But, Just Eat and co did solve it with volume; they made it possible for countless food places to add delivery to their repertoire, and their app added discoverability.
I would never have learned about local food places if it wasn't for that app.
But really, the economics are all in operations and scale.
Some people may complain that they can’t get delivery 10 miles away from a restaurant.. but they aren’t willing to tip or pay higher for the back and forth a driver must do to earn more than it costs to pay them. Cutting to 5 or even 3 miles for delivery ranges makes a big difference for orders per hour.
If nobody subsidized delivery workers' wages with tips, delivery companies would have to start paying workers enough to make it actually worth their time to begin with, and pass those costs onto VCs and eventually consumers.
More reliable income for the delivery workers, more transparent delivery pricing for consumers. What's not to like?
A similar dynamic will likely play out in other industries where tipping is common as well.
Alas, I do end up tipping in real life because I don't want delivery workers to suffer more than they have to in the mean time until not-tipping becomes the norm and wages increase as a result, so it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem.
Just stop counting tips for minimum wage and pay everybody a liveable wage. You can't start this change from the tipping side, because that way it primarily it hurts the workers.
Tips have completely died over here due to online payment. You order, you pay, food gets delivered. There's no stage for tipping.
Back when you had to pay cash on delivery, tipping was pretty common (at least for me), but right now there's just no reasonable moment to tip anymore.
Of course its trivial to include delivery cost in the price. You know where it needs to go, so you can make a good estimate of the time it takes to deliver there, and include that in the price.
Tipping isn't bad, because of it's infrequency. It's bad because it's unclear and hidden.
Consumer service business cannot pay their service employees more, than what consumers are willing to pay for the services. In most cases the business is just a venue for consumers to acquire services from individuals. In restaurants the individuals are waiter.
The economics are that when you insert a multinational between a local restaurant and a local hungry person, revenue to the restaurant drops, prices paid by the customer rise, and service gets worse.
This is why after a couple orders right at the start of lockdown, I started calling restaurants directly. Some of them are delivering in breach of their contracts on the side, the rest I just walk over and pick up.
> The economics are that when you insert a multinational between a local restaurant and a local hungry person, revenue to the restaurant drops, prices paid by the customer rise, and service gets worse.
Exactly, when the Softbank or VC money runs out for Doordash and the like it will be total mutiny, I doubt most if any drivers, outside of the Top dasher that accepts any orders, will continue to do so when the pay rates are reflecting the true costs of all externatalities are included in the total calculus. Several drivers see their 0% acceptance rate as a badge of honor, as its their only real avenue for opposition against the low delivery pay orders.
I was interested in the logistic sides of food delivery systems, especially during the shutdown, so I started to spend an hour a day of research on DD on their subreddits, and over time that led to even doing a few dashes myself during this period... and suffice it to say, everything from their app, to customer/dasher support, to the pay model are not sustainable so long as Humans are involved in the equation.
I've spoken to local restaurant owners and cooks during the shutdown in person, having experience in the Industry, and most were reluctantly using it as crutch in difficult times but it was cutting into their over all margins, which already suck.
Now with things starting to re-open in many states I hope they start to de-couple it to be less than the 10% of their total sales for their sake.
I wonder what would happen if I signed up for Doordash as a driver, picked up as many orders as I could in one evening, and just donated the food to the poor and needy? How long until I'm booted and banned as a driver?
Disclaimer: I'm not advocating this and I'm in no way condoning such behaviour with the following.
From what I saw when they did updates, usually on Friday evenings during the dinner rush no less, the system would crash and result in any and all current orders being essentially undeliverable as the app crashed and often you couldn't log in or out of the system nation-wide for 30 mins to hours later.
Furthermore, as I was monitoring this alongside the mass unemployment numbers rising due to the pandemic I saw the influx of new users that followed: so, I noticed that many hapless, and panicked users would be unable to fulfill an order because of random situations. I started to feel really bad for them, too as most were just trying to be as honest possible.
So, while I don't suggest doing that, see disclaimer above; I think if you signed up you would eventually have an order eventually 'slip through the cracks' through not fault of your own. Customer support was based overseas, and were limited and then inundated with requests so realistically nothing was done to prevent anyone giving the order away.
What you have to also keep in mind is that these partnerships are often with franchisees' or privately owned restaurants who ultimately take the hit when food is not delivered and a refund is issued. Which is why you see vigilante like behaviour be lauded by Doordashers when they see pizza being arbitraged, and them saying 'F-Doordash.'
So, in short, if you did it long enough you wouldn't need to steal anything and your opportunity would happen anyway through not fault of your own.
I highly suggest people read the r/doordash sub-reddit, its anecdotal but also direct feedback from a wide breadth of drivers, some positive, some neutral and a lot negative ones about the absurd algorithm based compensation model: the recurring $3 for +15 mile delivery kind of deal.
So, as person who spent a lot of time in the Culinary Industry, just do the right thing and buy any food you want to donate. Playing Robinhood within this context just nets a situation in which almost nobody ever wins.
There was a user here on HN who was trying to launch his own food delivery app; I wish he'd update and see if he had any updates on his progress and if he took significant Market Share from these big players.
I'm highly sceptical about his prospects, mostly because of the upfront cost of being moral.(you'd have to pay $15/hr to a driver in NYC)
Unless he decided to go immoral and shaft the delivery people.(Having seen how much abuse undocumented waiters and delivery people suffer from the restaurants)
Ever go to an Italian restaurant and they have a 30 minute or so variance in how soon they bring your order? That’s because they don’t adjust for the online orders in their kitchen. Either constrained by physical size or staff, also most services don’t rate limit how many orders go to singular restaurants. It’s especially hard for a restaurant to suspend online ordering if they rely on email, fax, or robo called orders.
>> The economics of food delivery can’t be solved with efficiency. There’s not enough pie to split.
> Have you tried pizza pie?
IIRC, proper pizza delivery requires a special warming bag. These generic delivery companies that employ gig-working randos don't equip their drivers with those bags, so they suck at delivering pizza at any distance, greater "efficiency" or no.
These are or were available. I’ve seen several branded bags both as a diner watching the order come in and as a customer ordering food. Whether they are given away, given upon request, or available for purchase, I have no idea. And I haven’t seen one in awhile, but I’ve also greatly reduced ordering this way and exclusively use Uber when I do.
I see doordash/grubhub/ubereats folks with big insulated bags(or backpacks in the case of bike/moto folks) pretty regularly. Not sure if they are required(or provided or sold) but they are definitely available.
> I see doordash/grubhub/ubereats folks with big insulated bags(or backpacks in the case of bike/moto folks) pretty regularly. Not sure if they are required(or provided or sold) but they are definitely available.
They're available, but I don't think they're universally used. I read one article where the a pizzeria was offering bags for the drivers to borrow (because of bad reviews for cold delivery pizza), but a lot of them refused because they'd have to leave a deposit and didn't want to return to the store to return the bag.
Irrelevant point? Could be accurate, but is all the more reason for them to merge if they think it improves the business. I didn't say "this will make them profitable", OP asked why they would do it and I answered. ¯\(°_o)/¯
