Dr. Roberto Baldacci
Doha, Qatar: A new study by researchers at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), member of Qatar Foundation has found that where food delivery couriers wait for orders can have a greater impact on service performance than how often they are moved around a city, offering fresh insights into improving the efficiency of online food delivery platforms.
“The most notable result was that the coverage radius was more important than the relocation distance,” said Dr. Roberto Baldacci, Professor at the College of Science and Engineering at HBKU.
“The ability of a waiting point to serve nearby restaurants had a stronger effect on demand coverage than allowing couriers to move longer distances between time periods.”
The finding emerged from a study titled ‘Optimising Courier Positioning and Demand Coverage in Online Food Delivery Platforms’, which introduces what researchers call the Dynamic Waiting Point Location Problem, a new framework designed to help delivery platforms determine where couriers should be positioned before customer orders arrive.
As online food delivery platforms continue to grow worldwide, they are fundamentally reshaping urban logistics and consumer behavior. Customers increasingly expect meals to arrive quickly and reliably, while platforms rely on real-time tracking, dynamic routing and crowd sourced courier networks to meet demand. Behind the convenience of a few taps on a smartphone, however, lies a complex logistics operation that must constantly balance courier availability, restaurant demand and delivery efficiency, challenges that formed the basis of the HBKU study.
According to Dr. Baldacci, the research was driven by both operational challenges faced by delivery companies and a gap in existing academic literature.
“Customer orders are not evenly distributed across the city or throughout the day,” he said. “They change by area, time slot, and especially during lunch and dinner peaks. If couriers wait in locations far from where demand will next appear, platforms may experience longer response times, lower service coverage, and inefficient operations.”
While most delivery systems focus on assigning couriers after orders are placed, the HBKU study shifts attention to an earlier and often overlooked stage of the process.
“Current systems are largely reactive,” said Dr. Baldacci. “They determine which courier should serve which order after demand appears. Our study asks a different question: where should couriers be positioned before orders arrive?”
The research identifies several inefficiencies that arise when courier positioning is not planned strategically. Couriers may remain idle in low-demand areas while restaurants in busier locations struggle to find available delivery personnel nearby. Such imbalances can increase pickup delays, reduce on-time deliveries and lower overall productivity.
To address this challenge, the researchers developed a mixed-integer programming model that helps platforms make four interconnected decisions: selecting which waiting points to activate, assigning restaurants to those locations, determining how many couriers should be stationed at each point, and deciding when couriers should be relocated as demand patterns change throughout the day.
In practical terms, waiting points are temporary staging areas where couriers remain between deliveries. These could include parking areas, food courts, restaurant clusters or other convenient locations close to anticipated demand.
“Once a waiting point is selected, the platform can decide which restaurants it covers, how many couriers should wait there, and whether couriers can move from that point to another location in the next period,” Dr. Baldacci said.
One of the study’s key conclusions is that delivery companies may achieve greater efficiency by carefully selecting strategic waiting locations rather than relying on frequent courier relocations.
“This suggests that platforms may improve performance more by selecting well-located waiting points than by frequently relocating couriers across the city,” said Dr. Baldacci. “A carefully designed network of waiting points can improve service coverage while avoiding unnecessary movement and operational complexity.”
Looking ahead, the HBKU team plans to expand the research beyond experimental scenarios by incorporating real-world operational data, including actual restaurant locations, travel times, demand patterns and courier availability.
