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I think you're right, and that people are downvoting you because they are confusing your references to pre-feminism gender roles as you supporting them. As del

I think you're right, and that people are downvoting you because they are confusing your references to pre-feminism gender roles as you supporting them. As delivery services become faster and more perfected, specifically when we can start using drones to deliver almost anything (which isn't heavy) to anyone in an urban/suburban area in an hour or less, I think we will see the rise of food being ordered and delivered at will. However, the technology isn't there yet. So instead, we get all these food delivery services that either deliver restaurant food (ubereats, orderup), their own food but without choice / at high cost relative to quality like with Freshly, or these meal-kits. At best they are awkward solutions to a problem that we can't fix with normal pricing and distribution models. What there is really a market for is a service that can deliver fresh or at least reasonably high quality food, which is customizable to individual preferences, for a reasonable cost (~$5 or so), on-demand, and in a timely manner. All of the existing companies in this space make tradeoffs in one way or another, which leave people dissatisfied and prevent adoption except by those who place a high premium on convenience.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pavel_lishin 9y ago
> What there is really a market for is a service that can deliver fresh or at least reasonably high quality food, which is customizable to individual preferences, for a reasonable cost (~$5 or so), on-demand, and in a timely manner. Does that also come with a free pony?
- opportune 9y ago
  Did you read what I wrote? Of course I acknowledge that this is not feasible yet. I'm saying that this is the product that the market is actually waiting for, and that the technology isn't there yet (automated drone delivery). So what we have in the meantime are awkward solutions that only meet a few of these requirements.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    I don't think drone delivery is the bottleneck for incredibly cheap, yet personalized food that's delivered to you on the order of ~15 minutes. Ingredients, chef's time, kitchen space, etc. are going to eat that five bucks right up. A six-inch sub from Subway is already nine bucks, and that includes the Sandwich Rembrandt personalizing it for me with an extra slice of provolone for a dollar extra. The market isn't waiting for it, people are waiting for it - who doesn't want super cheap, super good food, super fast? But there's a saying about picking two.
    - opportune 9y ago
      I'm not thinking of anything like a subway. Having each person's food prepared individually is ridiculously inefficient. I'm envisioning a facility tied to an Amazon warehouse or something similar that might be preparing food for >10000 people every day, not a huge kitchen with hundreds of chefs running around to fill maybe a couple thousand or so individual orders per day. There's no reason the production of something like a sandwich, soup, or really anything else needs to be done by a human. The problem is that to get the kind of economies of scale that an Amazon-style digital cafeteria could offer, you need to concentrate a lot of equipment in one place (and rent/build a huge place capable of processing large amounts of food coming and going). This is where distribution models fail, because the only place you can build places like this is in suburbs, where you can't efficiently deliver to the well-earning young people in the cities that form your target dmeo. And I highly disagree with saying that "the market isn't waiting for it, people are waiting for it". People, or rather consumers, are the market. Yes, I agree that basically every would of course want a product that is faster, higher quality, and cheaper. But $5 for one meal really is quite a lot when compared to the cost of food, especially when bought in bulk, and automated delivery/preparation could indeed make this food both faster and higher quality (or rather, give near-professional quality at a much lower cost).
      - eropple 9y ago
        So I'm not trying to pick on you, but have you ever stopped to think about how absolutely dystopic this future you're positing is? And the parts of the community--set aside "consumers" for a second, the point of being human is not to consume, is not to be an economic actor in your model--who could most use price improvements of economies of scale will be frozen out, because they're always frozen out. We don't need impersonal drones delivering your Food Packages so you don't need to see and interact with human beings and maybe generate some flavor of empathy somewhere inside of you. We need the exact opposite of that.
- blhack 9y ago
  Is this really that infeasible? If we just started somewhere unhealthy, and said In N Out with drone delivery, then the $5/meal isn't that far off from what the current cost is. If we could eliminate the building, the employees (and all of the overhead that goes along with them), and the expensive location that the buildings are usually in, it seems like the cost of the burger could come down. That sounds pretty nuts, but I don't think it's completely impossible at scale.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    Why not just air-drop a shipment of Soylent directly into my mouth? My smart-watch could vibrate when it's time to look directly upwards with my jaw agape.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pavel_lishin 9y ago

> What there is really a market for is a service that can deliver fresh or at least reasonably high quality food, which is customizable to individual preferences, for a reasonable cost (~$5 or so), on-demand, and in a timely manner. Does that also come with a free pony?

opportune 9y ago
Did you read what I wrote? Of course I acknowledge that this is not feasible yet. I'm saying that this is the product that the market is actually waiting for, and that the technology isn't there yet (automated drone delivery). So what we have in the meantime are awkward solutions that only meet a few of these requirements.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  I don't think drone delivery is the bottleneck for incredibly cheap, yet personalized food that's delivered to you on the order of ~15 minutes. Ingredients, chef's time, kitchen space, etc. are going to eat that five bucks right up. A six-inch sub from Subway is already nine bucks, and that includes the Sandwich Rembrandt personalizing it for me with an extra slice of provolone for a dollar extra. The market isn't waiting for it, people are waiting for it - who doesn't want super cheap, super good food, super fast? But there's a saying about picking two.
  - opportune 9y ago
    I'm not thinking of anything like a subway. Having each person's food prepared individually is ridiculously inefficient. I'm envisioning a facility tied to an Amazon warehouse or something similar that might be preparing food for >10000 people every day, not a huge kitchen with hundreds of chefs running around to fill maybe a couple thousand or so individual orders per day. There's no reason the production of something like a sandwich, soup, or really anything else needs to be done by a human. The problem is that to get the kind of economies of scale that an Amazon-style digital cafeteria could offer, you need to concentrate a lot of equipment in one place (and rent/build a huge place capable of processing large amounts of food coming and going). This is where distribution models fail, because the only place you can build places like this is in suburbs, where you can't efficiently deliver to the well-earning young people in the cities that form your target dmeo. And I highly disagree with saying that "the market isn't waiting for it, people are waiting for it". People, or rather consumers, are the market. Yes, I agree that basically every would of course want a product that is faster, higher quality, and cheaper. But $5 for one meal really is quite a lot when compared to the cost of food, especially when bought in bulk, and automated delivery/preparation could indeed make this food both faster and higher quality (or rather, give near-professional quality at a much lower cost).
    - eropple 9y ago
      So I'm not trying to pick on you, but have you ever stopped to think about how absolutely dystopic this future you're positing is? And the parts of the community--set aside "consumers" for a second, the point of being human is not to consume, is not to be an economic actor in your model--who could most use price improvements of economies of scale will be frozen out, because they're always frozen out. We don't need impersonal drones delivering your Food Packages so you don't need to see and interact with human beings and maybe generate some flavor of empathy somewhere inside of you. We need the exact opposite of that.
blhack 9y ago
Is this really that infeasible? If we just started somewhere unhealthy, and said In N Out with drone delivery, then the $5/meal isn't that far off from what the current cost is. If we could eliminate the building, the employees (and all of the overhead that goes along with them), and the expensive location that the buildings are usually in, it seems like the cost of the burger could come down. That sounds pretty nuts, but I don't think it's completely impossible at scale.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  Why not just air-drop a shipment of Soylent directly into my mouth? My smart-watch could vibrate when it's time to look directly upwards with my jaw agape.