Putting Cooperation on the Menu: Challenges Facing a Food Delivery Platform Co-op

Description

Putting Cooperation on the Menu: Challenges Facing a Food Delivery Platform Co-op: Abstract

In 2020, with COVID-19 in full swing, a team of Montreal developers decided to support restaurants by launching an urban food delivery service. Their offering differed from that of Uber Eats, Doordash, and SkipTheDishes in that members of the collective formed a cooperative with social, environmental, and economic goals. The result was Radish, a solidarity cooperative providing meal delivery and marketing services to restaurants. Restaurants, employees (delivery, programming, and marketing), and consumers had the opportunity to join the co-op and participate in its decision-making.

Teaching objectives

Characterize the specificities of cooperatives as entities that can replace for-profit enterprises, using the example of a platform cooperative Identify the characteristics of a platform cooperative, taking into account its business model, its democratic organization, and its relationship to technology and the environment Analyze the contributions and limitations of this platform cooperative in comparison to for-profit platforms such as Uber Eats, Doordash, and Skip the Dishes, and project introducing social innovation.

Additional information

Also available in French.

Teachers’ notes are available for university teachers only. Please contact the HEC Montréal Case Centre.