Facebook has emerged in Mexico City as a low-cost alternative to food delivery services like Uber Eats and Rappi, as restaurateurs seek to avoid high fees
The platform has emerged as a hack around Uber Eats and Rappi's high fees. — • XOCHIMILCO, MEXICO Tweets: @anirvan , @khushbuoshea , @leomschwartz , @lenton_chris , @cowvala , @kayla_s_stewart , @asayf , @mrstephendeng , and @brendawambui Tweets: Anirvan Chatterjee / @anirvan : “Berbera and other Mexico City restaurateurs who spoke to Rest of World said that Facebook offers them a hack around the delivery apps, all without having to pay a single centavo.” https://restofworld.org/... Khushbu Shah / @khushbuoshea : “People use Facebook because it's cheaper. You can find everything.” How Facebook became working-class Mexico's favorite food delivery app https://restofworld.org/... by @restofworld's @leomschwartz Leo Schwartz / @leomschwartz : In Mexico City, the exorbitant fees of Uber Eats and Rappi don't make sense for the affordable food scene. Instead, restaurants have found an ingenious low-tech hack: selling on private neighborhood Facebook groups. My story and 📷 for @restofworld: https://restofworld.org/... Chris Lenton / @lenton_chris : @leomschwartz @restofworld many in the US dislike Facebook but for much of the world it's an invaluable app @cowvala : small businesses and big tech don't really get along, ever https://twitter.com/... Kayla Stewart / @kayla_s_stewart : Food and tech in one @leomschwartz piece? I'm sold. Great read on the complex economics around food delivery services in working-class Mexico. https://restofworld.org/... Asif Khan / @asayf : This is great to see - our single biggest revenue channel is WhatsApp. We expect it to remain so. cc @andofoods https://twitter.com/... Stephen / @mrstephendeng : This dynamic will play out on the continent too. Keys are the shift to discovery and a huge compression of platform fees. https://twitter.com/... @brendawambui : Things that are possible when you have social trust: https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The SoftBank-funded price war among Uber, Didi, and Rappi was supposed to buy Latin American delivery apps customer loyalty with subsidized fees; instead it left restaurants facing steep commissions once the subsidies thinned out. Mexico City restaurateurs like Berbera are now routing orders through private Facebook neighborhood groups instead — a workaround that costs them nothing.
This is not an isolated hack. Meta's apps have been quietly absorbing small-business commerce across emerging markets, from Facebook's role as small-business infrastructure in Africa to WhatsApp's push into paid business messaging — and even Mexico City's own delivery couriers already coordinate on WhatsApp.
First-order effects
- Berbera and other Mexico City restaurateurs keep their full margin on delivery orders by selling through Facebook groups rather than paying Uber Eats or Rappi a cut per order.
- Uber Eats and Rappi lose restaurant supply and order volume in Mexico City to a channel they don't control and can't tax.
Second-order effects
- Meta gains an unpaid merchant base it can later monetize — the same path WhatsApp took from free messaging to paid business tools — while the delivery apps face pressure to cut commissions or lose listings.
- Delivery couriers, who already organize on WhatsApp groups, may see order flow fragment away from the apps' dispatch systems toward direct restaurant-to-customer arrangements.
Third-order effects
- If group-based selling scales, Latin American food delivery consolidates around two competing structures: take-rate marketplaces versus Meta's social graph acting as free commerce infrastructure — with Meta positioned to charge later what the apps charge now.
- Restaurants treating Facebook groups as storefronts deepen their dependence on a single platform whose algorithm and policy changes they don't govern, echoing the small-business reliance documented in Africa.
The trend: Small businesses in emerging markets are bypassing commissioned marketplaces by running commerce directly on Meta's social apps, forcing delivery platforms to defend their take rates.