I’ve been a trader and investor for 44 years. I left Wall Street long ago—-once I understood that their obsolete advice is designed to profit them, not you.
Today, my firm manages around $4 billion in ETFs, and I don’t answer to anybody. I tell the truth because trying to fool investors doesn’t help them, or me.
In Daily H.E.A.T. , I show you how to Hedge against disaster, find your Edge, exploit Asymmetric opportunities, and ride major Themes before Wall Street catches on.
Table of Contents
H.E.A.T.
When AI orders for you, DoorDash becomes a trucking company. Starbucks and Little Caesars already understand this. Here's who gets rich in the restack — and who's left holding the trucks.
THE SETUP: AI IS STEALING THE FRONT DOOR
There's a moment in every technology cycle when the new platform doesn't just compete with the old one — it makes the old one's reason for existing disappear. We're watching that happen right now in food delivery, and most investors haven't priced it in.
This week, Starbucks and Little Caesars — the biggest coffee chain and the third-largest pizza chain in America by location count — both launched ordering apps directly inside OpenAI's ChatGPT platform. The apps don't process full transactions yet. But that's the wrong detail to focus on. The right question is: why are these brands building native presence inside an AI platform at all?
The answer is that they're watching consumer behavior shift in real time. AI assistants are becoming the new search bar. People are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude where to eat, what to order, and what fits their mood — before they ever open DoorDash or Grubhub. If your brand isn't in that conversation, you don't exist.
"Every major multiunit brand will eventually need a presence inside AI platforms," said Oli Ostertag, President of Growth Platforms and AI at PAR Technology, a company embedded in restaurant operations. Stephen Zagor, a restaurant-industry consultant who teaches at Columbia Business School, put it more bluntly: "This is the sizzle in the restaurant world." And then: "The customer is going to tell you they need this, or they're not going to come."
$1.1T Global food delivery market by 2030 (Statista) | 500M+ ChatGPT monthly active users (OpenAI, 2025) | ~30% Avg. commission DoorDash/Grubhub charge restaurants | ~0% Commission an AI platform charges for a recommendation |
THE MECHANISM: WHERE THE PROFIT POOLS MOVE
To understand the threat, you need to understand what DoorDash and Grubhub actually sell. The food isn't their product. Discovery is. They charge restaurants 25–35% commissions not because delivery is expensive — it is — but because they own the moment of consumer intent. You're hungry, you open the app, and they control what you see first.
AI assistants are now attacking that moment directly. When a user asks ChatGPT "what should I have for lunch?" and the AI recommends a specific restaurant or chain, that's a discovery event that bypasses every delivery app entirely. The restaurant gets the recommendation for free. The consumer gets a personalized answer. OpenAI gets the engagement. DoorDash gets nothing.
This shift doesn't eliminate delivery. It changes who owns the margin. And the easiest way to see it is to look at how the stack rewrites itself:
Old World 1. Discover (app browse) 2. Select (app UI) 3. Pay (app checkout) 4. Deliver (app dispatch) | New World 1. Ask AI (natural language) 2. AI chooses (agent selects) 3. Pay rail (wallet approves) 4. Logistics API (dispatch layer) |
In the new world, the big economic question is simple: who owns the transaction when the interface disappears? Because if the AI agent becomes the chooser — then the delivery platforms don't own demand anymore. They own trucks. And trucks are not a monopoly business.
"The customer is going to tell you they need this, or they're not going to come." — Stephen Zagor, Columbia Business School
DoorDash already sees this coming. They built their own ChatGPT integration — for grocery delivery — before any of the restaurant chains moved. At the time of launch, co-founder Andy Fang framed it as giving people "time back." Read between the lines: DoorDash is trying to embed itself inside AI workflows before those workflows route around it entirely. Grubhub, now a distant third in market share, told MarketWatch it is "actively exploring new partnerships in this space." That's the language of a company reacting, not leading.
DOORDASH'S REAL RISK: LOSING THE TOLL BOOTH
Here's the nuance that makes this thesis more durable — and more profitable — than the simple "DoorDash dies" narrative:
DoorDash's risk isn't delivery. It's the toll booth.
They may keep the trucks. But they could lose the customer. The delivery infrastructure — drivers, routing algorithms, real-time dispatch — has genuine value. That doesn't disappear when AI takes over ordering. What disappears is the discovery monopoly: the captive consumer moment that let DoorDash charge 30% commissions, sell ads against competitor restaurants, and own customer purchase data.
If AI owns discovery and selection, DoorDash becomes a last-mile contractor API. The take rates compress. The ad business gets hit. The customer acquisition moat weakens. And "platform multiples" start looking a lot more like "transportation multiples." That's not zero. But it's not $55 billion in equity value either.
THE PAYMENT PROBLEM — AND WHY IT DOESN'T SAVE THE APPS
Bulls on the existing delivery platforms will point to one real friction point: payments. OpenAI tried a native checkout feature and had to pull it back because it didn't work reliably. Harshita Rawat, a senior analyst at Bernstein Research, flags the complexity — gift cards, loyalty points, encryption, fraud risk. "There's a lot of complexity around payments," she said.
This is real. But treat it as a 12-to-18 month delay, not a structural moat. Every major consumer platform — from Amazon to Apple Pay to Uber — has solved this exact problem. OpenAI has $40 billion in fresh funding and a mandate to build commerce infrastructure. The payment problem will be solved. When it is, the delivery apps lose their last remaining lock-in.
There's also a political economy problem: restaurants hate sharing transaction data with delivery apps. The apps mine that data to understand customer purchasing habits — and to upsell competitors at the moment of checkout. An AI-native ordering flow that routes directly to the restaurant keeps that data with the brand. That's a feature, not a bug, for every chain with more than 50 locations.
SPOTLIGHT: PAR TECHNOLOGY (NYSE: PAR) — THE PICKS-AND-SHOVELS PLAY Whether OpenAI builds the ordering layer, or Starbucks builds it, or Google builds it — the integration has to land somewhere. Specifically, it has to land on the restaurant's operating system: the POS, loyalty stack, kitchen routing, inventory, and payment rails that sit behind every transaction. PAR Technology is positioned to be exactly that connective tissue. They build restaurant-side infrastructure for major QSR chains, and PAR's President of Growth Platforms and AI is already leading the industry conversation on AI platform integration. This isn't a company chasing the trend — it's a company already embedded in the workflows the trend has to flow through. The investment thesis isn't "PAR built the ChatGPT apps." The thesis is: any AI ordering interface that wants to make a real order — not just a recommendation — has to connect to the restaurant OS layer. PAR is one of the best-positioned companies at that junction. Market cap: ~$1.0B. Recurring SaaS revenue growing >25% YoY. Under-owned, under-covered. Watch Q2 earnings for any language around AI platform partnerships. |
WINNERS: WHO GETS RICHER WHEN AI ORDERS DINNER
Company / Ticker | Why They Win |
OpenAI (private) | Owns the AI ordering interface. Collects intent data for every food query across all ChatGPT users. Commerce is the next revenue layer after subscriptions. If they solve payments, they become a toll booth — with a better margin profile than DoorDash. |
Alphabet / Google (GOOGL) | Gemini + Google Maps + restaurant data + Google Pay = fully integrated food ordering stack already in place. The competitive response to ChatGPT's restaurant push is one product update away. |
Apple (AAPL) | Siri AI overhaul + Apple Pay + App Store economics. Controls the most premium consumer segment and has frictionless payment infrastructure. If Apple gets Siri working as a true AI agent, the food ordering use case is table stakes. |
PAR Technology (PAR) | Restaurant OS infrastructure — the layer any AI ordering interface must connect to in order to make the order real. Already embedded in major QSR workflows. The picks-and-shovels play regardless of which AI wins. |
Toast (TOST) | Same thesis as PAR. Toast's massive installed base of independent restaurants becomes more valuable as those restaurants need AI-ready ordering backends to stay discoverable and operable. |
Major QSR Chains (MCD, YUM, SBUX) | Scale brands can build native AI ordering apps, offload commission costs, and own the customer relationship directly. Margin expansion story as AI shifts discovery away from platforms and back to the brand. |
PRESSURE POINTS: WHO GETS COMMODITIZED
Company / Ticker | The Problem |
DoorDash (DASH) | Discovery layer gets disintermediated by AI. The toll booth — not the trucks — is the high-margin asset. If AI owns the front door, DoorDash becomes a logistics API: still operating, but valued like transportation, not like a platform. |
Grubhub (private, owned by Wonder) | Already losing share. No credible AI strategy announced. Third-place players don't survive platform transitions — they get acquired or disappear. The question isn't if, it's when. |
Uber Eats / Uber (UBER) | Better positioned than Grubhub because Uber's logistics network is genuinely differentiated. But the discovery problem is identical. Uber needs a deep AI strategy specifically in food — broad AI investment isn't enough. |
Yelp (YELP) | The original restaurant discovery platform. Already being routed around by Google. AI assistants accelerate the decline — no one asks ChatGPT and then separately checks Yelp reviews. |
Small Independent Restaurants | Lack the tech budget to build native AI integrations. May end up paying to be featured inside AI discovery layers — recreating the same commission problem with a different, more powerful landlord. |
⚠ BEAR CASE • AI ordering adoption may be slower than the hype suggests. Many consumers — particularly older demographics — prefer app-based ordering they already know. Habit is powerful and sticky. • The payment integration problem is not solved. Until ChatGPT (or any AI) can complete a full transaction end-to-end without redirect, delivery apps retain a functional role in the commerce stack. • DoorDash and Uber Eats are not standing still. Both are investing in AI tools. If they successfully embed inside AI workflows rather than being routed around, the disruption narrative fails. • Platforms may lock down integrations — blocking agent-based ordering to protect their toll booth. That's a regulatory and technical fight that could last years. • Restaurant chains may face consumer privacy blowback if AI ordering data (dietary patterns, spending habits, location history) is perceived as being harvested by OpenAI without explicit consent. |
FIVE TAKEAWAYS
1. The moat is the interface, not the logistics. Delivery apps built their businesses on owning discovery. AI is stealing discovery. Logistics (drivers, routing) has value, but it's a commodity business. Watch for delivery players to pivot from "we help you find food" to "we get it there fast" — that's a lower-margin, more commoditized story.
2. DoorDash's risk isn't delivery — it's the toll booth. They may survive this shift as infrastructure. But infrastructure doesn't trade at platform multiples. The compression of take rates and ad revenue is where the P&L damage lands first. That's the short thesis.
3. PAR Technology and Toast are the picks-and-shovels plays. When there's a platform war, the infrastructure providers win regardless of which platform comes out on top. Both companies build the restaurant-side tech that any ordering interface — old or new — has to connect to. Under-owned relative to the opportunity.
4. Brand scale becomes a direct competitive advantage. McDonald's, Yum Brands, and Starbucks have the engineering budgets to build native AI ordering apps. Smaller chains and independents do not. Watch for QSR margin expansion as commissions migrate from delivery platforms to direct AI-native channels over the next 3–5 years.
5. This is a bottleneck migration story. In every technology buildout cycle, the bottleneck migrates: from hardware to software to interface to payment rails. AI is now claiming the interface layer for consumer commerce. Whoever owns identity and payment within that AI layer — Apple, Google, or an OpenAI-affiliated fintech — captures the next decade of consumer platform economics.
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News vs. Noise: What’s Moving Markets Today
I warned you the other day to watch out for a decline and to buy the oil stocks……
So far this morning, Oil is back over $100.
The Open AI news that I flagged yesterday did turn out to be a big deal. Here’s the link again, it’s behind a paywall, but the bottom line is that they are worried they may not be able to pay for future computing contracts……
Meanwhile, Seagate Technology had blowout earnings and guidance and was up big last night. Ought to have an impact on the memory stocks today.
Today we have FOMC and earnings from META, MSFT, GOOGL, and AMZN, plus a bunch of other names. I’d continue to be somewhat cautious as the market is set up for perfection.
What Iran Tells Us About UFO Disclosure
When governments confront unknown threats in their airspace, defense budgets surge
and the same aerospace and surveillance companies move hardest. On March 2nd,
Northrop jumped 6% and Lockheed 3.3% on the Iran news — and President Trump has
since ordered the formal release of government UAP files, with the Pentagon confirming
compliance. So if a conventional conflict can move these stocks this fast, what happens
when the bigger story breaks?
See the UFOD holdings: [thetruthisoutthereufod.com
ETF News
A Stock I’m Watching
I typically like to buy stocks on countertrend pullbacks, but as I wrote in the newsletter the other day this may be a special situation.
In Case You Missed It
Great talk on with the Acquirers Podcast on markets, value investing, inverse Cramer, and much more……
The H.E.A.T. (Hedge, Edge, Asymmetry and Theme) Formula is designed to empower investors to spot opportunities, think independently, make smarter (often contrarian) moves, and build real wealth.
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