4 ms·

Over $100 is insane for groceries? We regularly spend that much for a family of three almost every weekend. Admittedly, we are in a high CoL area.

koolba 7y ago
The 10% margins are what’d be insane. Not an individual bill of $100. At 2-3% the profits on that bill drop down to nowhere near enough to cover gas, mileage, health insurance, unemployment tax, and everything else tacked on for the true cost of delivery.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > At 2-3% the profits on that bill drop down to nowhere near enough to cover gas, mileage, health insurance, unemployment tax, and everything else tacked on for the true cost of delivery. I don't understand how most of those things are "true costs" at all. This type of work is ideal for college students, who are typically still on their parents health insurance, or as supplementary work for someone who already has a full time job and wants to work a few extra hours. Unemployment doesn't even make sense in this context because you work whatever hours you want and they don't really do layoffs. Even if the company went out of business, there are several others offering the same type of work immediately to anyone. Gas costs money, but how much is highly dependent on vehicle type and people doing this type of work have the obvious incentive to use higher efficiency vehicles where the gas for this kind of trip would cost less than $1, and for the same reason to choose more reliable vehicles with below average maintenance costs. The way you get really gnarly cost estimates is by using the same depreciation models that corporations do when they buy new vehicles for the sole purpose of making deliveries -- because you then lose $10,000 or more in value over the first few years of ownership regardless of mileage or anything else you do. But for someone using a personal vehicle they would need regardless, that huge reduction in value due to age is already a sunk cost. And it is a bad deal for anyone who is trying to make a long-term career out of it, but the people expecting to do that should look elsewhere for employment. Not every job is a career, and why should it have to be? It is better for jobs with high flexibility and low compensation to exist for the people who want them. The people who need less flexibility and more compensation should choose different jobs.
  - SturgeonsLaw 7y ago
    Well yeah, you can make the numbers square up if you ignore/offload a bunch of costs, but not everyone who is delivering for one of these companies is a student or has another income stream, and wear-and-tear on a vehicle will manifest as a mechanical fault one day. This argument sounds like a lot like the argument against raising minimum wage ("it's not meant to be enough to survive on"), however the reality is that large numbers of these gigs/jobs are worked by adults who depend on it as a primary source of income, and in the face of the massive and sudden job losses we're seeing, it's quite callous to say they should "just choose different jobs". If the Instacarts and Ubers of the world cannot afford to pay these people appropriately then their business model is a failure.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      > Well yeah, you can make the numbers square up if you ignore/offload a bunch of costs, but not everyone who is delivering for one of these companies is a student or has another income stream Given that it's sustainable if they do, what's wrong with letting those people be the ones who do it? Why is anybody who needs a long-term full-time job required to do this instead of working at Walmart or going to college or learning a trade? Why should we even want to encourage that? It's low-paying work open to anyone who needs immediate income with flexible hours. Let it be what it is. > and wear-and-tear on a vehicle will manifest as a mechanical fault one day. Which, for a modern reliable vehicle, you amortize over many thousands of miles. If you're doing this in a 1980s Land Rover, you're doing it wrong. > This argument sounds like a lot like the argument against raising minimum wage ("it's not meant to be enough to survive on"), however the reality is that large numbers of these gigs/jobs are worked by adults who depend on it as a primary source of income, and in the face of the massive and sudden job losses we're seeing, it's quite callous to say they should "just choose different jobs". How is it any less callous than saying that most of them should lose their jobs and the rest of them should lose their flexibility? That's what happens if you start requiring a bunch of recurring insurance costs, which increases hiring costs and reduces demand for workers (which lowers overall wages across the economy), and induces the company to schedule the remaining workers during the hours that maximize returns to cover the higher costs instead of letting them work when and how long they actually want to. I mean, suppose you have millions of college students who need some income. For example, Bob has class from 9AM to 10:30AM, drives for five hours, then has another class at 3:30PM. He drives 30 hours a week like this. You force insurance on him and that job becomes 40 hours scheduled at the company's convenience, which doesn't fit his class schedule, so he needs a different job. The different job is working a contiguous 8 hour shift in an office from 6PM to 2AM -- which fits into his schedule, and actually pays better than driving did, but he preferred driving even with lower pay because the hours for the better-paying job stink. He doesn't get home until 2:30AM and has class at 9AM, and it's 40 hours instead of 30 when he had been using the other 10 hours to study. The people using the better paying job as an actual job also prefer that a million Bobs not need it, because Bob will work for $15/hour when that job used to pay $20/hour, so now half of them lose their jobs to Bobs and the other half get paid less. Constraining choices pretty much always makes workers worse off. It's worse for everybody. The choices they're forced into in the alternative already exist and they're not choosing them to begin with because the alternatives are not actually better.
dheera 7y ago
I rarely spend $100 in one go at the grocery store. During normal times I visit the grocery store about 4-7 times per week and only buy whatever I feel like having for the next day or two. There have been many times that I had everything else I needed and walked out with a single potato. It helps that I live 2 blocks from the grocery store, but I very much prioritize grocery store distance when choosing apartments. Of course, during these epidemic times I've flipped my habits around and buying 1-2 weeks worth at a time to minimize exposure, but that's not my normal way of buying groceries. I'm not usually good at predicting what my stomach feels like having 2 days later.
notduncansmith 7y ago
I see you’re being downvoted, just wanted to add that our family of 3 also regularly spends over $100 weekly on groceries. We live in a fairly high cost-of-living area as well (Los Angeles, SF before that). A mix of prepared foods and raw ingredients, trying to source responsibly, for ~20 feedings adds up quickly.
- dbuder 7y ago
  It's not about what median families spend weekly on groceries, it's about your average order value and that's $20-30 by my guess, maybe dragged up by some big orders but you'll find that people who order in bulk won't want to pay 10% and that most of your orders will be for near the minimum you set.

koolba 7y ago

The 10% margins are what’d be insane. Not an individual bill of $100. At 2-3% the profits on that bill drop down to nowhere near enough to cover gas, mileage, health insurance, unemployment tax, and everything else tacked on for the true cost of delivery.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> At 2-3% the profits on that bill drop down to nowhere near enough to cover gas, mileage, health insurance, unemployment tax, and everything else tacked on for the true cost of delivery. I don't understand how most of those things are "true costs" at all. This type of work is ideal for college students, who are typically still on their parents health insurance, or as supplementary work for someone who already has a full time job and wants to work a few extra hours. Unemployment doesn't even make sense in this context because you work whatever hours you want and they don't really do layoffs. Even if the company went out of business, there are several others offering the same type of work immediately to anyone. Gas costs money, but how much is highly dependent on vehicle type and people doing this type of work have the obvious incentive to use higher efficiency vehicles where the gas for this kind of trip would cost less than $1, and for the same reason to choose more reliable vehicles with below average maintenance costs. The way you get really gnarly cost estimates is by using the same depreciation models that corporations do when they buy new vehicles for the sole purpose of making deliveries -- because you then lose $10,000 or more in value over the first few years of ownership regardless of mileage or anything else you do. But for someone using a personal vehicle they would need regardless, that huge reduction in value due to age is already a sunk cost. And it is a bad deal for anyone who is trying to make a long-term career out of it, but the people expecting to do that should look elsewhere for employment. Not every job is a career, and why should it have to be? It is better for jobs with high flexibility and low compensation to exist for the people who want them. The people who need less flexibility and more compensation should choose different jobs.
- SturgeonsLaw 7y ago
  Well yeah, you can make the numbers square up if you ignore/offload a bunch of costs, but not everyone who is delivering for one of these companies is a student or has another income stream, and wear-and-tear on a vehicle will manifest as a mechanical fault one day. This argument sounds like a lot like the argument against raising minimum wage ("it's not meant to be enough to survive on"), however the reality is that large numbers of these gigs/jobs are worked by adults who depend on it as a primary source of income, and in the face of the massive and sudden job losses we're seeing, it's quite callous to say they should "just choose different jobs". If the Instacarts and Ubers of the world cannot afford to pay these people appropriately then their business model is a failure.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > Well yeah, you can make the numbers square up if you ignore/offload a bunch of costs, but not everyone who is delivering for one of these companies is a student or has another income stream Given that it's sustainable if they do, what's wrong with letting those people be the ones who do it? Why is anybody who needs a long-term full-time job required to do this instead of working at Walmart or going to college or learning a trade? Why should we even want to encourage that? It's low-paying work open to anyone who needs immediate income with flexible hours. Let it be what it is. > and wear-and-tear on a vehicle will manifest as a mechanical fault one day. Which, for a modern reliable vehicle, you amortize over many thousands of miles. If you're doing this in a 1980s Land Rover, you're doing it wrong. > This argument sounds like a lot like the argument against raising minimum wage ("it's not meant to be enough to survive on"), however the reality is that large numbers of these gigs/jobs are worked by adults who depend on it as a primary source of income, and in the face of the massive and sudden job losses we're seeing, it's quite callous to say they should "just choose different jobs". How is it any less callous than saying that most of them should lose their jobs and the rest of them should lose their flexibility? That's what happens if you start requiring a bunch of recurring insurance costs, which increases hiring costs and reduces demand for workers (which lowers overall wages across the economy), and induces the company to schedule the remaining workers during the hours that maximize returns to cover the higher costs instead of letting them work when and how long they actually want to. I mean, suppose you have millions of college students who need some income. For example, Bob has class from 9AM to 10:30AM, drives for five hours, then has another class at 3:30PM. He drives 30 hours a week like this. You force insurance on him and that job becomes 40 hours scheduled at the company's convenience, which doesn't fit his class schedule, so he needs a different job. The different job is working a contiguous 8 hour shift in an office from 6PM to 2AM -- which fits into his schedule, and actually pays better than driving did, but he preferred driving even with lower pay because the hours for the better-paying job stink. He doesn't get home until 2:30AM and has class at 9AM, and it's 40 hours instead of 30 when he had been using the other 10 hours to study. The people using the better paying job as an actual job also prefer that a million Bobs not need it, because Bob will work for $15/hour when that job used to pay $20/hour, so now half of them lose their jobs to Bobs and the other half get paid less. Constraining choices pretty much always makes workers worse off. It's worse for everybody. The choices they're forced into in the alternative already exist and they're not choosing them to begin with because the alternatives are not actually better.

dheera 7y ago

I rarely spend $100 in one go at the grocery store. During normal times I visit the grocery store about 4-7 times per week and only buy whatever I feel like having for the next day or two. There have been many times that I had everything else I needed and walked out with a single potato. It helps that I live 2 blocks from the grocery store, but I very much prioritize grocery store distance when choosing apartments. Of course, during these epidemic times I've flipped my habits around and buying 1-2 weeks worth at a time to minimize exposure, but that's not my normal way of buying groceries. I'm not usually good at predicting what my stomach feels like having 2 days later.

notduncansmith 7y ago

I see you’re being downvoted, just wanted to add that our family of 3 also regularly spends over $100 weekly on groceries. We live in a fairly high cost-of-living area as well (Los Angeles, SF before that). A mix of prepared foods and raw ingredients, trying to source responsibly, for ~20 feedings adds up quickly.

dbuder 7y ago
It's not about what median families spend weekly on groceries, it's about your average order value and that's $20-30 by my guess, maybe dragged up by some big orders but you'll find that people who order in bulk won't want to pay 10% and that most of your orders will be for near the minimum you set.