4 ms·

I feel like what's often overlooked is how much so many of these delivery services have lost money over the past few years. UberEats is more popular than ever,

by colmvp 6y ago

I feel like what's often overlooked is how much so many of these delivery services have lost money over the past few years. UberEats is more popular than ever, but it's not even close to helping Uber as a company avoid mass layoffs in the coming weeks. The UberEats division was losing hundreds of millions of dollars last year. Likewise with DoorDash. Restaurants complain about the fees which is fair but they've failed to mention how much money and time they would've spent on hiring multiple drivers to fulfill orders as well as a digital system to allow people to place orders online. By all means, if these apps suck, then hire your own drivers like restaurants have done in previous decades. Furthermore, platforms like this apps allow restaurants to be far more visible than if they just used their social media presence. IMO, the biggest flaw with restaurant delivery is that it's hugely inefficient. You can't optimize it like UPS/Fedex can with packages, and people don't buy as much in one go as you would with a grocer. So companies like UberEats need these fees to allow them to actual remain viable and so that they can keep spending on things like development, marketing/sales, etc. Like it or not, delivery is expensive.

kelnos 6y ago
I think the issue is more that predictable, timely delivery is expensive. When I was growing up we'd get pizza delivery from a local pizza shop. Depending on the day of the week and the time we'd call, our pizza could arrive in a half hour or two hours. Sure, a part of the was the capacity of the kitchen, but a big part was also their delivery capacity. They had two guys each driving a car. They could batch deliveries to some extent so each driver would drop off more than one before returning to the restaurant, but while that gave them better throughput, it gave them worse latency. Meanwhile, with Grubhub, Postmates, etc., you have a fleet of always-ready drivers -- effectively an unlimited number -- who are ready to take a single order, go pick it up as soon as it's ready, and deliver it directly to you. That's terribly inefficient on a per-driver basis, but it's great for the customer. I personally don't mind the variability in timing in the old system all that much. Sure, there are some times when I really want food now (but even then, the fastest deliveries on these platforms is usually around 45 minutes), but for the most part I don't care if it's going to take another 30-60 minutes. But a lot of people really do value the speed, and, more importantly the predictability. If you want to eat at 6pm and know that the delivery time is nearly always 45-60 minutes, you can pretty much eat at 6pm. If the delivery times vary from 30 to 120 minutes, you order at 5pm and live with eating anywhere between 5:30 and 7:00. Yeah, this is seriously a "first world problem", but plenty of people have gotten addicted to the predictability and seamlessness of it all. It's really unfortunate, because at the end of the day it means we value convenience over the health of our local businesses.
masonic 6y ago
I feel like what's often overlooked is how much so many of these delivery services have lost money If the restaurant is losing money because of predatory behavior by delivery operations, the fact that the delivery company doesn't make money either doesn't really help the restaurant.

by colmvp 6y ago

kelnos 6y ago

I think the issue is more that predictable, timely delivery is expensive. When I was growing up we'd get pizza delivery from a local pizza shop. Depending on the day of the week and the time we'd call, our pizza could arrive in a half hour or two hours. Sure, a part of the was the capacity of the kitchen, but a big part was also their delivery capacity. They had two guys each driving a car. They could batch deliveries to some extent so each driver would drop off more than one before returning to the restaurant, but while that gave them better throughput, it gave them worse latency. Meanwhile, with Grubhub, Postmates, etc., you have a fleet of always-ready drivers -- effectively an unlimited number -- who are ready to take a single order, go pick it up as soon as it's ready, and deliver it directly to you. That's terribly inefficient on a per-driver basis, but it's great for the customer. I personally don't mind the variability in timing in the old system all that much. Sure, there are some times when I really want food now (but even then, the fastest deliveries on these platforms is usually around 45 minutes), but for the most part I don't care if it's going to take another 30-60 minutes. But a lot of people really do value the speed, and, more importantly the predictability. If you want to eat at 6pm and know that the delivery time is nearly always 45-60 minutes, you can pretty much eat at 6pm. If the delivery times vary from 30 to 120 minutes, you order at 5pm and live with eating anywhere between 5:30 and 7:00. Yeah, this is seriously a "first world problem", but plenty of people have gotten addicted to the predictability and seamlessness of it all. It's really unfortunate, because at the end of the day it means we value convenience over the health of our local businesses.

masonic 6y ago

I feel like what's often overlooked is how much so many of these delivery services have lost money If the restaurant is losing money because of predatory behavior by delivery operations, the fact that the delivery company doesn't make money either doesn't really help the restaurant.