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As a former founder working on the sharing economy/delivery space, UberEats will most likely fail, unless their ATG departments hit home-runs (~5% probability)

As a former founder working on the sharing economy/delivery space, UberEats will most likely fail, unless their ATG departments hit home-runs (~5% probability) The economics are impossible to sustain, and I've been on the ground first hand talked to over 1000 owners at restaurants, grocers etc. Every single one of them has a timeline to get rid of Eats, Doordash, Instacart etc. They're just waiting for the right time to build out their own systems. There was an enormous opportunity to help them build their systems out that I might pursue if my current venture fails.

mikeg8 6y ago
If you’ve spoken to so many owners that all want to ditch the platforms mentioned for their own systems, do you feel there is enough interested to justify a venture/product to sell to the owners that gives them the control they are after without having to figure out how to develop an application. Seems like a great opportunity
- srnvs123 6y ago
  Yup, I was working on it myself, but shelved it to work on another startup right now. I wrote a complete system like a Shopify for small retailers integrated with delivery etc. But the code is locked in a private repo for me to get back to if my current startup fails.
  - JAlexoid 6y ago
    You mean like ChowNow? They manage stuff like that. You do understand that the problem with food delivery isn't the online bit. It's fairly easy to manage the online bit. Expectation management is a big issue in food delivery business - that turns people away real easy. Miss delivery timing twice and people are much more likely to drop you. Get swamped with calls - people drop you. It's a hellhole of customer service. Building out a reliable delivery network - is not easy. The farther the delivery goes out - the more complex it gets. Out of all - Uber has the best solution to evaluate speed of delivery using a car... and OK for bicycles.
- basch 6y ago
  It should just be a set of protocols. 1) Your domain has a dns op (order placement) record like an mx record. Your op record points to your online pos system. A standard chunk of data is sent by the customer browser and received by your system. 2) You pay a company for marketing+online menu services. You optionally grant them the right to list/crosspost the same data on competing services. You have the choice which menu-fronts are allowed to use your name and advertise your product. 3) The order comes into your system like any other order. This triggers a separate signal to a p2p dispatch network. The dispatch network load balances all the incoming orders, assigning them to drivers in a logical way that hits restaurants and destinations with minimal extra travel. 4) The delivery driver chooses any client they want, that is compatible with the dispatch network. Tasks are routed to their client. The order placement, pos, and the dispatch network are totally separate technologies, not proprietary vertically integrated institutions.
  - mikeg8 6y ago
    I think the owners are tired of giving up so much control - your proposal sounds too similar to the platforms they are trying to leave. Without having the first-hand knowledge of parent comment, my assumption is restaurateurs want more control of both the marketing and the delivery process. I don't think there is enough $ in the pie to pay a third party for marketing and a 3rd party for delivery. I believe the desire is to go back to something they can more directly manage (traditional delivery worked for them), but have an online ordering/POS tool that is easy to use/find from a google search. The consumer does not care if the order is delivered by an employee or someone on a network.
    - basch 6y ago
      The cost of using drivers between restaurants has to be cheaper than each restaurant having it's own exclusive drivers. Labor is a huge component of restaurant costs, and having idle hands is bad. It's no different than time sharing. There's no reason they have to use a third party marketing company, if they want to build their own menu and run their own ads.
kungato 6y ago
I'm sure there are many companies offering them to build put their systems, it's still not that easy. My friend's small company is failing at helping small companies have their own system as we speak. They can always go back to paying some local dude belowe minimim wage to deliver with their own naive paper system
asadlionpk 6y ago
So a Shopify-like Doordash?
- srnvs123 6y ago
  Exactly. Except the unit economics work. You don't take a cut, you charge a subscription fee to the service.
  - JAlexoid 6y ago
    FYI: https://get.chownow.com/ https://get.chownow.com/

mikeg8 6y ago

If you’ve spoken to so many owners that all want to ditch the platforms mentioned for their own systems, do you feel there is enough interested to justify a venture/product to sell to the owners that gives them the control they are after without having to figure out how to develop an application. Seems like a great opportunity

srnvs123 6y ago
Yup, I was working on it myself, but shelved it to work on another startup right now. I wrote a complete system like a Shopify for small retailers integrated with delivery etc. But the code is locked in a private repo for me to get back to if my current startup fails.
- JAlexoid 6y ago
  You mean like ChowNow? They manage stuff like that. You do understand that the problem with food delivery isn't the online bit. It's fairly easy to manage the online bit. Expectation management is a big issue in food delivery business - that turns people away real easy. Miss delivery timing twice and people are much more likely to drop you. Get swamped with calls - people drop you. It's a hellhole of customer service. Building out a reliable delivery network - is not easy. The farther the delivery goes out - the more complex it gets. Out of all - Uber has the best solution to evaluate speed of delivery using a car... and OK for bicycles.
basch 6y ago
It should just be a set of protocols. 1) Your domain has a dns op (order placement) record like an mx record. Your op record points to your online pos system. A standard chunk of data is sent by the customer browser and received by your system. 2) You pay a company for marketing+online menu services. You optionally grant them the right to list/crosspost the same data on competing services. You have the choice which menu-fronts are allowed to use your name and advertise your product. 3) The order comes into your system like any other order. This triggers a separate signal to a p2p dispatch network. The dispatch network load balances all the incoming orders, assigning them to drivers in a logical way that hits restaurants and destinations with minimal extra travel. 4) The delivery driver chooses any client they want, that is compatible with the dispatch network. Tasks are routed to their client. The order placement, pos, and the dispatch network are totally separate technologies, not proprietary vertically integrated institutions.
- mikeg8 6y ago
  I think the owners are tired of giving up so much control - your proposal sounds too similar to the platforms they are trying to leave. Without having the first-hand knowledge of parent comment, my assumption is restaurateurs want more control of both the marketing and the delivery process. I don't think there is enough $ in the pie to pay a third party for marketing and a 3rd party for delivery. I believe the desire is to go back to something they can more directly manage (traditional delivery worked for them), but have an online ordering/POS tool that is easy to use/find from a google search. The consumer does not care if the order is delivered by an employee or someone on a network.
  - basch 6y ago
    The cost of using drivers between restaurants has to be cheaper than each restaurant having it's own exclusive drivers. Labor is a huge component of restaurant costs, and having idle hands is bad. It's no different than time sharing. There's no reason they have to use a third party marketing company, if they want to build their own menu and run their own ads.

kungato 6y ago

I'm sure there are many companies offering them to build put their systems, it's still not that easy. My friend's small company is failing at helping small companies have their own system as we speak. They can always go back to paying some local dude belowe minimim wage to deliver with their own naive paper system

asadlionpk 6y ago

So a Shopify-like Doordash?

srnvs123 6y ago
Exactly. Except the unit economics work. You don't take a cut, you charge a subscription fee to the service.
- JAlexoid 6y ago
  FYI: https://get.chownow.com/ https://get.chownow.com/