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This hearsay but I've heard restaurants hate all of the delivery services. They take a cut and decrease walk in traffic which usually buys high profit stuff lik

by th0ma5 8y ago

This hearsay but I've heard restaurants hate all of the delivery services. They take a cut and decrease walk in traffic which usually buys high profit stuff like alcohol and fountain beverages.

truebosko 8y ago
We've had a few coffee shops in our area drop the delivery/mobile purchase (Ritual) apps, perhaps due to this. Or, just the logistics may have been unbearable for them. Sometimes, I do enjoy walking into a coffee shop and ordering like a human.
- fierro 8y ago
  Hold on, your door dash coffee to your house? Thank you for this
  - mynegation 8y ago
    Ritual is an “order ahead and pick up” app.
    - giancarlostoro 8y ago
      Dunkin does this and it can be a little frustrating when you're next in line but they gotta handle like 3 online orders. I wish they'd hire an extra person to mostly handle such heavy load... But I'm not in charge of everything everywhere.. Otherwise I want to say don't do online ordering if you don't have more than enough people to handle both regular customers AND online ones... It just sucks. The one time I was next in line, there were probably 3 or more orders, and like 5 or more people behind me in line, plus the person in front of me was ordering the whole menu.
- kerabatsos 8y ago
  We are parents of two small boys and it’s damn near impossible to go out. Ordering DoorDash helps us try different restaurants and not have to deal with the madness of corralling two kids in a busy environment.
mrep 8y ago
Well, considering I can order food and pay practically the same delivery fee/tip that I have to pay for waiter tip + I don't have to pay the ridiculous "alcohol and fountain beverage" since I can drink that at my home that I already purchased: BooHoo. Maybee it is time they reduced their ridiculous "alcohol and fountain beverage" margins.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Those beverage margins are what makes the razor thin food margins tolerable for the business (average restaurant margins are 2-6 percent). If you can’t turn a profit, no point wasting your time being in business (or accepting tech delivery platform orders). It behooves you for the restaurateurs you enjoy patroning to have healthy financials and not be squeezed, otherwise they can’t continue as a business.
  - vorpalhex 8y ago
    Food margins are on average consistently > 66% if not more for many types of restaurants. Delivery services usually pass on costs to consumers (delivery fee + tip) which means they are only removing consumers buying alcohol - but that assumes if delivery were not available that I would go to the restaurant which is false. Delivery is not an alternative to going to a restaurant, it's an alternative to cooking at home.
    - rahimnathwani 8y ago
      You're right that food margins are typically 66%. But this considers only the cost of ingredients. So you'd rather sell a bottle of wine for $15 (that cost $5) than sell a meal for $15 (whose ingredients cost $5). On your final point, I suspect that delivery via Doordash or similar can take margin that a restaurant's own delivery service (via phoning in) would have made, and that Doordash has inserted itself as an intermediary (with a margin) where none was present before. The pie might be bigger but I'm not sure whether Doordash is capturing less than or more than 100% of the increase.
tushar-r 8y ago
In India, especially bigger cities like Bangalore, this has had a different effect - the rise of the delivery-only restaurant. These places are typically listed only on the delivery apps (Swiggy, Food Panda, Uber Eats), and don't have any other way to sell direct. Some of them are quite good, and we've ended up becoming regular customers. That said, smaller restaurants in India don't depend as much on beverage revenue to start with - and most places don't serve alcohol. Also - my father who owns a small resto hates pretty much every delivery service. They refuse to do anything beyond "We can't help you, it's policy", anytime an issue happens. For instance, you can order food with cash on delivery here. The delivery guy is supposed to pay the restaurant before he picks the food up. On one occasion, the delivery guy said that he did not have cash and would pay up once the end customer paid up. At some point, the end customer refused the delivery, so this guy came back, quietly left the parcel on a table and disappeared. The platform of course was of no help.
- Erwin 8y ago
  In London, there are "dark kitchens" -- the take away provider pays for the equipment and the site, and the desirable restaurants provide the staff and skills. This lets the delivery provider optimize for location and services shared between multiple restaurants though the conditions for the cooks are supposedly often even worse than a cramped, hot restaurant kitchen as the dark kitchens are really just a bunch of industrial containers with kitchen in some gritty industrial park. https://www.ft.com/content/d23c44fe-4b0b-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af89b https://www.ft.com/content/d23c44fe-4b0b-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af...
  - tushar-r 8y ago
    Yup - one of the companies - Swiggy - operates a few, like The Bowl Company and House of Dabbas https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/companies/swiggy-expands-restaurants-reach-to-remote-locations/articleshow/61647301.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/companies/swiggy-expands...
- avip 8y ago
  I was in a tech meetup with CEO of food delivery in India. They buy directly from "food factories", which are much like "jewellery factories" in spirit - you come in with recipes and they provide. This whole business has a fascinating backend of small city kitchens providing food upstream. Edit: See Erwin's comment for better phrasing.

by th0ma5 8y ago

This hearsay but I've heard restaurants hate all of the delivery services. They take a cut and decrease walk in traffic which usually buys high profit stuff like alcohol and fountain beverages.

truebosko 8y ago

We've had a few coffee shops in our area drop the delivery/mobile purchase (Ritual) apps, perhaps due to this. Or, just the logistics may have been unbearable for them. Sometimes, I do enjoy walking into a coffee shop and ordering like a human.

fierro 8y ago
Hold on, your door dash coffee to your house? Thank you for this
- mynegation 8y ago
  Ritual is an “order ahead and pick up” app.
  - giancarlostoro 8y ago
    Dunkin does this and it can be a little frustrating when you're next in line but they gotta handle like 3 online orders. I wish they'd hire an extra person to mostly handle such heavy load... But I'm not in charge of everything everywhere.. Otherwise I want to say don't do online ordering if you don't have more than enough people to handle both regular customers AND online ones... It just sucks. The one time I was next in line, there were probably 3 or more orders, and like 5 or more people behind me in line, plus the person in front of me was ordering the whole menu.
kerabatsos 8y ago
We are parents of two small boys and it’s damn near impossible to go out. Ordering DoorDash helps us try different restaurants and not have to deal with the madness of corralling two kids in a busy environment.

mrep 8y ago

Well, considering I can order food and pay practically the same delivery fee/tip that I have to pay for waiter tip + I don't have to pay the ridiculous "alcohol and fountain beverage" since I can drink that at my home that I already purchased: BooHoo. Maybee it is time they reduced their ridiculous "alcohol and fountain beverage" margins.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Those beverage margins are what makes the razor thin food margins tolerable for the business (average restaurant margins are 2-6 percent). If you can’t turn a profit, no point wasting your time being in business (or accepting tech delivery platform orders). It behooves you for the restaurateurs you enjoy patroning to have healthy financials and not be squeezed, otherwise they can’t continue as a business.
- vorpalhex 8y ago
  Food margins are on average consistently > 66% if not more for many types of restaurants. Delivery services usually pass on costs to consumers (delivery fee + tip) which means they are only removing consumers buying alcohol - but that assumes if delivery were not available that I would go to the restaurant which is false. Delivery is not an alternative to going to a restaurant, it's an alternative to cooking at home.
  - rahimnathwani 8y ago
    You're right that food margins are typically 66%. But this considers only the cost of ingredients. So you'd rather sell a bottle of wine for $15 (that cost $5) than sell a meal for $15 (whose ingredients cost $5). On your final point, I suspect that delivery via Doordash or similar can take margin that a restaurant's own delivery service (via phoning in) would have made, and that Doordash has inserted itself as an intermediary (with a margin) where none was present before. The pie might be bigger but I'm not sure whether Doordash is capturing less than or more than 100% of the increase.

tushar-r 8y ago

In India, especially bigger cities like Bangalore, this has had a different effect - the rise of the delivery-only restaurant. These places are typically listed only on the delivery apps (Swiggy, Food Panda, Uber Eats), and don't have any other way to sell direct. Some of them are quite good, and we've ended up becoming regular customers. That said, smaller restaurants in India don't depend as much on beverage revenue to start with - and most places don't serve alcohol. Also - my father who owns a small resto hates pretty much every delivery service. They refuse to do anything beyond "We can't help you, it's policy", anytime an issue happens. For instance, you can order food with cash on delivery here. The delivery guy is supposed to pay the restaurant before he picks the food up. On one occasion, the delivery guy said that he did not have cash and would pay up once the end customer paid up. At some point, the end customer refused the delivery, so this guy came back, quietly left the parcel on a table and disappeared. The platform of course was of no help.

Erwin 8y ago
In London, there are "dark kitchens" -- the take away provider pays for the equipment and the site, and the desirable restaurants provide the staff and skills. This lets the delivery provider optimize for location and services shared between multiple restaurants though the conditions for the cooks are supposedly often even worse than a cramped, hot restaurant kitchen as the dark kitchens are really just a bunch of industrial containers with kitchen in some gritty industrial park. https://www.ft.com/content/d23c44fe-4b0b-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af89b https://www.ft.com/content/d23c44fe-4b0b-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af...
- tushar-r 8y ago
  Yup - one of the companies - Swiggy - operates a few, like The Bowl Company and House of Dabbas https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/companies/swiggy-expands-restaurants-reach-to-remote-locations/articleshow/61647301.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/companies/swiggy-expands...
avip 8y ago
I was in a tech meetup with CEO of food delivery in India. They buy directly from "food factories", which are much like "jewellery factories" in spirit - you come in with recipes and they provide. This whole business has a fascinating backend of small city kitchens providing food upstream. Edit: See Erwin's comment for better phrasing.