14 ms·

I would think that in my city, most restaurants would have struggled to survive through lockdown without Deliveroo and similar services.

by dash2 6y ago

TeMPOraL 6y ago
In other words, it took a global pandemic to turn these businesses into net positive for society. Temporarily.
- Spivak 6y ago
  I don’t get this level of cynicism. Like they’re a delivery company. People give them monies for someone to deliver food, restaurants give them monies for lead generation and delivery, both parties are happy enough with the transaction to actually do it. Yeah they’re middlemen squeezing customers, drivers, and restaurants but that’s basically all business. I really enjoy using these services. I went from having pizza and American-Chinese food delivery to having every restaurant in a 15 mile radius. It’s so nice when I’m low energy, having people over, whatever to order better food than chain pizza.
  - leppr 6y ago
    The service in itself is alright, but the 35% cut Deliveroo and Uber Eats take is just too much. It's a very inefficient business. My orders are very often wrong, and they simply refund the whole order. Then the next time I order they get it wrong again and I get refunded again. With Just Eat or direct restaurant delivery, the issue would get resolved on the spot. There's just no need for such a fat middleman between restaurants and customers. The only reason I'm using it is to exploit the delivery mispricing and promotions, like Uber in its early days.
    - dash2 6y ago
      Obv question: why doesn't someone undercut them if they are making rents? What's the barrier to entry? My local coffee shop does its own delivery. Seems to work. Is it network effects?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > both parties are happy enough with the transaction to actually do it That part often isn't true. These companies frequently list restaurants with whom they have no relationship, and when a person makes an order on-line, they just send a driver with a credit card to purchase it takeout and pick it up. It sounds fine on first look, but the way it plays out, this causes huge brand management issues for the restaurants. Customers are charged more than they expect, not realizing delivery company is misrepresenting prices, and complain about delivery problems (which are frequent) to the restaurant, despite that restaurant having nothing to do with delivery, and often no knowledge of it. Sometimes there are even darker shenanigans happening. GrubHub replacing restaurant phone numbers with their own comes to mind. All this is done to collect/encourage usage data, and then offer the restaurant a formal relationship, in a form of borderline extortion. And as owners of ever growing network/distribution channel, these companies can very much force businesses into accepting very unfavorable deals. They don't care if they're burning these restaurants to the ground, because there will always be more. They make money off the churn. Don't get me wrong, I like being able to order from a wide variety of restaurants using the same, streamlined interface. But after learning how bad a deal these companies are to the restaurants, I steer away from those platforms. I don't like when multinational corporations are using their weight and dishonest tactics to crush the small entrepreneurs from the community I live in.
    - schrodinger 6y ago
      > These companies frequently list restaurants with whom they have no relationship, and when a person makes an order on-line, they just send a driver with a credit card to purchase it takeout and pick it up. This is scummy, but Deliveroo doesn't do that.

I would think that in my city, most restaurants would have struggled to survive through lockdown without Deliveroo and similar services.

by dash2 6y ago

I would think that in my city, most restaurants would have struggled to survive through lockdown without Deliveroo and similar services.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

In other words, it took a global pandemic to turn these businesses into net positive for society. Temporarily.

Spivak 6y ago
I don’t get this level of cynicism. Like they’re a delivery company. People give them monies for someone to deliver food, restaurants give them monies for lead generation and delivery, both parties are happy enough with the transaction to actually do it. Yeah they’re middlemen squeezing customers, drivers, and restaurants but that’s basically all business. I really enjoy using these services. I went from having pizza and American-Chinese food delivery to having every restaurant in a 15 mile radius. It’s so nice when I’m low energy, having people over, whatever to order better food than chain pizza.
- leppr 6y ago
  The service in itself is alright, but the 35% cut Deliveroo and Uber Eats take is just too much. It's a very inefficient business. My orders are very often wrong, and they simply refund the whole order. Then the next time I order they get it wrong again and I get refunded again. With Just Eat or direct restaurant delivery, the issue would get resolved on the spot. There's just no need for such a fat middleman between restaurants and customers. The only reason I'm using it is to exploit the delivery mispricing and promotions, like Uber in its early days.
  - dash2 6y ago
    Obv question: why doesn't someone undercut them if they are making rents? What's the barrier to entry? My local coffee shop does its own delivery. Seems to work. Is it network effects?
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > both parties are happy enough with the transaction to actually do it That part often isn't true. These companies frequently list restaurants with whom they have no relationship, and when a person makes an order on-line, they just send a driver with a credit card to purchase it takeout and pick it up. It sounds fine on first look, but the way it plays out, this causes huge brand management issues for the restaurants. Customers are charged more than they expect, not realizing delivery company is misrepresenting prices, and complain about delivery problems (which are frequent) to the restaurant, despite that restaurant having nothing to do with delivery, and often no knowledge of it. Sometimes there are even darker shenanigans happening. GrubHub replacing restaurant phone numbers with their own comes to mind. All this is done to collect/encourage usage data, and then offer the restaurant a formal relationship, in a form of borderline extortion. And as owners of ever growing network/distribution channel, these companies can very much force businesses into accepting very unfavorable deals. They don't care if they're burning these restaurants to the ground, because there will always be more. They make money off the churn. Don't get me wrong, I like being able to order from a wide variety of restaurants using the same, streamlined interface. But after learning how bad a deal these companies are to the restaurants, I steer away from those platforms. I don't like when multinational corporations are using their weight and dishonest tactics to crush the small entrepreneurs from the community I live in.
  - schrodinger 6y ago
    > These companies frequently list restaurants with whom they have no relationship, and when a person makes an order on-line, they just send a driver with a credit card to purchase it takeout and pick it up. This is scummy, but Deliveroo doesn't do that.