5 ms·

One thing to consider about services like this is the actual value that they add to the store owners or customers. In my opinion this value is more is less zero

One thing to consider about services like this is the actual value that they add to the store owners or customers. In my opinion this value is more is less zero! They don't offer anything in the business of delivery. In reality, the store owners are forced to use these services and pay a heavy premium so as to not be left out: If your restaurant can't be found on the app then the customer will prefer the ones he finds! (Please notice that here in Greece all restaurants had their own delivery people before e-food and other similar companies emerged) This is really problematic for me. A whole enterprise has been created by inventing a fake need (order food from the internet; why is it so difficult to just make a call?). Nobody actually profits except that particular company(e-food etc)! To make my point even more; consider the situation 10 years ago. The same pool of people that ordered food are ordering from the same pool of restaurants. However nowadays a percentage of the money goes to e-food (and similar companies). For what? Myself, I never use these companies because I know that there's a premium that will go to them and either me or the store owner (usually the store owner) will need to pay for that! I just call the store and go there and pick the food up! Also all restaurant owners I have talked to, prefer getting calls directly and handling the orders themselves to avoid paying the e-food premium.

lkramer 5y ago
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but these food delivery services does have a convenience factor in their favour: Unified UI (no more weirdly scanned PDF of their menu, or other nonsense), no having to explain over a bad phone line to some person who might not speak your language that well (or you not speaking his) your order, and hoping he wrote the right things down and don't make a mistake, and most important of all, ease of payment. A lot of these restaurants either don't accept card, or expect you to yell your card number across the phone to pay. In all honesty, I also suspect that there is some value for restaurants, at least some of them, to not have to worry about hiring their own delivery driver. If that's not the case, a disruptive service offering just a unified UI + Payment, but no delivery should have appeared by now.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > no having to explain over a bad phone line to some person who might not speak your language that well (or you not speaking his) your order This is an edge case in my experience. We're talking immigrants/expats that haven't learned the local language (I'm yet to see a restaurant hiring immigrants not knowing the local language for the front desk / phone duty). Not that it's not worth catering for, but perhaps not at the expense of everyone else. > and hoping he wrote the right things down and don't make a mistake This perhaps eliminates excuses. In my experience with on-line ordering, mistakes happen frequently anyway - it's not a communications issue, it's a "cooks and delivery people are extremely busy" issue. They'll just occasionally forget to add some topping or to package the extra sauce you ordered. > and most important of all, ease of payment. That is absolutely true. I was a fan of these third-party services because of that - because I could pre-pay using my card online, not bothering about having cash, whether the driver has change, or whether they took the card terminal with them. I was a fan, I no longer am, because mainstream food delivery services are abusive to restaurants and delivery workers. > there is some value for restaurants, at least some of them, to not have to worry about hiring their own delivery driver. Depends. Some may prefer their own drivers (e.g. small-scale restaurants, where the drivers are family members, or friends). Some purposefully offer no delivery (e.g. for branding reasons). The new breed of delivery services (Uber Eats, Glovo, etc.) don't give a damn about preferences - they'll offer delivery services for your restaurant whether you want them or not; they won't even ask you for permission. The problems here are twofold: 1. People associate delivery service with the restaurant. The squeezed, exploited drivers of Uber Eats, et al. make mistakes too, deliver cold food, etc. The customers often blame the restaurant. The restaurant suffers branding and monetary loss due to no fault of their own, and with no way of improving the service. 2. The business model of those companies depends on getting people used to ordering food from restaurant through them, and then blackmailing the restaurant into signing up and paying a percentage, or getting delisted. They're forcing restaurants into participation. > If that's not the case, a disruptive service offering just a unified UI + Payment, but no delivery should have appeared by now. One would think so, but this is a winner-take-all market; Uber Eats & friends outcompeted previous iterations of services that offered just the UI and payment service.
  - 5y ago
Kiro 5y ago
> why is it so difficult to just make a call? Maybe easy for you but I would never ever order anything if I had to make a call. That's a big no from me. The other benefit I see is that the app has my payment and delivery details and I don't need to hassle with cash or paying on delivery. Ordering from restaurant A and B is exactly the same and encourages me to try out new stuff. The third thing is that I can see the delivery courier in realtime on a map and know when they arrive. With that said, all these benefits would be the same for me if the app was just an aggregator and payment processor with the restaurants handling the delivery themselves.
- spapas82 5y ago
  Yes I can see why it could be difficult for some people to make calls. Also I agree that being able to use your credit card is convenient. However I am not sure that premium that e-food gets is actually worth that convenience... As I said before almost all the reastaurants had their own delivery people and the major reason for them that decided to use e-food is their fear of missing out the online delivery hype. If most people at least understood how much better it is for restaurants to avoid the intermediate it would be much better.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    I would expect value of online presence, ordering, payment processing to be somewhere 5-10% of order. I wouldn't call anyone to order, but I do order online. And I would prefer the restaurants own or partnered site for this. I still think there is place for low cost platform that does exactly this. It won't be billion dollar business, but certainly multiple millions is entirely possible.
krisoft 5y ago
> The same pool of people that ordered food are ordering from the same pool of restaurants. I don't have hard data. What I know is that the phone-your-order-in didn't work for me. I hate crummy pdf menus. I hate calling a phone number. I hate that they don't understand me. Everything about it sucked for me. I just didn't do it. Then I discovered deliveroo and it just works. I want to use that. In this case the pool of people ordering food from restaurant have certainly grown by one. Does it make business sense for the individual restaurants to provide the service for me? I don't know and don't care. Their managers can make that decision. As far as I'm concerned their options are "offering the service" or "me buying groceries instead". Since they are the business they should collect the data how much offering the service raises their income and decide based on that if they wish to keep offering. Likewise the curriers employed should decide if the pay is worth the inconvenience of working this job. And my government should make sure that the currier companies are sticking to the letter of the law, and that the letter of the law does ensure that the curriers are not exploited. This is among other things one of the services I'm paying my considerable taxes for. If anyone in this chain of transactions is unhappy with their end of the bargain they should stop. And I will just walk to the grocery store even on those days when otherwise I would have got a treat to myself. > I just call the store and go there and pick the food up! Good for you. I won't.
- spapas82 5y ago
  What you don't consider is that the restaurant owners cannot decide anymore if using the service is beneficial for them or not! It's either use the service of lose a lot of customers because they will go to the next restaurant. These people are small business owners and can't afford losing customers. Now, if there was a way all restaurant owners could agree that "nobody will use e-food from now on" then they would definitely decide that since using that service is not beneficial for them.
  - Jochim 5y ago
    There's some benefit to the businesses in that people who otherwise wouldn't have heard about them can find them more easily. Personally I order a fair bit more frequently since I can pay by card and I rarely have cash at home. In the UK the most popular service is probably Just Eat and until recently they didn't have their own drivers. I assume this also meant they took a smaller cut of the order.
ascar 5y ago
What my favorite Asian delivery restaurant did is launch their own webshop and tell their regular customers to please order there. They are still on the big aggregator, but at least I order through their own webshop. However, as many others said I usually don't wanna order by calling. The biggest inconveniences are being misunderstood and not having cash at hand.

lkramer 5y ago

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but these food delivery services does have a convenience factor in their favour: Unified UI (no more weirdly scanned PDF of their menu, or other nonsense), no having to explain over a bad phone line to some person who might not speak your language that well (or you not speaking his) your order, and hoping he wrote the right things down and don't make a mistake, and most important of all, ease of payment. A lot of these restaurants either don't accept card, or expect you to yell your card number across the phone to pay. In all honesty, I also suspect that there is some value for restaurants, at least some of them, to not have to worry about hiring their own delivery driver. If that's not the case, a disruptive service offering just a unified UI + Payment, but no delivery should have appeared by now.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
> no having to explain over a bad phone line to some person who might not speak your language that well (or you not speaking his) your order This is an edge case in my experience. We're talking immigrants/expats that haven't learned the local language (I'm yet to see a restaurant hiring immigrants not knowing the local language for the front desk / phone duty). Not that it's not worth catering for, but perhaps not at the expense of everyone else. > and hoping he wrote the right things down and don't make a mistake This perhaps eliminates excuses. In my experience with on-line ordering, mistakes happen frequently anyway - it's not a communications issue, it's a "cooks and delivery people are extremely busy" issue. They'll just occasionally forget to add some topping or to package the extra sauce you ordered. > and most important of all, ease of payment. That is absolutely true. I was a fan of these third-party services because of that - because I could pre-pay using my card online, not bothering about having cash, whether the driver has change, or whether they took the card terminal with them. I was a fan, I no longer am, because mainstream food delivery services are abusive to restaurants and delivery workers. > there is some value for restaurants, at least some of them, to not have to worry about hiring their own delivery driver. Depends. Some may prefer their own drivers (e.g. small-scale restaurants, where the drivers are family members, or friends). Some purposefully offer no delivery (e.g. for branding reasons). The new breed of delivery services (Uber Eats, Glovo, etc.) don't give a damn about preferences - they'll offer delivery services for your restaurant whether you want them or not; they won't even ask you for permission. The problems here are twofold: 1. People associate delivery service with the restaurant. The squeezed, exploited drivers of Uber Eats, et al. make mistakes too, deliver cold food, etc. The customers often blame the restaurant. The restaurant suffers branding and monetary loss due to no fault of their own, and with no way of improving the service. 2. The business model of those companies depends on getting people used to ordering food from restaurant through them, and then blackmailing the restaurant into signing up and paying a percentage, or getting delisted. They're forcing restaurants into participation. > If that's not the case, a disruptive service offering just a unified UI + Payment, but no delivery should have appeared by now. One would think so, but this is a winner-take-all market; Uber Eats & friends outcompeted previous iterations of services that offered just the UI and payment service.
- 5y ago

Kiro 5y ago

> why is it so difficult to just make a call? Maybe easy for you but I would never ever order anything if I had to make a call. That's a big no from me. The other benefit I see is that the app has my payment and delivery details and I don't need to hassle with cash or paying on delivery. Ordering from restaurant A and B is exactly the same and encourages me to try out new stuff. The third thing is that I can see the delivery courier in realtime on a map and know when they arrive. With that said, all these benefits would be the same for me if the app was just an aggregator and payment processor with the restaurants handling the delivery themselves.

spapas82 5y ago
Yes I can see why it could be difficult for some people to make calls. Also I agree that being able to use your credit card is convenient. However I am not sure that premium that e-food gets is actually worth that convenience... As I said before almost all the reastaurants had their own delivery people and the major reason for them that decided to use e-food is their fear of missing out the online delivery hype. If most people at least understood how much better it is for restaurants to avoid the intermediate it would be much better.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I would expect value of online presence, ordering, payment processing to be somewhere 5-10% of order. I wouldn't call anyone to order, but I do order online. And I would prefer the restaurants own or partnered site for this. I still think there is place for low cost platform that does exactly this. It won't be billion dollar business, but certainly multiple millions is entirely possible.

krisoft 5y ago

> The same pool of people that ordered food are ordering from the same pool of restaurants. I don't have hard data. What I know is that the phone-your-order-in didn't work for me. I hate crummy pdf menus. I hate calling a phone number. I hate that they don't understand me. Everything about it sucked for me. I just didn't do it. Then I discovered deliveroo and it just works. I want to use that. In this case the pool of people ordering food from restaurant have certainly grown by one. Does it make business sense for the individual restaurants to provide the service for me? I don't know and don't care. Their managers can make that decision. As far as I'm concerned their options are "offering the service" or "me buying groceries instead". Since they are the business they should collect the data how much offering the service raises their income and decide based on that if they wish to keep offering. Likewise the curriers employed should decide if the pay is worth the inconvenience of working this job. And my government should make sure that the currier companies are sticking to the letter of the law, and that the letter of the law does ensure that the curriers are not exploited. This is among other things one of the services I'm paying my considerable taxes for. If anyone in this chain of transactions is unhappy with their end of the bargain they should stop. And I will just walk to the grocery store even on those days when otherwise I would have got a treat to myself. > I just call the store and go there and pick the food up! Good for you. I won't.

spapas82 5y ago
What you don't consider is that the restaurant owners cannot decide anymore if using the service is beneficial for them or not! It's either use the service of lose a lot of customers because they will go to the next restaurant. These people are small business owners and can't afford losing customers. Now, if there was a way all restaurant owners could agree that "nobody will use e-food from now on" then they would definitely decide that since using that service is not beneficial for them.
- Jochim 5y ago
  There's some benefit to the businesses in that people who otherwise wouldn't have heard about them can find them more easily. Personally I order a fair bit more frequently since I can pay by card and I rarely have cash at home. In the UK the most popular service is probably Just Eat and until recently they didn't have their own drivers. I assume this also meant they took a smaller cut of the order.

ascar 5y ago

What my favorite Asian delivery restaurant did is launch their own webshop and tell their regular customers to please order there. They are still on the big aggregator, but at least I order through their own webshop. However, as many others said I usually don't wanna order by calling. The biggest inconveniences are being misunderstood and not having cash at hand.