Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1524836
9 ANALYSIS maltatoday | SUNDAY • 4 AUGUST 2024 MaltaToday explores the rise and disruption of the food delivery and taxi industries. NICOLE MEILAK reports. REGULATING THE JUNGLE A CABS AND COURIERS CONUNDRUM CONTINUES ON PAGES 10 - 11 > Hungry and fancying takeaway Back in 2017, Friday nights in Mal- ta could have gone one of two ways. The first is a night out at Paceville, moving from one sweaty bar to an- other downing cheap alcohol all night. As the night draws to a close, you walk down the road from The White Palace, just pass that kebab joint, until you find an older man in a white shirt shouting "eCabs please!" on repeat. You talk to the lady at the reception desk inside the cab office, book a van for you and your friends, and take a seat as you wait for your ride. Alternatively, maybe you were sitting on your sofa at home after a long week at work and decided that you weren't going to cook tonight. You turn on the television and a Maltese influencer named Sarah Zerafa appears during the commer- cial break asking if you're hungry and fancying takeaway (you are, indeed, hungry and fancying takea- way). You pull out your laptop and head to the Time to Eat website to order whatever greasy food you can get on the cheap. Within minutes, you've settled on a food joint and placed your order in the system. Whichever way your Friday night looked, you were probably using the technology of pioneering com- panies in a sector that was relative- ly new at the time. Time to Eat was the first online platform to connect restaurants and customers through its own delivery system. Meanwhile, eCabs was the first cab company in Malta to introduce its own booking app. Only one of the two survived in an industry that, over the years, has transformed it- self entirely, and disrupted Maltese regulators completely. A piece of the pie Time to Eat held a monopoly po- sition in the food delivery business for several years.