I’m always interested to see new business models emerge, and the internet has played a huge role in changing the way society operates, and the way people think about commerce. Online delivery has had a huge impact both on my life, and the way that I shop. If I want to buy something — a book, or a piece of furniture, or a piece of equipment, I can find it online, and order it, and it will arrive at my door. Previously, I had to go to the shop, look around the shop, collect, pay and go home. Now I just go to Google, then Amazon or eBay and the product is in my hands the next day. Now if this is revolutionary for me, it is even more revolutionary for sellers: instead of maintaining expensive retail real estate, they can maintain low-cost warehouses, and increase the range of products they stock . Of course, this new model presents challenges to established retail businesses, and to local government and communities who see town centres increasingly deserted, and more and more physical retailers going out of business f they can’t adapt. But that’s the nature of capitalism: things come and things go depending on what is popular, and what attracts custom.

But there are a certain class of businesses that have not been quite so affected by the online-retail revolution. Businesses like nightclubs, health spas, and restaurants where the physical premises is a huge aspect of the business model. Restaurants can’t establish a warehouse where food is assembled and send it out to the customers’ homes. I am sure McDonald’s have given this serious thought, but it just wouldn’t work — customers want freshly prepared food, delivered to their table in a bricks-and-mortar restaurant. Nightclubs can’t deliver themselves to me either — although the fact that I can stream any music I choose from Spotify and dance around my bedroom is surely a threat to their business model.

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