8 ms·

What’s the Point of 15-Minute Grocery Delivery?

25 points by imartin2k 5y ago

xyzzy21 5y ago
Last Mile Costs are still the choke point for this. And those are only slightly relaxed in high density urban locations which the USA really has very few. Anywhere else, Last Mile Costs quickly negate advantages if prices matter at all. For most people they do.
- smoyer 5y ago
  I searched but couldn't find the article but remember reading about housewives (in China?) who took deliveries of groceries in bulk and then distributed them to their neighbors. It's not intended to be 15 minute delivery but you could in theory solve the last mile by having ad-hoc distribute points in neighborhoods and villages.
shmatt 5y ago
One thing these companies aren't spending much time on: Engineers. Their software is hilariously bad, and full of ways to exploit their service
villasv 5y ago
I’ve been using such services once in a while and I can tell you, the point is very well made right in the first try. I do agree it’s going to be hard to make this profitable without trampling on the workforce, but meanwhile I’m getting ice cold beer in my apartment really cheap and really fast thanks to VCs so thank you I guess.
- libertine 5y ago
  But isn't that part of the game? Throw absurd amounts of money just to create unsustainable standards that end up changing consumer behavior and expectations? It's the SME that will pay the price for their "bad service" because they can't put things at your door in 5 minutes via drones that are barely regulated. All to thin the herd, leaving us with behemoths that can only talk to us via crappy chat-bots and auto-replies.
- gruez 5y ago
  >I do agree it’s going to be hard to make this profitable without trampling on the workforce is 15 minute delivery any more exploitative than 2-day or even "regular" delivery? seems like all the issues with delivery (eg. poor warehouse conditions, low pay, contractor classification, pressure to meet metrics) are there regardless of whether it's 15 minute delivery or not.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    You can bundle 2 day deliveries to increase efficiency. You don't need a delivery person with just one or two items do the trip between warehouse and your mailbox.
    - gruez 5y ago
      Does bundling 2-day deliveries make companies less willing to exploit workers or something? Is working as a gig economy food delivery worker better than working as an amazon delivery worker?
      - kevincox 5y ago
        No, but price affects demand. So 2-day delivery doesn't have to drive down costs quite as hard to meet the required price (which is probably a bit lower but similar to the 15min service). Of course the workers will be exploited anyways because lower costs means more profits but they don't need to be exploited quite as much. At the end of the day the workers will be exploited exactly up to the limit of what the company can get away with. For "disposable" and interchangeable untrained workers like delivery people that limit is pretty high.
        gruez 5y ago
        > No, but price affects demand. So 2-day delivery doesn't have to drive down costs quite as hard to meet the required price (which is probably a bit lower but similar to the 15min service). This argument only works if you consider 15-minute delivery as a different business unit as 2-day delivery, so they'll be fighting it out to gain market share. In reality, the same company is behind both options, so it doesn't really matter. They really don't care if you choose 15-minute or 2-day delivery, only that you bought it from them. If anything, they'll keep the 2-day delivery cost the same and charge a premium for 15-minute, because "how urgently you want it" is a pretty good price discriminator.
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  Sure. The point is catering for emergencies and cravings, and maybe laziness/convenience. But this is exactly the sort of premium service that people should be willing to pay for. So, to me, saying that they won't charge for the service is a big mistake: they are setting themselves up for extra costs will passing on income. This will not last. Ultimately they will charge or disappear, we've seen it with other delivery services. As you say, you're bagging a bargain thanks to VCs, so enjoy while it lasts.
- NineStarPoint 5y ago
  I just don’t see why the demand is high enough to create a business around. While there are certainly times I wished I could get a delivery of X in under an hour, the vast majority of the time I plan ahead well enough that, when I don’t think I’ll have grocery store time/energy, ordering groceries for delivery tomorrow is sufficient. The amount of times I’d be willing to pay more for this day groceries is very small. (Edit: Obviously, you can get around this by using VC funding to keep your pricing in line with slower services. That’s not sustainable though.) But I’m rarely a good judge of demand for a product I wouldn’t personally use, so maybe lots of people do just want the groceries immediately.
  - villasv 5y ago
    > I just don’t see why the demand is high enough to create a business around. I live in a city with more than 10MM residents, so there's enough demand for vodka-focused 15-min delivery businesses. The problem is more of cutthroat competition than demand.
MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
This is such a cookie cutter pearl-clutching article it’s hilarious. „Experts unsure whether New Thing will work out“ yes it’s called entrepreneurship. If VCs want to subsidize another startup for my personal gain, who am I to say no?
- NineStarPoint 5y ago
  There’s a fundamental issue to society where businesses can set prices at levels that could never be profitable due to VC funding. This means that any business attempting to have a sustainable business model is pushed out of the market. This results in all businesses in our markets being forced to find ways to cost compete with the businesses to whom money barely matters, which has knock on effects on employment. This isn’t to say Venture Capital money is always bad. Its good use is allowing a business that is slowly growing to quickly scale to meet demand higher than they are currently able to supply. It also allows new businesses to get through the first few years where lack of economies of scale mean profitability is impossible. But when you look at an Uber-style company that is using prices that could never be profitable to capture market share, there’s no real difference to the issue with monopoly price fixing we have long known is bad for an economy.
  - MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
    This is a different issue from monopoly capture, as the VC money will eventually run out. This is more a "US con-man" thing, and in a way it is very traditional and lindy. Similar things happened during the railroad era or the oil boom. Without shady figures financing Las Vegas or Hollywood, those industries wouldn't exist today. Stopping those things would have caused much more damage than it prevented. Maybe the scale is bigger today, because the markets are flooded with money and there is no easy return on capital anymore, which means assets are ballooning and there is more temptation to inflate stocks. The end of it will not be pretty.
mettamage 5y ago
I'd love: order today and receive tomorrow grocery delivery. It actually seems sustainable.
- laurowyn 5y ago
  This is a thing in the UK - both collection and delivery. In fact I can even order in the morning and collect in the evening, if the collection point has the availability on the day. Otherwise I can order for delivery the following day, or up to 2 weeks in advance. Typically a £1 charge on top of groceries, but the actual amount can vary based on how busy the system is in the timeslot you pick - can even be free as a way for them to spread out customers across the timetable. I didn't use it until the pandemic kicked off, and then I only started using it as a way to avoid the long queues outside supermarkets. And it was a revelation. I can now select everything I want to buy over the course of a few hours to a few days, and then go and collect at the time I picked. I rarely forget anything, as I can just add it to the order as I remember it. And from arrival to departure is normally no more than 10 minutes, can be ridiculously short if you pick the right timeslot, or can be up to 30 minutes if busy - that's still faster than parking, going into the store, wandering around, forgetting things, checking out and loading the car. The downside to it is if an item isn't available, you may get some weird replacements or just don't get the item at all. But that's not entirely different to if you went inside anyway. In all seriousness, if Amazon can get a delivery across the country and out for delivery within 6 hours, supermarkets should be able to select your order, pack it and make it available to collect from the store in less time.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    > This is a thing in the UK Today (Friday) The earliest slot at Ocado (A big established grocery delivery service / Online supermarket with own robot warehouses etc, in the UK) will give me is Sunday morning. I do not know if this is due to cut-off times or slot availability but it is moot. I'm not worried, I plan these orders weeks in advance (and you can add or remove until the night before). Other smaller services (e.g. Deliveroo, weezy, gorillas) will come much faster, but they typically just collect and cover the last mile. This seems to be a growth area lately, two of those companies are new.
hkt 5y ago
The point is: you've run out of nappies and your kid just took a dump. Do you: * Take them to the shop with no nappy on * Order ASAP delivery Seems simple to me. Convenience is great and I'll pay.
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  As a parent of a kid almost out of nappies, I cannot imagine ever getting to the point where we run out them. Not having the preferred brand stocked and having to make do with a supermarket brand? Sure. Running out altogether? That's like running out of toilet paper: you just don't let it happen.
  - hkt 5y ago
    I can confirm I have also been rescued from having no toilet paper by a same day delivery more than once. (For which I am eternally grateful to delivery drivers for counterbalancing my frazzled, disorganised self)
- tokai 5y ago
  You sacrifice an old t shirt as an ad hoc cloth diaper. Or call family/friends to get them for you.
  - hkt 5y ago
    The latter is a huge boon to lots of people, but the fact is that modern lifestyles are mobile and nobody can take for granted the idea of having family and friends nearby enough to do that. Fair enough about the t-shirt, though.
- jrootabega 5y ago
  But let's acknowledge there's a difference between using it sometimes, and using it always. Sometimes it makes sense. Usually, you can structure your life sensibly to not need these services. (Buy backups.) Subscription/gig services like this want people to shift all their responsibilities to an app instead of being somewhat self-reliant, and waste a ton of money in the process. Or, possibly even worse, they want to take advantage of people who don't have enough money to buy backups and get ahead of things, or tolerate knowing that this will happen with some of their customers.
ohgodplsno 5y ago
VCs and preying on the weakest of our society with miserable wages and horrible work conditions for the benefit of a few tech bros and bourgeois, name a more iconic duo. You can wait a full day for your groceries to be delivered. There is absolutely nothing that justifies full on immediate groceries delivery. As for the other comment that goes "your kid just took a dump", you do what we've always done: clean up your kid and take them to the shop.
- roenxi 5y ago
  > ...preying on the weakest of our society with miserable wages and horrible work conditions... Is there a long list of better jobs they could be doing that they are choosing not to because the VCs are all hypnotists? is it better for the weakest to sit around doing nothing all day? The VCs look like losers here too, they are making lousy returns on a lot of these ventures. The problem in the story is a weak economy that means people can't get good work, and the constant infusions of cash to people who make bad long term decisions (eg, the banks after the 2008 financial crisis).
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    I'd prefer people to do nothing, yes. Spend time with their friends and families. Lots of good things have come from people doing nothing.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  Uber felt like it was robbing VCs and exploiting the working class to give the middle class cheaper and nicer taxi rides (my crystal ball predicts someone downthread moaning about how a taxi driver scammed them...).
optimalsolver 5y ago
If there's a market for it, there's a point to it, even if you happen to find it unseemly.
Thegreatflood 5y ago
I personally see it as an alternative. There have been moments where I didn't have much time to go for groceries and I have a Gorillas depo nearby. Literally 6 minutes delivery. Now, I can tell, I wouldn't go regular on this. I compared the prices of the same items from Gorillas or Flink with branches (Germany) like Lidl or even Rewe (which is usually more expensive) and those deliveries are way more expensive. At least 10-15% more. Now, in the end is a money/time trade... But also you earn money while investing your time, so it's up to you ;)
eric4smith 5y ago
Dude…. As a person interested in husbanding my time, I value these services greatly. Where I live now you can pickup the app and your groceries are here in 15 minutes. Super awesome, especially for this spur of the moment things you need. I for one, am not gonna wait for a cab and spend an hour in the grocery store then commute back home again. My time is more valuable than that. Just tip your delivery person well!!!
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  If you have to tip the delivery person than it is a socially harmful business model that exploits its workers.
  - eric4smith 5y ago
    Speak for yourself. If it was not for these "delivery services" that everyone hates to love, a lot of those people would be unemployed. The problem is this, you or I cannot stop these delivery corporations from springing up and hiring people. Get real buster. What we CAN do, is to either not use them (you), or if we do (like) me, tip them well.
Lamad123 5y ago
Making George Bizos richer!
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
Debatable claim that avoiding food waste saves anything. The cost of sending a person to your door with a quart of milk, might overshadow anything gained. And the idea of 'fridge no more' contradicts the 'no more food waste' idea, as you'll have to throw away anything left over that need refrigeration.
Igelau 5y ago
> A perplexing 40 percent of food in the U.S. goes uneaten I hate when people bring up food waste like it's a bad thing. What would be the ideal amount going uneaten? A 40% surplus sounds like a great buffer. Zero food waste isn't some ecological utopia; it's a scarred hellscape where people are cracking open bones for marrow and killing each other for a loaf of bread.
- MauranKilom 5y ago
  If it could be reduced to, say, 5-10%, you'd be able to cut food production by 25% to feed the same population. The strange part is that whoever is doing the throwing away is already incentivized by the potential reduction in wasted investment. I don't know what food is included in those statistics though - I assume most of it comes from past-due-date food thrown out in stores.
soneca 5y ago
All claims about solving societal problems (like food waste, pollution, etc) sounds BS to me. But I do think it solves my problem, as a customer. I am a happy customer of one of these companies, but I am not a hyper busy productivity-optimizing person. The problem it solves for me is not exactly the 30-minute trip to the supermarket. For me it is a substitute of grocery shopping planning. When I am about to make my morning egg and notice I have no more butter. When I ordered a burger on delivery and realized I am out of coke (much cheaper to buy a 2L bottle than order a 350ml can in the burger place). When I already started cooking dinner and realized I am out of tomatoes. Also, a last-minute desire for some chocolate or chips. Better for my health to buy one only when I really want it than keep a few around that I’ll eat just because they are there (here, being more expensive and hard to get is a feature , not a bug).
jacknews 5y ago
The obvious use-case is that you're in the middle of cooking a dish, and suddenly realize you're missing a crucial ingredient.
rchaves 5y ago
I really despise those apps, it’s yet another thing putting people to work under middle-class instead of each citizen solving their own problems, increasing the social inequality, and also another duck tape to the problems car-centric society creates, instead of fixing the actual problems. If it takes you an hour to go to the supermarket then maybe they shouldn’t be so big and far, but smaller and more distributed I live in Amsterdam and I see absolutely no reason for those apps to exist here as it takes me literally 10 min to go to the supermarket, likewise with most people I know, yet there are 3 competing 15-min delivery apps here right now, go figure
tomjen3 5y ago
The point is that grocery shopping is very inefficient and a waste of time, so it is worth it for people with more money than time to spend some of that money not wasting time shopping.

25 points by imartin2k 5y ago

Last Mile Costs are still the choke point for this. And those are only slightly relaxed in high density urban locations which the USA really has very few. Anywhere else, Last Mile Costs quickly negate advantages if prices matter at all. For most people they do.

smoyer 5y ago
I searched but couldn't find the article but remember reading about housewives (in China?) who took deliveries of groceries in bulk and then distributed them to their neighbors. It's not intended to be 15 minute delivery but you could in theory solve the last mile by having ad-hoc distribute points in neighborhoods and villages.

shmatt 5y ago

One thing these companies aren't spending much time on: Engineers. Their software is hilariously bad, and full of ways to exploit their service

villasv 5y ago

I’ve been using such services once in a while and I can tell you, the point is very well made right in the first try. I do agree it’s going to be hard to make this profitable without trampling on the workforce, but meanwhile I’m getting ice cold beer in my apartment really cheap and really fast thanks to VCs so thank you I guess.

libertine 5y ago
But isn't that part of the game? Throw absurd amounts of money just to create unsustainable standards that end up changing consumer behavior and expectations? It's the SME that will pay the price for their "bad service" because they can't put things at your door in 5 minutes via drones that are barely regulated. All to thin the herd, leaving us with behemoths that can only talk to us via crappy chat-bots and auto-replies.
gruez 5y ago
>I do agree it’s going to be hard to make this profitable without trampling on the workforce is 15 minute delivery any more exploitative than 2-day or even "regular" delivery? seems like all the issues with delivery (eg. poor warehouse conditions, low pay, contractor classification, pressure to meet metrics) are there regardless of whether it's 15 minute delivery or not.
- adrianN 5y ago
  You can bundle 2 day deliveries to increase efficiency. You don't need a delivery person with just one or two items do the trip between warehouse and your mailbox.
  - gruez 5y ago
    Does bundling 2-day deliveries make companies less willing to exploit workers or something? Is working as a gig economy food delivery worker better than working as an amazon delivery worker?
    - kevincox 5y ago
      No, but price affects demand. So 2-day delivery doesn't have to drive down costs quite as hard to meet the required price (which is probably a bit lower but similar to the 15min service). Of course the workers will be exploited anyways because lower costs means more profits but they don't need to be exploited quite as much. At the end of the day the workers will be exploited exactly up to the limit of what the company can get away with. For "disposable" and interchangeable untrained workers like delivery people that limit is pretty high.
      - gruez 5y ago
        > No, but price affects demand. So 2-day delivery doesn't have to drive down costs quite as hard to meet the required price (which is probably a bit lower but similar to the 15min service). This argument only works if you consider 15-minute delivery as a different business unit as 2-day delivery, so they'll be fighting it out to gain market share. In reality, the same company is behind both options, so it doesn't really matter. They really don't care if you choose 15-minute or 2-day delivery, only that you bought it from them. If anything, they'll keep the 2-day delivery cost the same and charge a premium for 15-minute, because "how urgently you want it" is a pretty good price discriminator.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
Sure. The point is catering for emergencies and cravings, and maybe laziness/convenience. But this is exactly the sort of premium service that people should be willing to pay for. So, to me, saying that they won't charge for the service is a big mistake: they are setting themselves up for extra costs will passing on income. This will not last. Ultimately they will charge or disappear, we've seen it with other delivery services. As you say, you're bagging a bargain thanks to VCs, so enjoy while it lasts.
NineStarPoint 5y ago
I just don’t see why the demand is high enough to create a business around. While there are certainly times I wished I could get a delivery of X in under an hour, the vast majority of the time I plan ahead well enough that, when I don’t think I’ll have grocery store time/energy, ordering groceries for delivery tomorrow is sufficient. The amount of times I’d be willing to pay more for this day groceries is very small. (Edit: Obviously, you can get around this by using VC funding to keep your pricing in line with slower services. That’s not sustainable though.) But I’m rarely a good judge of demand for a product I wouldn’t personally use, so maybe lots of people do just want the groceries immediately.
- villasv 5y ago
  > I just don’t see why the demand is high enough to create a business around. I live in a city with more than 10MM residents, so there's enough demand for vodka-focused 15-min delivery businesses. The problem is more of cutthroat competition than demand.

MrBuddyCasino 5y ago

This is such a cookie cutter pearl-clutching article it’s hilarious. „Experts unsure whether New Thing will work out“ yes it’s called entrepreneurship. If VCs want to subsidize another startup for my personal gain, who am I to say no?

NineStarPoint 5y ago
There’s a fundamental issue to society where businesses can set prices at levels that could never be profitable due to VC funding. This means that any business attempting to have a sustainable business model is pushed out of the market. This results in all businesses in our markets being forced to find ways to cost compete with the businesses to whom money barely matters, which has knock on effects on employment. This isn’t to say Venture Capital money is always bad. Its good use is allowing a business that is slowly growing to quickly scale to meet demand higher than they are currently able to supply. It also allows new businesses to get through the first few years where lack of economies of scale mean profitability is impossible. But when you look at an Uber-style company that is using prices that could never be profitable to capture market share, there’s no real difference to the issue with monopoly price fixing we have long known is bad for an economy.
- MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
  This is a different issue from monopoly capture, as the VC money will eventually run out. This is more a "US con-man" thing, and in a way it is very traditional and lindy. Similar things happened during the railroad era or the oil boom. Without shady figures financing Las Vegas or Hollywood, those industries wouldn't exist today. Stopping those things would have caused much more damage than it prevented. Maybe the scale is bigger today, because the markets are flooded with money and there is no easy return on capital anymore, which means assets are ballooning and there is more temptation to inflate stocks. The end of it will not be pretty.

mettamage 5y ago

I'd love: order today and receive tomorrow grocery delivery. It actually seems sustainable.

laurowyn 5y ago
This is a thing in the UK - both collection and delivery. In fact I can even order in the morning and collect in the evening, if the collection point has the availability on the day. Otherwise I can order for delivery the following day, or up to 2 weeks in advance. Typically a £1 charge on top of groceries, but the actual amount can vary based on how busy the system is in the timeslot you pick - can even be free as a way for them to spread out customers across the timetable. I didn't use it until the pandemic kicked off, and then I only started using it as a way to avoid the long queues outside supermarkets. And it was a revelation. I can now select everything I want to buy over the course of a few hours to a few days, and then go and collect at the time I picked. I rarely forget anything, as I can just add it to the order as I remember it. And from arrival to departure is normally no more than 10 minutes, can be ridiculously short if you pick the right timeslot, or can be up to 30 minutes if busy - that's still faster than parking, going into the store, wandering around, forgetting things, checking out and loading the car. The downside to it is if an item isn't available, you may get some weird replacements or just don't get the item at all. But that's not entirely different to if you went inside anyway. In all seriousness, if Amazon can get a delivery across the country and out for delivery within 6 hours, supermarkets should be able to select your order, pack it and make it available to collect from the store in less time.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  > This is a thing in the UK Today (Friday) The earliest slot at Ocado (A big established grocery delivery service / Online supermarket with own robot warehouses etc, in the UK) will give me is Sunday morning. I do not know if this is due to cut-off times or slot availability but it is moot. I'm not worried, I plan these orders weeks in advance (and you can add or remove until the night before). Other smaller services (e.g. Deliveroo, weezy, gorillas) will come much faster, but they typically just collect and cover the last mile. This seems to be a growth area lately, two of those companies are new.

hkt 5y ago

The point is: you've run out of nappies and your kid just took a dump. Do you: * Take them to the shop with no nappy on * Order ASAP delivery Seems simple to me. Convenience is great and I'll pay.

Freak_NL 5y ago
As a parent of a kid almost out of nappies, I cannot imagine ever getting to the point where we run out them. Not having the preferred brand stocked and having to make do with a supermarket brand? Sure. Running out altogether? That's like running out of toilet paper: you just don't let it happen.
- hkt 5y ago
  I can confirm I have also been rescued from having no toilet paper by a same day delivery more than once. (For which I am eternally grateful to delivery drivers for counterbalancing my frazzled, disorganised self)
tokai 5y ago
You sacrifice an old t shirt as an ad hoc cloth diaper. Or call family/friends to get them for you.
- hkt 5y ago
  The latter is a huge boon to lots of people, but the fact is that modern lifestyles are mobile and nobody can take for granted the idea of having family and friends nearby enough to do that. Fair enough about the t-shirt, though.
jrootabega 5y ago
But let's acknowledge there's a difference between using it sometimes, and using it always. Sometimes it makes sense. Usually, you can structure your life sensibly to not need these services. (Buy backups.) Subscription/gig services like this want people to shift all their responsibilities to an app instead of being somewhat self-reliant, and waste a ton of money in the process. Or, possibly even worse, they want to take advantage of people who don't have enough money to buy backups and get ahead of things, or tolerate knowing that this will happen with some of their customers.

ohgodplsno 5y ago

VCs and preying on the weakest of our society with miserable wages and horrible work conditions for the benefit of a few tech bros and bourgeois, name a more iconic duo. You can wait a full day for your groceries to be delivered. There is absolutely nothing that justifies full on immediate groceries delivery. As for the other comment that goes "your kid just took a dump", you do what we've always done: clean up your kid and take them to the shop.

roenxi 5y ago
> ...preying on the weakest of our society with miserable wages and horrible work conditions... Is there a long list of better jobs they could be doing that they are choosing not to because the VCs are all hypnotists? is it better for the weakest to sit around doing nothing all day? The VCs look like losers here too, they are making lousy returns on a lot of these ventures. The problem in the story is a weak economy that means people can't get good work, and the constant infusions of cash to people who make bad long term decisions (eg, the banks after the 2008 financial crisis).
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  I'd prefer people to do nothing, yes. Spend time with their friends and families. Lots of good things have come from people doing nothing.
bellyfullofbac 5y ago
Uber felt like it was robbing VCs and exploiting the working class to give the middle class cheaper and nicer taxi rides (my crystal ball predicts someone downthread moaning about how a taxi driver scammed them...).

optimalsolver 5y ago

If there's a market for it, there's a point to it, even if you happen to find it unseemly.

Thegreatflood 5y ago

I personally see it as an alternative. There have been moments where I didn't have much time to go for groceries and I have a Gorillas depo nearby. Literally 6 minutes delivery. Now, I can tell, I wouldn't go regular on this. I compared the prices of the same items from Gorillas or Flink with branches (Germany) like Lidl or even Rewe (which is usually more expensive) and those deliveries are way more expensive. At least 10-15% more. Now, in the end is a money/time trade... But also you earn money while investing your time, so it's up to you ;)

eric4smith 5y ago

Dude…. As a person interested in husbanding my time, I value these services greatly. Where I live now you can pickup the app and your groceries are here in 15 minutes. Super awesome, especially for this spur of the moment things you need. I for one, am not gonna wait for a cab and spend an hour in the grocery store then commute back home again. My time is more valuable than that. Just tip your delivery person well!!!

Freak_NL 5y ago
If you have to tip the delivery person than it is a socially harmful business model that exploits its workers.
- eric4smith 5y ago
  Speak for yourself. If it was not for these "delivery services" that everyone hates to love, a lot of those people would be unemployed. The problem is this, you or I cannot stop these delivery corporations from springing up and hiring people. Get real buster. What we CAN do, is to either not use them (you), or if we do (like) me, tip them well.

Lamad123 5y ago

Making George Bizos richer!

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

Debatable claim that avoiding food waste saves anything. The cost of sending a person to your door with a quart of milk, might overshadow anything gained. And the idea of 'fridge no more' contradicts the 'no more food waste' idea, as you'll have to throw away anything left over that need refrigeration.

Igelau 5y ago

> A perplexing 40 percent of food in the U.S. goes uneaten I hate when people bring up food waste like it's a bad thing. What would be the ideal amount going uneaten? A 40% surplus sounds like a great buffer. Zero food waste isn't some ecological utopia; it's a scarred hellscape where people are cracking open bones for marrow and killing each other for a loaf of bread.

MauranKilom 5y ago
If it could be reduced to, say, 5-10%, you'd be able to cut food production by 25% to feed the same population. The strange part is that whoever is doing the throwing away is already incentivized by the potential reduction in wasted investment. I don't know what food is included in those statistics though - I assume most of it comes from past-due-date food thrown out in stores.

soneca 5y ago

All claims about solving societal problems (like food waste, pollution, etc) sounds BS to me. But I do think it solves my problem, as a customer. I am a happy customer of one of these companies, but I am not a hyper busy productivity-optimizing person. The problem it solves for me is not exactly the 30-minute trip to the supermarket. For me it is a substitute of grocery shopping planning. When I am about to make my morning egg and notice I have no more butter. When I ordered a burger on delivery and realized I am out of coke (much cheaper to buy a 2L bottle than order a 350ml can in the burger place). When I already started cooking dinner and realized I am out of tomatoes. Also, a last-minute desire for some chocolate or chips. Better for my health to buy one only when I really want it than keep a few around that I’ll eat just because they are there (here, being more expensive and hard to get is a feature , not a bug).

jacknews 5y ago

The obvious use-case is that you're in the middle of cooking a dish, and suddenly realize you're missing a crucial ingredient.

rchaves 5y ago

I really despise those apps, it’s yet another thing putting people to work under middle-class instead of each citizen solving their own problems, increasing the social inequality, and also another duck tape to the problems car-centric society creates, instead of fixing the actual problems. If it takes you an hour to go to the supermarket then maybe they shouldn’t be so big and far, but smaller and more distributed I live in Amsterdam and I see absolutely no reason for those apps to exist here as it takes me literally 10 min to go to the supermarket, likewise with most people I know, yet there are 3 competing 15-min delivery apps here right now, go figure

tomjen3 5y ago

The point is that grocery shopping is very inefficient and a waste of time, so it is worth it for people with more money than time to spend some of that money not wasting time shopping.