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Next week there will be complaints that food delivery services are no longer catering to certain areas. Instead of accepting that it is just not profitable for

• colinmhayes 6y ago
  I don't understand why people in central areas of the city order delivery. There are 10 amazing restaurants within easy walking distance of me, why order delivery when I can walk for 5 minutes instead?
  • switch007 6y ago
    Depression, chronic fatigue, disabilities, anxiety...?
  • flerchin 6y ago
    Sick in your apt with covid for one.
  • donatj 6y ago
    - There is a pandemic going on - Not everyone is physically able
  • dubcanada 6y ago
    Cause people are lazy/committed to something else/working too much/sick/what ever else? They wouldn't be ordering delivery at all if they weren't. They would make their own food.
  • fortran77 6y ago
    If you have enough discretionary income, why not circulate it and help expand the econony? I'd never have a problem with any of my neighbors spending money, and especially not locally.
    • scarface74 6y ago
      My barber (well masked up and a face shield) was seeing fewer customers. I was getting my haircut less since I was at home and spending less in gas. I was giving him double the amount that I usually pay for a haircut when he reopened. I’m also tipping delivery drivers a lot better these days.
  • amyjess 6y ago
    Maybe because some people are completely quarantined and unable to leave their homes.
  • bluehatbrit 6y ago
    We're moving from an age of consumers going to the good/service and to the good/service going to the consumer. In particular younger generations see delivery as a norm. It's less about being lazy or having high expectations and more a case of it being baked into the culture of younger generations now. I work for a takewaway / food delivery company and it's facinating listening to what our customers are saying. I heard one parent say that their kids have sometimes ordered ice cream on a delivery platform rather than look to see if there's any in the freezer first. It's quickly becoming the norm to the point where peoples literal first thought is "can I order it?" rather than "can I go and get it?".
    • chillwaves 6y ago
      Sounds incredibly wasteful, no matter the economics involved.
      • missedthecue 6y ago
        Because those parents are bearing the costs of their childrens eating habits, rather than the kids feeling the cost.
      • bluehatbrit 6y ago
        I'm not defending it, it's just the trend I'm seeing.
      • 05 6y ago
        Once the long promised delivery drones are finally here, it’s actually less wasteful. So the younger generations are just adapting to the yet to come future :)
    • wyre 6y ago
      I think Amazon Prime is a big cause of this mindset. It's become so much easier to order things on Amazon and wait two days than it is to think about going to the store and looking for the item you want.
  • austhrow743 6y ago
    5 minute walk then 20 minute wait then 5 minute walk back. When you're earning $50+ an hour, which many in cities are easily clearing, it starts to make a lot of sense to pay someone else to do your waiting for you.
    • ghaff 6y ago
      Call ahead?
    • asdff 6y ago
      Takeout is 15-20 minutes, delivery is 40-60. Call ahead, and the food will be ready by the time you get yourself together, walk out the door, and arrive at the restaurant.
      • missedthecue 6y ago
        Right, but you can be doing other things during those 40-60 minutes
        • Agathos 6y ago
          I usually spend that time distracted with thoughts of where is my delivery, why is my delivery late, I'm so hungry, why did I even order delivery? The walk is a lot more pleasant.
    • OkGoDoIt 6y ago
      This is maybe a reasonable argument for lunch on a workday, but doesn’t really apply for dinner or on weekends. There’s a counter argument to be made that for many people their productivity and creativity increases when interspersed with a bit of walking, change of environment, sunlight, etc. Anyway it’s largely a matter of preference. There’s are certainly occasions where it’s nice to relax and order door-to-door delivery regardless, although I’m never personally willing to pay the insane fees that apps like Uber Eats charge.
      • chillwaves 6y ago
  • TylerE 6y ago
    Because my time is worth more to me than that. It's not so much the travel... it's the waiting once you get there for the food to actually be ready (or conversely, waiting at home first and risking it not being hot when you get there).
    • sokoloff 6y ago
      I prefer to pick up the food myself, so that I can be reasonably assured that it's hot when I sit down to eat it. I've gone so far as to buy an insulated pizza delivery bag so we can eat hot pizza at home. For me, the prospect of lukewarm food kills the delivery experience for me, even if delivery were "free" (not itemized to me).
  • ponker 6y ago
    Because they’re lazy and can afford it.
• carlmr 6y ago
  How about you have to charge the fee to the customer. The issue isn't taking 25%. It's taking 25% from the restaurant, which means they don't have a profit margin left. If for example the pizza is $10 at the restaurant, make that $12.50 with delivery and $10 without. That way the consumer can decide themselves if they want to pay the added amount for delivery, or if they'd rather walk/drive. Right now they charge you $10 and give the restaurant only $7.50 meaning they can't make a profit on that pizza.
  • princevegeta89 6y ago
    It's already 12.5$ with delivery. And even worse, a ton of other fees get added on top of it, making your order total close to 18$. Consumers are already paying enough, so they don't want to pay more. This is the reason why the Apps turn to restaurants instead. Even with that, they aren't still profitable.
    • carlmr 6y ago
      Then they should cease being in business.
      • mardifoufs 6y ago
        Couldn't the same argument be made for restaurants? If they can't afford delivery fees, or can't afford to make money without delivery they shouldn't be in business either.
        • NoSorryCannot 6y ago
          Yes, of course, and they often do go out of business.
        • Spivak 6y ago
          This is true so long as you recognize that this is a change in the market that will make certain restaurants unprofitable. A restaurant that was financially well-off before the advent of 3rd party delivery apps may not be anymore because they have fiercer competition. Restaurants that can absorb the 25-30% hit, for whatever reason, now have an advantage over those that couldn't. The question becomes is this a market failure that needs corrected, or the natural evolution of the food service industry? The case for the former is that you have a vibrant market of pretty high quality restaurants run by their owners as passion projects and have margins that keep the lights on. Squeezing this market because it's now "deliver or die" means that they'll either have to go out of business or reduce their costs which hurts the customer with second order effects -- they will have to reduce their rents by going to a cheaper location that's out of the way, the quality of the food will drop, and/or the staff will be squeezed. I don't necessarily agree with capping the fee but I don't think supply-chain transparency ever hurt the customer.
• devalgo 6y ago
  >The winners are people living in central areas of the city with lots of restaurants. The losers are the poorer outskirts. Not sure this holds in most US cities. Outskirts are usually wealthier suburbs and lots of Urban Cores are quite poor.
  • wutbrodo 6y ago
    This has been changing dramatically over the last decade+, but I guess I don't know which tendency currently dominates
• ip26 6y ago
  If food delivery services suspend service in Portland tomorrow, I would find it pretty hard to believe it isn't political maneuvering to prevent other localities from doing the same.
  • koheripbal 6y ago
    They won't stop delivering in Portland, they'll just stop delivering to certain areas that are more out of the way.
    • scarface74 6y ago
      Or just be more transparent and charge a higher delivery fee.
• Reedx 6y ago
  Exactly what happened in SF. Uber Eats stopped delivering to Treasure Island as a result: "The Order limits our ability to cover operation costs, so we have had to revise the areas Uber Eats can deliver to in the city. Unfortunately, this means we cannot continue to serve customers in Treasure Island. The Mayor’s Emergency Order limits the commissions we charge restaurants for access to our platform and delivery services."
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • nitrogen 6y ago
    To some extent this seems like grandstanding. They charge a delivery fee. If the delivery fee doesn't cover delivery, then charge a higher delivery fee. That comes from the customer, not the restaurant.
    • orangecat 6y ago
      * If the delivery fee doesn't cover delivery, then charge a higher delivery fee.* Why doesn't that reasoning apply to restaurants? If the fees cut into their profits too much, then they need to raise prices. There is no free lunch here (ha!). The customer is always going to be paying for both the food and the delivery. There's no benefit in micromanaging the internal transactions.
      • 8ytecoder 6y ago
        I’d wager they have clauses that prevent them from charging a lower price for direct customers. In which case the restaurant has to charge everyone a higher price. In what world does that benefit anyone but the intermediaries? It’s the exact same as credit card processing fees. Except that’s 3% and this is 30%
      • rootusrootus 6y ago
        > Why doesn't that reasoning apply to restaurants? More opaque. The honest approach would be for the menu prices to be the menu prices, and the cost of the delivery should be obvious.
• monadic2 6y ago
  I mean by this logic the food delivery services are also proven not to work based on the ridiculous fees for a commodity service.
• deleted 6y ago
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