There are already a handful of laundry services operating in the bay area. They're all roughly an order of magnitude more expensive than doing it myself even as a renter.
Likewise, the overwhelming cost of food delivery services is in the "service" part. Even if you could make the meal for $2, I would still end up paying $10 for a $2 meal, and while it definitely possible to make a nutritious and reasonably palatable meal for $2, it's never going to compare to the $10 meal I can get just by walking down the block to my local taqueria, much less what I can make myself.
When I was living alone as a bachelor, I crunched the numbers and decided it was kind of stupid to do my own laundry rather than drop it off at the laundromat for their wash-and-fold service.
Doing a load of laundry coin-op would cost me about $2/$3 a load. Plus the cost of detergent, fabric softener, and dryer sheets. And the aggravation of going to a grungy, depressing laundromat, waiting around for the washer to run, running the dryer several times because things wouldn't get dry, and then folding it all and lugging my baskets home.
When I was in an apartment that did have hookups, but no laundry machines, buying a basic washer and dryer ran about $1000, unless I found some ticking time bomb of a used set on Craigslist. And then there is the water and electricity costs. Not to mention the hassle of either abandoning them or having to drag them off somewhere else when I moved.
In contrast, I could drop off a huge barracks bag full of laundry at the laundromat once every two weeks, and they would weigh it up, charge me a dollar a pound, then I'd go off to work and pick it up at the end of the day, perfectly washed and expertly folded. Just in the amount of time saved at drudgery, it was worth it, besides the fact that they did a far, far better job than I would do myself.
$1000 sounds really expensive. You can definitely get something cheaper than that, specially if you don't try to purchase something that is also a dryer (drying things on a clothesline is also cheaper...). If you are living alone, you might even be able to get away with an $100 "RV trailer" washing machine.
I think what you were really doing here is finding a way to justify your choice of relying on a laundry service :)
The difference between you (and me) and an unfortunately large number of people is that they don't have the luxury to trade money for time, even for seemingly trivial things. Spending $3 and two hours at a laundromat might be the only option, as $5-$10 for a service can often be out of reach.
That's $3/load+drying. When I worked as a mechanic that is what it cost me to wash work clothes (didn't want them in my washing machine). I did the same thing--it would cost me ~$20 and 2 hours sitting at the laundromat, wash and fold service was 28. Even for someone making minimum wage, $4/hour is pretty poor value for time.
I got a set for $100-200 specifically requesting the oldest ones they had. They tend to last decades with repairs being cheap. Unlike modern ones. About a year later I got some specifics in this article:
Then the detergent and stuff at Costco so it's cheap. From there, you might also consider your time going to, waiting in, and leaving the laundromat. With your own machines, that pretty much reduces to minutes of walking around in the house. During the wait time, you just do whatever you'd normally do in the house. Saves a trip out.
Likewise, the overwhelming cost of food delivery services is in the "service" part. Even if you could make the meal for $2, I would still end up paying $10 for a $2 meal, and while it definitely possible to make a nutritious and reasonably palatable meal for $2, it's never going to compare to the $10 meal I can get just by walking down the block to my local taqueria, much less what I can make myself.