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I skimmed through the slides and didn't see a single word allocated to the problem of the waste, pollution, and health effects generated by these services or an

I skimmed through the slides and didn't see a single word allocated to the problem of the waste, pollution, and health effects generated by these services or any costs involved in managing them. Perhaps the figure of $365 billion is a convenient fiction, as is so often the case when modern young "entrepreneurs" see an opportunity to upend the underpinnings of society for profit. Food isn't a problem we solve with megacorporations and apps and technology. Food isn't supposed to be optimized and analyzed and held to KPIs. Food is best when communities of people come together to participate and interact and nourish one another. All these services do is enslave and silo us away from each other so that the individual's essential needs for nutrition and community can become a profit stream in a corporation's ledger. They would build yet another layer in America's enormous neurosis around food. No thanks, Google.

Shivetya 7y ago
Okay, but how is optimization of delivery not going to help address waste, pollution, and health effects. We have so much abundance in Western nations that we fail at times to understand how much optimization through technology, apps, and whatnot, will still provide benefit. From reducing wasted food by ensuring only what is needed is on hand and in the channel. Covering pollution by reducing trips made by many to fewer delivery groups. To health by offering better choices as part of the service, new menu options never considered because they were not previously available. The food abundance did not come way of the government but instead by corporations and individuals trying to improve their position in society all the while providing services and goods with improved the lives of others. If anything tariffs and food regulatory groups make food more expensive by preventing our access to other producers and products.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
seanhandley 7y ago
If you live on takeaway food, yes. I work for a DSP company partnering with Just Eat and I also do a lot of home cooking with local non-intensive produce. Food delivery is way too expensive for most people to cater for every meal. A Friday night treat after a rough week has its rightful place in the world. As for pollution, food is increasingly being delivered by bicycle in many cities here in Europe.
Kalium 7y ago
Food isn't a problem we solve with megacorporations and apps. Food is a problem we solve with agricultural production at scale and shipping and logistics. Food is best when it's nourishing and nutritious and where people are in sufficient quantities to cover everyone's needs with foods they are familiar with. This is just my own wildly unreasonable opinion, but perhaps we could consider the possibilities to be realized by shelving the romance of participation and community and unity until we've got the logistics solved. Rather than trying to tell people how they should relate to food, maybe we should focus on making sure everyone has enough and that an obsession with hyperlocalism isn't setting the world up for more famine. Perhaps then people can choose how to relate to food and how to nourish their communities. I'm certain that many people will choose exactly what you describe.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  The logistics is solved, or solved enough at a price point the HN class of people can afford, hence the focus on the experience and community of it. The upper classes want fancy "experience beer" you go to some brewery bar to drink with your friends instead of just "decent, beer" that you drink from a can while sitting in a lawn chair on your own property.
  - moorhosj 7y ago
    Isn't food the underpinning of most cultural traditions? It seems to me like society (as defined by generations of civilization) has already determined that food has value for it's experience and community aspects. Maybe it's more than just an "HN class of people" thing and you could examine your own perspective? [1] The cultural significance of food and eating - https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0029665182000342 https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c... [2] How Food Shaped Humanity - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-food-shaped-humanity-83840262/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-food-shaped-... [3] Understanding Culture: Food as a Means of Communication - https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=15&ved=2ahUKEwj-oZ3Gq9DiAhWETN8KHfutA8gQFjAOegQIBxAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fyadda.icm.edu.pl%2Fyadda%2Felement%2Fbwmeta1.element.desklight-3b71a1ed-2c03-499a-8884-ab5ec51e1f56%2Fc%2F05-Stajcic_v01.pdf&usg=AOvVaw17t1K-IMZtOJrAs6gbUcEA https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
coldtea 7y ago
That. I'd like to see a future of food delivery which is less food delivery, more time to spend at home, more cooking and healthy choices. But of course, as an endeavor whose main end goal is money, the future of food delivery has to be "more, more, more".
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Food delivery is a good idea. Myself, I'd like to see less time spent on cooking. Except few special cases, cooking is a chore for me, not pleasure. What isn't a good idea is inherently unsustainable, VC-subsidized companies lobotomizing the industry in order to strip-mine it for value long enough to get flipped, leaving a shell of a market sector behind.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. If anything, I'd like to throw out more of the baby: e.g. people learning to grow their own fruits and vegetables, and make more of their own food, not just cooking.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Sure. I don't see why the two can't coexist. It's also a matter of life stages. I know I want to have a vegetable garden of my own, either vertical in the city, or regular one in the country, depending on where I end up in the future. But today, I very much enjoy the ability to order a dinner or a pizza whenever my wife and I don't feel like cooking after a full day of work.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- puranjay 7y ago
  A bunch of delivery-only restaurants have opened up in my city. Most of them are helmed by young chefs who trained or lived abroad and are bringing interesting new cuisines and dishes to local people. It's great for the local culinary scene and the food is often amazing. But my word, they've somehow come to think that since they are delivery-only, they have to give customers a "dining experience" by overpacking everything. Every order comes in a fancy cardboard box, every order has multiple sets of disposable cutlery. Every little dish is packed in its own plastic box. With some cuisines (like Korean), you end up with over a dozen boxes for a single meal. The amount of packaging waste delivery creates is a little sickening. I've taken to ordering from restaurants that throw the entire order into a cheap cardboard box and skip the "branding" altogether.
frogpelt 7y ago
How exactly are waste and pollution made worse by people delivering food to you versus you driving to the restaurant and buying it?
- dajohnson89 7y ago
  Because people are more likely to just cook at home, if delivery weren't an option?
  - Kalium 7y ago
    Do you have data to support this hypothesis? Bear in mind that various forms of takeout food and restaurants have existed for thousands of years in many cultures.
    - dajohnson89 7y ago
      taxis have existed for over a century, but ride-sharing apps make "taxis" more popular due to increased availability/affordability/convenience. this is all speculative, i've no data :)

Shivetya 7y ago

Okay, but how is optimization of delivery not going to help address waste, pollution, and health effects. We have so much abundance in Western nations that we fail at times to understand how much optimization through technology, apps, and whatnot, will still provide benefit. From reducing wasted food by ensuring only what is needed is on hand and in the channel. Covering pollution by reducing trips made by many to fewer delivery groups. To health by offering better choices as part of the service, new menu options never considered because they were not previously available. The food abundance did not come way of the government but instead by corporations and individuals trying to improve their position in society all the while providing services and goods with improved the lives of others. If anything tariffs and food regulatory groups make food more expensive by preventing our access to other producers and products.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

seanhandley 7y ago

If you live on takeaway food, yes. I work for a DSP company partnering with Just Eat and I also do a lot of home cooking with local non-intensive produce. Food delivery is way too expensive for most people to cater for every meal. A Friday night treat after a rough week has its rightful place in the world. As for pollution, food is increasingly being delivered by bicycle in many cities here in Europe.

Kalium 7y ago

Food isn't a problem we solve with megacorporations and apps. Food is a problem we solve with agricultural production at scale and shipping and logistics. Food is best when it's nourishing and nutritious and where people are in sufficient quantities to cover everyone's needs with foods they are familiar with. This is just my own wildly unreasonable opinion, but perhaps we could consider the possibilities to be realized by shelving the romance of participation and community and unity until we've got the logistics solved. Rather than trying to tell people how they should relate to food, maybe we should focus on making sure everyone has enough and that an obsession with hyperlocalism isn't setting the world up for more famine. Perhaps then people can choose how to relate to food and how to nourish their communities. I'm certain that many people will choose exactly what you describe.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
The logistics is solved, or solved enough at a price point the HN class of people can afford, hence the focus on the experience and community of it. The upper classes want fancy "experience beer" you go to some brewery bar to drink with your friends instead of just "decent, beer" that you drink from a can while sitting in a lawn chair on your own property.
- moorhosj 7y ago
  Isn't food the underpinning of most cultural traditions? It seems to me like society (as defined by generations of civilization) has already determined that food has value for it's experience and community aspects. Maybe it's more than just an "HN class of people" thing and you could examine your own perspective? [1] The cultural significance of food and eating - https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0029665182000342 https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c... [2] How Food Shaped Humanity - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-food-shaped-humanity-83840262/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-food-shaped-... [3] Understanding Culture: Food as a Means of Communication - https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=15&ved=2ahUKEwj-oZ3Gq9DiAhWETN8KHfutA8gQFjAOegQIBxAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fyadda.icm.edu.pl%2Fyadda%2Felement%2Fbwmeta1.element.desklight-3b71a1ed-2c03-499a-8884-ab5ec51e1f56%2Fc%2F05-Stajcic_v01.pdf&usg=AOvVaw17t1K-IMZtOJrAs6gbUcEA https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

coldtea 7y ago

That. I'd like to see a future of food delivery which is less food delivery, more time to spend at home, more cooking and healthy choices. But of course, as an endeavor whose main end goal is money, the future of food delivery has to be "more, more, more".

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Food delivery is a good idea. Myself, I'd like to see less time spent on cooking. Except few special cases, cooking is a chore for me, not pleasure. What isn't a good idea is inherently unsustainable, VC-subsidized companies lobotomizing the industry in order to strip-mine it for value long enough to get flipped, leaving a shell of a market sector behind.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. If anything, I'd like to throw out more of the baby: e.g. people learning to grow their own fruits and vegetables, and make more of their own food, not just cooking.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Sure. I don't see why the two can't coexist. It's also a matter of life stages. I know I want to have a vegetable garden of my own, either vertical in the city, or regular one in the country, depending on where I end up in the future. But today, I very much enjoy the ability to order a dinner or a pizza whenever my wife and I don't feel like cooking after a full day of work.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
puranjay 7y ago
A bunch of delivery-only restaurants have opened up in my city. Most of them are helmed by young chefs who trained or lived abroad and are bringing interesting new cuisines and dishes to local people. It's great for the local culinary scene and the food is often amazing. But my word, they've somehow come to think that since they are delivery-only, they have to give customers a "dining experience" by overpacking everything. Every order comes in a fancy cardboard box, every order has multiple sets of disposable cutlery. Every little dish is packed in its own plastic box. With some cuisines (like Korean), you end up with over a dozen boxes for a single meal. The amount of packaging waste delivery creates is a little sickening. I've taken to ordering from restaurants that throw the entire order into a cheap cardboard box and skip the "branding" altogether.

frogpelt 7y ago

How exactly are waste and pollution made worse by people delivering food to you versus you driving to the restaurant and buying it?

dajohnson89 7y ago
Because people are more likely to just cook at home, if delivery weren't an option?
- Kalium 7y ago
  Do you have data to support this hypothesis? Bear in mind that various forms of takeout food and restaurants have existed for thousands of years in many cultures.
  - dajohnson89 7y ago
    taxis have existed for over a century, but ride-sharing apps make "taxis" more popular due to increased availability/affordability/convenience. this is all speculative, i've no data :)