When bicycles did come into the picture around the turn of the century, they revolutionized the industry. By that time, Tokyo was sprawling, so there was more ground for demae to cover. “You want the noodles to still be hot when you arrive, so speed is of the essence,” says Kapur. “In a lot of cases, they would be carrying lunch to one entire company, so that’s why they’re carrying maybe 20 or 30 portions together.”

Interesting - it all being one delivery instead of several makes more sense!

this is a lot more believable for 2 reasons - I have seen them (not in person, but you get the point), and they have this base, in which all the tiffins(lunchboxes) are kept, so all this essentially acts as a very large single body, unlike noodle carrier, who had them all in a vertical - stacked setup, with the dabbawala setup, the center of gravity is much easier to be aligned across their head, but with noodle guy, that is genuinely hard, even balancing one long stick that way would be hard, it would just tip over, although in motion it would be comparatively more stabler