Delivering Presence
The Uber x Opentable Partnership
TL;DR
Presence matters: Dining out generates 3.2x more neighborhood spending than delivery. You browse, drink, connect. Delivery kills the ecosystem.
Uber + OpenTable partnership = Silicon Valley's $100B bet that we've pushed too far toward isolation (25% of Americans now eat entirely alone, up 53% since 2003)
The math is tough for both companies: Every 1% increase in delivery = 2% fewer rideshare trips to restaurants. Uber's own innovation is cannibalizing its core business.
Roberta's proves the formula: 2008 opening in sketchy Bushwick → 2011 Uber arrives → 2016 becomes Lyft's #1 NYC destination. Rideshare turned inaccessible into irresistible.
Pattern everywhere: Cheap industrial space + destination dining + rideshare access = gentrification. The tech that democratized restaurants also displaces communities.
Real fight: Uber/OpenTable (team "get people out") vs DoorDash (70% delivery share, team "keep people in"). DoorDash built an empire on convenience over connection.
Research shows sharing even one meal per week = measurably higher happiness. Restaurants aren't just businesses - they're happiness infrastructure.
The kicker: In a world of infinite convenience, showing up becomes revolutionary. This partnership admits what delivery can't deliver: presence.
Audio from Eleven Labs Can Be a Little Wonky
Delivering Presence
The recent partnership between Uber and OpenTable is a powerful affirmation of restaurants' centrality to modern life—and the tensions that define it. This alliance embodies a fundamental push and pull of our era: dining out versus delivery, presence versus remoteness, connection versus isolation, community versus convenience. It reveals how ridesharing and restaurants have together reshaped our cities in the 21st century, and why restaurants remain foundational to Silicon Valley's elusive pursuit of the "super-app."
To understand these interwoven forces—and where they're taking us—all my instincts and research led me to one specific place and time: Bushwick, Brooklyn, 2008.
The Edge of Everything
Brandon Hoy and Carlo Mirarchi probably weren't thinking about urban transformation when they opened Roberta's in January 2008. More likely, they were thinking about pizza, rent, and a massive wood-fired oven they'd somehow fit into a former garage on Moore Street. The concrete bunker aesthetic was part design choice, part economic reality. Bushwick offered what Manhattan and much of Brooklyn couldn't: space you could actually afford.
Bushwick's history reads like a compressed version of American urban decline and renewal. Founded by Dutch farmers in the 17th century, it evolved into one of America's brewing capitals by the late 1800s, with fourteen breweries producing one-tenth of all beer consumed in the United States. But by the 1960s and 70s, the neighborhood had descended into poverty and abandonment, culminating in the infamous 1977 blackout that saw widespread arson and looting. By the time Roberta's arrived, Bushwick was still largely industrial, dotted with warehouses and auto body shops, far from Manhattan's dining consciousness. In the first few years, getting to Roberta's was an adventure unto itself. The L train could get you close, but for most guests, local and tourist), it meant multiple transfers and a walk through unfamiliar streets. It was a challenge hailing a yellow cab to take you that deep into Brooklyn and a near impossibility to find one to take you home.
Within three months, The New York Times praised Roberta's "heretically creative pies." Food & Wine called them "marvelous things of no particular geographical provenance." By 2013, USA Today ranked it among America's top 15 pizzerias. The backyard filled with picnic tables. Heritage Radio Network broadcast from a shipping container on the patio. They grew vegetables in old tires and a vintage Mercedes. The Clintons showed up for a party in 2012.
Roberta's succeeded not despite its location but, in part, because of it. The journey became part of the experience, a pilgrimage that self-selected for a certain kind of diner. But that same geography limited who could make the trek. Until ridesharing changed everything.
The Accessibility Equation & The Pattern Spreads
Uber launched in New York in 2011, three years after Roberta's opened. The timing is crucial—rideshare didn't create Roberta's success but seriously amplified it. Lyft arrived in 2014. Suddenly, that sketchy walk from the Morgan Avenue station became optional.
The data tells the story. In 2016, Lyft announced that Roberta's topped their list of restaurant destinations across all of New York City. This from the smallest player—Lyft handled just 38,000 daily trips versus Uber's 237,000. If Roberta's dominated Lyft's data, its popularity with Uber's larger user base was likely even more pronounced though I could not find specific data.
What changed? Everything. The adventure of getting there transformed from barrier to choice. Late-night diners gained guaranteed rides home. Groups could travel together without the taxi-negotiation dance. Visitors from other boroughs—people who might never navigate the L train to industrial Bushwick—suddenly had access.
What happened in Bushwick wasn't isolated. Across American cities, the same pattern emerged. In Los Angeles, Ori Menashe opened Bestia in the Arts District in 2012, transforming a former loading dock into one of the city's most sought-after reservations. Chicago's West Loop saw Stephanie Izard open Girl & the Goat in 2010 in the former meatpacking district. Philadelphia watched the same story unfold in Fishtown with Suraya, Houston in East Downtown with Nancy's Hustle, and Boston in Dorchester's Upham's Corner with Comfort Kitchen.
Each followed a predictable playbook:
Edge-of-town rent arbitrage: Cheap industrial spaces allowed for ambitious build-outs with healthy margins that would be impossible in established neighborhoods.
Destination cooking worth the detour: The food and experience had to be compelling enough to override location friction—good enough that people would actively seek it out.
Ridehail as the last-mile solution: No subway? Terrible parking? No problem. Pin-drop navigation and on-demand access made "inconvenient" locations suddenly convenient.
The real-estate flywheel effect: Once restaurants proved demand existed, the transformation accelerated. Breweries arrived, then galleries, followed by Class-A office space and luxury condos.
"Dining, delivery and transportation are all intimately connected. This partnership strategically positions OpenTable to make those daily experiences as integrated and frictionless as possible for both restaurants and diners." Debby Soo, CEO Opentable
Why Now: The Numbers That Matter and The Power of a Shared Enemy
But here's where the Uber-OpenTable partnership reveals an important aspect of the strategy for both. University of Michigan researchers discovered something alarming: for every 1% increase in restaurants joining delivery platforms, rideshare trips to restaurants dropped by 2.12% for Uber and 6.43% for Lyft in those areas.
Read that again. Every percentage point of delivery growth costs two percentage points of dining out. The platforms that made restaurants accessible are watching delivery—their own innovation—erode the very behavior that drives their highest-margin business.
The economic ripple effects amplify the concern. When people dine out, they generate 3.2 times more neighborhood spending than delivery customers. They browse shops, grab drinks next door, create what economists call "agglomeration effects." Delivery captures the transaction but kills the ecosystem.
Presence matters…a lot.
The partnership also speaks to a shared enemy: DoorDash. With nearly 70% market share in food delivery and a growing presence in grocery and convenience delivery, DoorDash threatens both Uber's mobility business and OpenTable's reservation model. While Uber and OpenTable want to get people out, DoorDash has built an empire on keeping them in.
The Transformation Cycle
Academic research confirms what Bushwick's evolution suggests: rideshare doesn't just reflect neighborhood change—it accelerates it. The entry of Uber and Lyft correlates with 9% average increases in urban housing prices almost entirely concentrated in rentals. Formerly inaccessible areas often see the steepest jumps. Studies document "significant in-migration of rich-younger individuals" as transportation barriers fall.
The mechanism is elegant and relentless. Rideshare makes marginal neighborhoods accessible. Restaurants open in former industrial spaces. Success attracts more ambitious ventures. Property values rise. The original residents and businesses that gave these neighborhoods character find themselves priced out just as investment finally arrives.
Yet the benefits are real too. Entrepreneurial energy flows into neglected areas. Jobs multiply. Cultural cross-pollination creates dining scenes that couldn't exist in homogeneous neighborhoods. Bushwick today blends Dominican, Mexican, and new American influences in combinations found nowhere else. The question isn't whether change is good or bad—it's how to preserve what matters while enabling what's possible.
Building the Everything Ecosystem
Silicon Valley has chased the "super-app" dream for years, envious of Asian platforms like WeChat that seamlessly blend messaging, payments, transportation, and commerce. American attempts to replicate this model keep fragmenting against consumer habits and competitive dynamics. The Uber-OpenTable partnership suggests a different path: building ecosystems around natural behavior patterns rather than forcing unnatural integration.
Consider the user journey they're crafting. You're browsing dinner options when you notice that impossible reservation is suddenly available. Book through the integrated app, get a ride discount. Your Uber knows your destination before you step in. After dinner, your return ride is one tap away. Each element reinforces the others without feeling forced.
This stands opposite to DoorDash's pure-play approach. Despite dominating delivery, they remain transactional. Their SevenRooms acquisition acknowledges the limitation, but they're fighting their own model. Every successful delivery order is a small victory against the dining ecosystem they claim to support.
The timing feels particularly acute. Americans eating alone has increased 53% since 2003. A quarter of us now eat solo. Research shows that people who shared even one meal with others last week report measurably higher happiness than complete solo diners. The Uber-OpenTable partnership, whether by design or fortune, represents technology nudging us toward presence at a moment when isolation threatens to become our default.
The Present Tense
Standing outside Roberta's today, the transformation feels complete. Those empty warehouses command millions. The sketchy walk from the subway passes boutique hotels and natural wine bars. The concrete bunker aesthetic that once signaled authenticity now reads as carefully curated. Ironically, you can now have instacart bring you that Roberta’s pie from whole foods to eat at home, probably alone. I’d argue that would never have happened without ridesharing unlocking access and amplifying the reach of the restaurant.
Yet something essential persists. On any given night, the backyard fills with the same energy that made Roberta's magnetic from the start. Groups cluster around picnic tables. Strangers become temporary friends over shared pizzas. Most likely arrived by rideshare, creating an informal taxi line that would have been impossible in 2008. The partnership between transportation and destination has evolved from novelty to necessity.
The Uber-OpenTable alliance acknowledges what the data and a Surgeon General confirm: convenience has perhaps pushed too far toward isolation. Their integration isn't just corporate strategy. It's recognition that restaurants serve functions delivery can never replicate—they create community, generate "spillover effects," transform neighborhoods for better and worse.
Whether this partnership can meaningfully shift behavior remains uncertain. DoorDash's dominance won't erode easily. The gravitational pull of convenience is strong. But it represents something important: major platforms acknowledging that presence matters.
The same technologies that can reduce restaurants to delivery nodes can also extend their reach and deepen their impact. Rideshare democratized access to places like Roberta's, enabling transformations both wonderful and painful. Now, as delivery threatens to reverse those gains at twice the rate, we face a choice about what kind of future we're building.
The answer won't come from technology alone but from how tech companies deploy it and consumers embrace it. Can we preserve what makes restaurants vital while managing the disruption they drive? Can we maintain the human connections that define us acknowledging the irresistible pull of convenience? The partnership between Uber and OpenTable suggests that even Silicon Valley recognizes some experiences can't be optimized away. In a world of infinite convenience from delivery options, the profound act of sharing a meal out with friends, loved ones and strangers becomes more important, not less. Presence matters.
Brilliant article - thanks for sharing.