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Couple of points 1 Where we live Whole Foods in store purchases have been cheaper than Safeway, who they are trying to put out of business Walmart style. Prime

Couple of points 1 Where we live Whole Foods in store purchases have been cheaper than Safeway, who they are trying to put out of business Walmart style. Prime home delivery has got very expensive per item (and a lot of the items ordered don't show up, shown as out of stock) in comparison to buying in store. 2 100 years ago it was normal in most Western world countries for small vendors to deliver food to homes. Milkmen in the UK had electric milk floats until the 1980's, delivery bicycles and tricycles were very common until the 1960's, and smaller local vendors almost invariably offered local delivery. I spoke to an Ocardo delivery van guy in February based in Coventry UK who told his route went into Wales 90 miles away. In the US we are consuming incredible amounts of packaging to buy small items from Amazon. I'm not seeing value in centralizing delivery through large entities via casual delivery people unconnected to the businesses they are delivering from, I see massive profits for a tiny number of people and zero oversight of our private business, what we order and from who. I'd like to see a return to local anonymous delivery via private arrangements with local vendors. As a seperate topic I'd also like to know that my every move in an Uber/Lyft etc is not being tracked, filed away by God knows who and sold.

sneak 6y ago
> I'd like to see a return to local anonymous delivery via private arrangements with local vendors. Building a polished, stable, feature-complete mobile app for the two major platforms generally costs about a million dollars if you want it to be world class. Of course you can reduce scope or polish or pick only one platform, but that's roughly what it takes. Who's going to pay to develop the apps that these local businesses use to do online ordering, to sway customers away from Uber Eats et al? The reason these organizations are achieving market penetration is because their UX is polished. Yelp made a whole (predatory) business off of small business owners being bad at websites. I'd love to see it become more decentralized via private arrangements, but there are real costs to entering the market due to software developers not being cheap. I'd also love to see a resurgence in use of the web for such things, but despite being able to bookmark websites to one's homescreen, it's still not quite at the point where using a website feels like an app, and users care a lot about that stuff.
- olivermarks 6y ago
  When I was a kid we had a paper book at the local greengrocers/general store, paid the bill every two weeks with cash.
  - priyankc 6y ago
    That is still the case in many local grocers in India. We pay them once a month. It becomes their local advantage.
- asdff 6y ago
  Do you need a mobile app? Ultimately, your order is given to the chef on reciept paper in chronological order, completely analog like it's always been with cooking and restaurants. Even fast food restaurants just replace the reciept paper with a screen emulating reciept paper. You can replicate this functionality with some cheap device and an orders@yourrestaurant.com address.
  - sneak 6y ago
    Yes, you need a mobile app. Users won’t order from the places that don’t have a mobile app. Mobile apps do things that mobile websites can’t, such as integrated payments and geolocation.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Delivery food is one of those things that’s really hard to not centralize. If I don’t know what I want, a common problem for delivery food, a centralized app makes it much easier to browse for choices and easily get what you want.
ashconnor 6y ago
Milk is still delivered like this in the UK today.
- olivermarks 6y ago
  Our UK family neighbour told us the milk used to be delivered via a big urn on a horse and cart in the 50's. As the cart came along customers would come out with jugs and the milk was ladled out to them. Then things progressed to a centralized milk bottling factory and delivery first by horse then by electric float...

sneak 6y ago

> I'd like to see a return to local anonymous delivery via private arrangements with local vendors. Building a polished, stable, feature-complete mobile app for the two major platforms generally costs about a million dollars if you want it to be world class. Of course you can reduce scope or polish or pick only one platform, but that's roughly what it takes. Who's going to pay to develop the apps that these local businesses use to do online ordering, to sway customers away from Uber Eats et al? The reason these organizations are achieving market penetration is because their UX is polished. Yelp made a whole (predatory) business off of small business owners being bad at websites. I'd love to see it become more decentralized via private arrangements, but there are real costs to entering the market due to software developers not being cheap. I'd also love to see a resurgence in use of the web for such things, but despite being able to bookmark websites to one's homescreen, it's still not quite at the point where using a website feels like an app, and users care a lot about that stuff.

olivermarks 6y ago
When I was a kid we had a paper book at the local greengrocers/general store, paid the bill every two weeks with cash.
- priyankc 6y ago
  That is still the case in many local grocers in India. We pay them once a month. It becomes their local advantage.
asdff 6y ago
Do you need a mobile app? Ultimately, your order is given to the chef on reciept paper in chronological order, completely analog like it's always been with cooking and restaurants. Even fast food restaurants just replace the reciept paper with a screen emulating reciept paper. You can replicate this functionality with some cheap device and an orders@yourrestaurant.com address.
- sneak 6y ago
  Yes, you need a mobile app. Users won’t order from the places that don’t have a mobile app. Mobile apps do things that mobile websites can’t, such as integrated payments and geolocation.

ashtonkem 6y ago

Delivery food is one of those things that’s really hard to not centralize. If I don’t know what I want, a common problem for delivery food, a centralized app makes it much easier to browse for choices and easily get what you want.

ashconnor 6y ago

Milk is still delivered like this in the UK today.

olivermarks 6y ago
Our UK family neighbour told us the milk used to be delivered via a big urn on a horse and cart in the 50's. As the cart came along customers would come out with jugs and the milk was ladled out to them. Then things progressed to a centralized milk bottling factory and delivery first by horse then by electric float...