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> “Bottom line is that you need to pay someone enough money to drive to the restaurant, pick up food and drive it to a diner. . . ,” the company wrote. “At some

> “Bottom line is that you need to pay someone enough money to drive to the restaurant, pick up food and drive it to a diner. . . ,” the company wrote. “At some point, delivery drones and robots may reduce the cost of fulfillment, but it will be a long time before the capital costs and ongoing operating expenses are less than the cost of paying someone for 30-45 minutes of their time.” Key point here. Even if you are expecting that these drivers are making minimum wage and your operating costs are zero and they have to maintain their bikes/vehicles out of their own pocket, that's still 7.50-11.25$ per order. Which is not something people would be willing to pay for a 20-30$ food order. Hell, I'd say even for a 100$ order people would balk at because they're used to it being free. We are approaching a reckoning as a society where we need to understand the "true cost" of our choices. I think the only way you can make door-to-door food delivery financially viable is with A) delivery drones, and B) massive centralized kitchens.

Barrin92 6y ago
>We are approaching a reckoning as a society where we need to understand the "true cost" of our choices. the much scarier question is why investors apparently don't understand this rather simple fact and keep pumping ungodly sums of money into these ventures says a lot about the level of general innovation in our society
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  If the move to the centralized kitchens and turn burgers into a commodity product, then I can see Uber being highly profitable. Costs can fall.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    Right, then you can optimize the delivery with routes to several customers as well. And they can make food that handles delivery better etc. But that is not what is happening now.
    - Melting_Harps 6y ago
      > Right, then you can optimize the delivery with routes to several customers as well. And they can make food that handles delivery better etc. But that is not what is happening now. Its no doubt that the Culinary Industry is going to morph into something else (seemingly undesirable to me) than it what it was in a Post COVID World, but given that the only ones that will survive this massive disruption will be those that either optimized their curb-side/take out menus to meet the demands, or those that simply have a ton of outside investment I can totally see that happening. Dine-in will be few and far between with limited seating and dining options being the norm, where as everything else will just be delivered. I hope this spurs on more people to learn to cook at home and lose dependency on fast food and in turn support their local farmers and join CSA and community gardens along with it to offset the pains of a broken Global Food supply chain. We're already seeing that now, as many B2C farms are recording ATHs all over the US and selling out this early in the growing season. As a former cook/chef and farmer, restaurants were always horrible business ventures in the best of times that relies on horrible work conditions, long hours, low wages and pervasive and culturally accepted substance abuse that often leads to severe mental health issues. Hopefully, this gives young cooks the opportunity to take some of the Marketshare from the established players doing what they love (low wages are irrelevant then) and working from commissary Kitchens with low overhead business models. I'd rather they try an experimental business, even with failure being a real possibility, than see them waste 2-3 years of their lives and 40K+ in student debt as that model, much like 'University as an imperative to financial success,' is dead.
  - addicted44 6y ago
    My primary question, as always with Uber, is with ridiculously easy switching costs, and almost no lock-in, why will Uber be the one that benefits when the profit making $EPOCH happens? Why wouldnt another well capitalized business that hasn't lost tens of billions of dollars not be able to do better, since for $EPOCH + x years, that other business can actually afford to lose dollars while Uber needs to maintain its profit margin to recover the billions it lost in the pre $EPOCH era.
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      Because then Uber becomes more of a food search engine and maintains dominance in the same way that Google does, simply by being the biggest and having the most content.
    - addicted44 6y ago
      But how would they ever have the most content? There isn't a single restaurant that is not being paid millions by Uber that is specific to Uber. Nearly every cab driver will also drive for Lyft, Via, etc. Additionally, Google actually competes and wins on content. It's rare that Google offers a worse search result than any of its competitors. However, my food tastes just as good if ordered through Uber Eats or Grubhub or through the restaurant's own website, and my taxi service is likely gonna be the same whether I use Lyft or Uber. Finally, unlike Google, Uber is actually renting its location from its competitors. Apple and Google could sign deals with Lyft/Seamless to make them the default provider in Maps, Google search, Apple Search or an Apple Restaurants app.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    I'm curious is there an example of this? Burgers and lots of fast food seem already highly commoditized, McDonald's makes a lot of them pretty cheaply and centralisation would imply longer delivery and probably your food being cold which sounds inefficient if anything
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      I suspect most people still think "I want a McDonald's burger." The win is in moving people to think "I want a burger." DoorDash has already trained me this way on Chinese food. I get Chinese food once a week. I don't know the name of the place I get it from. As long as they didn't change the food too much, I could easily migrate to a cloud kitchen.
kmonsen 6y ago
I think the key point is similar but slightly different. Traditional restaurants are not a good model for making food for delivery. The dishes are not created to be stored before eaten, it is higher cost because it is an experience to eat in the restaurant, and they are spread all over the place with customers also all over the place. Traditional delivery services have optimized for all these things for a long time, for example pizza delivery.
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> I think the only way you can make door-to-door food delivery financially viable is with A) delivery drones, and B) massive centralized kitchens. The tech driving Dominoes would discredit your entire argument. Most are privately owned franchises that use the delivery software and Human based drivers. I personally prefer to make my own pizza as I have a stone, a kitchenaid and a decent oven, but when I do order out I prefer to pick it up and tip the cook staff not the driver as I think its an ancillary service that bares no relation to the end product I'm consuming.
jon-wood 6y ago
I really don’t get this argument that it’s impossible to do delivery without losing money. Takeaway restaurants have been doing delivery for decades now, and don’t seem to have any problem making that work, the problem here is the middleman, and the unrealistic approach of having every order individually delivered. Actual takeaway shops don’t do that, they have one guy go run round 10 orders at a time then come back for more. You have to wait longer for your food to arrive, but people seem to have coped with that in the past.

Barrin92 6y ago

>We are approaching a reckoning as a society where we need to understand the "true cost" of our choices. the much scarier question is why investors apparently don't understand this rather simple fact and keep pumping ungodly sums of money into these ventures says a lot about the level of general innovation in our society

MattGaiser 6y ago
If the move to the centralized kitchens and turn burgers into a commodity product, then I can see Uber being highly profitable. Costs can fall.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  Right, then you can optimize the delivery with routes to several customers as well. And they can make food that handles delivery better etc. But that is not what is happening now.
  - Melting_Harps 6y ago
    > Right, then you can optimize the delivery with routes to several customers as well. And they can make food that handles delivery better etc. But that is not what is happening now. Its no doubt that the Culinary Industry is going to morph into something else (seemingly undesirable to me) than it what it was in a Post COVID World, but given that the only ones that will survive this massive disruption will be those that either optimized their curb-side/take out menus to meet the demands, or those that simply have a ton of outside investment I can totally see that happening. Dine-in will be few and far between with limited seating and dining options being the norm, where as everything else will just be delivered. I hope this spurs on more people to learn to cook at home and lose dependency on fast food and in turn support their local farmers and join CSA and community gardens along with it to offset the pains of a broken Global Food supply chain. We're already seeing that now, as many B2C farms are recording ATHs all over the US and selling out this early in the growing season. As a former cook/chef and farmer, restaurants were always horrible business ventures in the best of times that relies on horrible work conditions, long hours, low wages and pervasive and culturally accepted substance abuse that often leads to severe mental health issues. Hopefully, this gives young cooks the opportunity to take some of the Marketshare from the established players doing what they love (low wages are irrelevant then) and working from commissary Kitchens with low overhead business models. I'd rather they try an experimental business, even with failure being a real possibility, than see them waste 2-3 years of their lives and 40K+ in student debt as that model, much like 'University as an imperative to financial success,' is dead.
- addicted44 6y ago
  My primary question, as always with Uber, is with ridiculously easy switching costs, and almost no lock-in, why will Uber be the one that benefits when the profit making $EPOCH happens? Why wouldnt another well capitalized business that hasn't lost tens of billions of dollars not be able to do better, since for $EPOCH + x years, that other business can actually afford to lose dollars while Uber needs to maintain its profit margin to recover the billions it lost in the pre $EPOCH era.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    Because then Uber becomes more of a food search engine and maintains dominance in the same way that Google does, simply by being the biggest and having the most content.
  - addicted44 6y ago
    But how would they ever have the most content? There isn't a single restaurant that is not being paid millions by Uber that is specific to Uber. Nearly every cab driver will also drive for Lyft, Via, etc. Additionally, Google actually competes and wins on content. It's rare that Google offers a worse search result than any of its competitors. However, my food tastes just as good if ordered through Uber Eats or Grubhub or through the restaurant's own website, and my taxi service is likely gonna be the same whether I use Lyft or Uber. Finally, unlike Google, Uber is actually renting its location from its competitors. Apple and Google could sign deals with Lyft/Seamless to make them the default provider in Maps, Google search, Apple Search or an Apple Restaurants app.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  I'm curious is there an example of this? Burgers and lots of fast food seem already highly commoditized, McDonald's makes a lot of them pretty cheaply and centralisation would imply longer delivery and probably your food being cold which sounds inefficient if anything
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    I suspect most people still think "I want a McDonald's burger." The win is in moving people to think "I want a burger." DoorDash has already trained me this way on Chinese food. I get Chinese food once a week. I don't know the name of the place I get it from. As long as they didn't change the food too much, I could easily migrate to a cloud kitchen.

kmonsen 6y ago

I think the key point is similar but slightly different. Traditional restaurants are not a good model for making food for delivery. The dishes are not created to be stored before eaten, it is higher cost because it is an experience to eat in the restaurant, and they are spread all over the place with customers also all over the place. Traditional delivery services have optimized for all these things for a long time, for example pizza delivery.

Melting_Harps 6y ago

> I think the only way you can make door-to-door food delivery financially viable is with A) delivery drones, and B) massive centralized kitchens. The tech driving Dominoes would discredit your entire argument. Most are privately owned franchises that use the delivery software and Human based drivers. I personally prefer to make my own pizza as I have a stone, a kitchenaid and a decent oven, but when I do order out I prefer to pick it up and tip the cook staff not the driver as I think its an ancillary service that bares no relation to the end product I'm consuming.

jon-wood 6y ago

I really don’t get this argument that it’s impossible to do delivery without losing money. Takeaway restaurants have been doing delivery for decades now, and don’t seem to have any problem making that work, the problem here is the middleman, and the unrealistic approach of having every order individually delivered. Actual takeaway shops don’t do that, they have one guy go run round 10 orders at a time then come back for more. You have to wait longer for your food to arrive, but people seem to have coped with that in the past.