4 ms·

You're right, and that's why I'm genuinely confused by what's going on. Restaurant delivery used to be a healthy market that didn't need to eat up external capi

by paulgb 6y ago

You're right, and that's why I'm genuinely confused by what's going on. Restaurant delivery used to be a healthy market that didn't need to eat up external capital. Now we have a situation where: - Restaurants say they are paying too much. - Delivery companies are losing money. - Customers are paying fees to the sites in addition to the delivery cost we used to pay. What gives? It seems these can't all be true.

marcinzm 6y ago
In NYC I'm guessing most restaurants paid illegal immigrants in cash to deliver for them. Not sure about elsewhere. That lowers the cost a lot versus having a legitimate delivery business with legal workers and taxes.
belltaco 6y ago
Add to that drivers complaining that they're getting exploited. But yes, all of those can be true. Paying someone for 30 to 45 minutes of their time is expensive.
- paulgb 6y ago
  > Paying someone for 30 to 45 minutes of their time is expensive. Definitely, but this was also the case before Uber Eats et al.
  - belltaco 6y ago
    It's not the same though, because the costs are reduced by two things at places like Pizza joints and Chinese restaurants. First, every trip by a driver would include multiple deliveries, which is very rare with Uber Eats style delivery. Secondly all of the drivers would wait and drive back to a single restaurant, eliminating the time needed for a driver to drive to the restaurant from their spot. Not to mention that crazy high costs of developing, running and maintaining slick apps that work for all restaurants, restaurant and customer acquisition, and tech support. Those costs have to be made up somehow.
NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
You missed out on: - VCs continue to pour money into the delivery companies ... that is all that is required for this to continue. If that stops, presumably a whole bunch of these firms will fail and that will be the end of that.
- paulgb 6y ago
  I didn't miss that, but usually the VC money ends up in someone's pocket. I'm thinking of all the meal kits and rides I got for next to nothing thanks to VCs and win-the-market-at-all-costs strategies. With food delivery, it feels like everyone is getting screwed.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    To be fair, in the case of Uber, at least in London there's always someone paid to stand near the metro stations distributing Uber Eats vouchers. Of course, Uber's objective is to acquire you as a customer and not give you free food, so it's limited to new accounts only and presumably they check credit card and phone numbers to prevent multiple accounts being created. However, if you try hard enough, you can indeed take advantage of it and automate the process assuming you have a good source of phone numbers and non-fraudulent credit card numbers.
  - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
    My only theory on what the VCs are thinking is something like: "eventually, efficiencies in delivery costs will occur, perhaps due to the number of participants shrinking allowing better driver routing or new technology coming available (drones, automated delivery vehicles, who knows) - at that time, the dominant players will become massively profitable". But I don't really get it. To be clear, the people doing well out of this are the delivery customers who are receiving a subsidy from all other participants.
gpderetta 6y ago
A single or unified marketplace and a convenient paying process can easily capture the whole market, especially if the fees are shown to be artificially small or even zero. Requiring market places to advertise the actual fee (i.e. anything that doesn't go to the restaurant directly) would probably help here: I might be willing to pay a 5% extra for the convenience, but at 30% I might think twice. It would both improve competitions between marketplaces and marketplace vs direct order. Of course I'm sure that companies will do anything to game it (for example shifting costs to restaurants to fees not directly connected to the orders themselves).

by paulgb 6y ago

marcinzm 6y ago

In NYC I'm guessing most restaurants paid illegal immigrants in cash to deliver for them. Not sure about elsewhere. That lowers the cost a lot versus having a legitimate delivery business with legal workers and taxes.

belltaco 6y ago

Add to that drivers complaining that they're getting exploited. But yes, all of those can be true. Paying someone for 30 to 45 minutes of their time is expensive.

paulgb 6y ago
> Paying someone for 30 to 45 minutes of their time is expensive. Definitely, but this was also the case before Uber Eats et al.
- belltaco 6y ago
  It's not the same though, because the costs are reduced by two things at places like Pizza joints and Chinese restaurants. First, every trip by a driver would include multiple deliveries, which is very rare with Uber Eats style delivery. Secondly all of the drivers would wait and drive back to a single restaurant, eliminating the time needed for a driver to drive to the restaurant from their spot. Not to mention that crazy high costs of developing, running and maintaining slick apps that work for all restaurants, restaurant and customer acquisition, and tech support. Those costs have to be made up somehow.

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago

You missed out on: - VCs continue to pour money into the delivery companies ... that is all that is required for this to continue. If that stops, presumably a whole bunch of these firms will fail and that will be the end of that.

paulgb 6y ago
I didn't miss that, but usually the VC money ends up in someone's pocket. I'm thinking of all the meal kits and rides I got for next to nothing thanks to VCs and win-the-market-at-all-costs strategies. With food delivery, it feels like everyone is getting screwed.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  To be fair, in the case of Uber, at least in London there's always someone paid to stand near the metro stations distributing Uber Eats vouchers. Of course, Uber's objective is to acquire you as a customer and not give you free food, so it's limited to new accounts only and presumably they check credit card and phone numbers to prevent multiple accounts being created. However, if you try hard enough, you can indeed take advantage of it and automate the process assuming you have a good source of phone numbers and non-fraudulent credit card numbers.
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  My only theory on what the VCs are thinking is something like: "eventually, efficiencies in delivery costs will occur, perhaps due to the number of participants shrinking allowing better driver routing or new technology coming available (drones, automated delivery vehicles, who knows) - at that time, the dominant players will become massively profitable". But I don't really get it. To be clear, the people doing well out of this are the delivery customers who are receiving a subsidy from all other participants.

gpderetta 6y ago

A single or unified marketplace and a convenient paying process can easily capture the whole market, especially if the fees are shown to be artificially small or even zero. Requiring market places to advertise the actual fee (i.e. anything that doesn't go to the restaurant directly) would probably help here: I might be willing to pay a 5% extra for the convenience, but at 30% I might think twice. It would both improve competitions between marketplaces and marketplace vs direct order. Of course I'm sure that companies will do anything to game it (for example shifting costs to restaurants to fees not directly connected to the orders themselves).