5 ms·

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 P

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.
- santialbo 5y ago
  > 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. This is no longer true with Glovo. I've seen restaurants in the Glovo app that do their own delivery. The app shows it to explain why there's no tracking of the riders for example. Or why they can't give you an accurate estimate.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    That's some progress, I guess. I'll be on the lookout for this - I don't use them myself (I'm boycotting this breed of gig companies in general), but people around me do. So far, all deliveries I witness were Glovo riders.
- slfnflctd 5y ago
  > Uber Eats & friends outcompeted previous iterations of services If by 'outcompeted' you mean spent massive amounts of investor money to give free stuff away at a loss until they starved their competitors of traffic and/or bought those competitors outright. A lot of restaurants are fighting back by just setting up their own websites and gradually improving them, and hiring drivers directly. Ultimately I think the pendulum will swing back this way, because as much as it may be nice to have a unified UI, it's not worth paying significantly more for food that takes longer and arrives cold. Especially when, as you say, the system hurts everyone involved in actually preparing & delivering your food. > I was a fan, I no longer am Ditto.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > 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 I don't know how it is around where you live, but here literally all ethnic restaurants ( Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, etc.) have ethnic employees with the associated native language. Some are fairly fluent in the main language of the country, but a lot aren't, at all.

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.

santialbo 5y ago
> 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. This is no longer true with Glovo. I've seen restaurants in the Glovo app that do their own delivery. The app shows it to explain why there's no tracking of the riders for example. Or why they can't give you an accurate estimate.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  That's some progress, I guess. I'll be on the lookout for this - I don't use them myself (I'm boycotting this breed of gig companies in general), but people around me do. So far, all deliveries I witness were Glovo riders.
slfnflctd 5y ago
> Uber Eats & friends outcompeted previous iterations of services If by 'outcompeted' you mean spent massive amounts of investor money to give free stuff away at a loss until they starved their competitors of traffic and/or bought those competitors outright. A lot of restaurants are fighting back by just setting up their own websites and gradually improving them, and hiring drivers directly. Ultimately I think the pendulum will swing back this way, because as much as it may be nice to have a unified UI, it's not worth paying significantly more for food that takes longer and arrives cold. Especially when, as you say, the system hurts everyone involved in actually preparing & delivering your food. > I was a fan, I no longer am Ditto.
sofixa 5y ago
> 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 I don't know how it is around where you live, but here literally all ethnic restaurants ( Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, etc.) have ethnic employees with the associated native language. Some are fairly fluent in the main language of the country, but a lot aren't, at all.