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DoorDash Joins Forces with Wolt
- NaughtyShiba 5y agoAs almost-daily user of Wolt, I'm interested to see how this will impact me. Maybe I finally won't have to pay 3 euros for McDonalds to get delivered for a 10minute walking distance.
- shafyy 5y agoJesus, this is exactly the problem, If you don't want to pay the people who deliver your food to your lazy ass a fair salary don't use food delivery. Go get your own food. In my opinion it should be even more than €3 for most deliveries, I think this is subsidized by VC money and unfair conditions to the delivery people.
- NaughtyShiba 5y agoWolt charges 3 euros for McD delivery, because McD refuses to pay 30% tax. It's end-user who pays Wolt tax, rather than restaurant.
- nickkell 5y agoWhich tax are you referring to and in which country? Is this especially applied to deliveries?
- NaughtyShiba 5y agoWolt takes 30% from order.
- deanc 5y agoIt's not just lazy people that rely on these services. It's disabled people too.
- throwaway744678 5y agoWon't somebody think of the children?
- bwlg 5y agoIn Germany we have services commonly referred to as "Essen auf Rädern" (Meals on Wheels). A quick search shows that the concept actually originated in the 40s in the UK and has also made it to the US in the 60s [1]. Disabled and elderly people not being able to procure their own food isn't really a new problem and also isn't a problem that most first world societies have ignored. So I'm not really sure what disabled people using a service have to do with the (allegedly) unfair wages of the delivery drivers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meals_on_Wheels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meals_on_Wheels
- deanc 5y agoIt has nothing to do with it. It was a direct response to the idea that the only people ordering from food delivery services are lazy, which is simply not true. I was incapacitated last year due to an injury and wasn't able to leave the house for a couple of weeks. I would have really struggled without Wolt.
- bwlg 5y agoFair enough, sorry then. I mistook it as an argument against delivery fees. If you're incapacitated for a longer time, you might still want to check out if any meals on wheels services are available to you. I actually know a few colleagues (in their 30s) that started getting those since working 100% from home. It can be quite a bit cheaper. And if you're like me it would also be healthier, because every time I order food it turns out to be something like burgers with fries ;-)
- illuminati1911 5y agoFor a mcdonalds meal worth of 5-7e, 3e delivery is a complete highway robbery. If people will go get their own food, try to guess how much the delivery guy earn then when the whole business goes down? From user of the service point-of-view, the salary of a middleman delivery guy is irrelevant. It's only about what service is being given and how much does it cost. If the cost is too high then people will simply not buy the service. Food delivery is not a necessity after all.
- Ekaros 5y agoThe cost of delivery doesn't really depend on price of order. Not even size of order, unless it's extreme. 3€ for delivery isn't really unreasonable, it's actually quite cheap. Let's say that it takes 10 minutes all together with going to restaurant pick-up/waiting, then going to drop off. With full utilization that would be 18€ an hour. Now remove 24% of VAT: 13.68€. Rest of the taxes and so on... In the end 3€ is probably too low. Even with some 30% from whole order price.
- thenaturalist 5y agoIn German we have an expression for your condition: Wohlstandsverwahrlosung.
- Angostura 5y agoThat sounds about right for the administrative overhead. The expensive bit isn't the walk.
- paavohtl 5y agoThey also take up to 30% from the price of the food, in addition to the delivery fee.
- atlasunshrugged 5y agoAs someone who has used both Wolt and DoorDash I would say don't hold your breath on decreased fees. Probably it'll just get more opaque and restaurant menu prices will increase 10-20% while the additional fees stay the same so they can book more revenue without you feeling like you're paying more (because who is also googling the restaurant menu at the same time to compare?)
- deanclatworthy 5y agoThis is exactly what I see happening. Restaurants are increasing prices to cover the “Wolt tax”. My local McDonald’s does this.
- fy20 5y agoCan confirm, I work in the POS space and most of the restaurants we work with increase their prices to cover the comission charges from the delivery service. DoorDash has a policy that pickup prices have to match in-store (restaurants are still charged comission though), but delivery can be marked up by whatever you want. That and the extra service fees they charge to customers (they are a lot more in the US [0]), means you can end up paying double what it would be if you got off your ass and walked down the street to order :-) [0] https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/technology/uber-eats-doordash-raise-fees-california-cover-driver-benefits https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/technology/uber-eat...
- beefield 5y agoAny contract that prohibits price differentiation between sales channels should be flat out illegal. Those kind of contracts are nothing short of evil.
- cotillion 5y agoMost pizza-places here attempt to avoid the "(wolt|foodora) tax" price increase for pickups by offering free drinks if you call and order instead of doing it through the app. Wouldn't be surprised if they start splitting into separate legal entities soon to get out of the pickup price matching restrictions.
- rapsey 5y agoIt definitely won't get cheaper. 3 euros seems a completely reasonable price for this delivery.
- NaughtyShiba 5y agoMost other deliveries are cheaper even if they are 15mins driving distance. And some of them are free. The only reason McDonalds delivery is 3euros, because they refuse to pay 30% tax - so Wolt puts that tax on end-user.
- PedroCandeias 5y agoIs 3 euros such a high price to pay someone to bike over to the restaurant and bring you a still warm meal?
- Hamuko 5y agoMy experiences with Wolt are that the food comes in a car and is not warm.
- NaughtyShiba 5y agoI once had twister ankle, so couldn't bother walking 3min to pizza place. It took 30mins to deliver it by car, and it arrived cold.
- Ekaros 5y agoFree delivery deals are nice, but it is not exactly fun looking at driver going around the town for 40 minutes. And then order missing stuff...
- weberer 5y agoI've seen a lot of Wolt carriers using public transit in Helsinki. The whole delivery system seems pretty Laissez-faire in a country that's usually pretty strict with regulations.
- Hamuko 5y agoI imagine there's way less of that on the Espoo side.
- illuminati1911 5y agoDepends how you look at it. Here in China (major cities) delivery is often free and when buying from delivery apps there are additional discount available that you can't get when visiting the restaurant. So basically it's often cheaper to get food delivered to your home than going to the restaurant itself.
- mns 5y agoThis is not meant to be condescending, but do you have any form of disability or health issues that prevent you from getting the food yourself? In cases like this it would be fair for these apps to show support and maybe even drop the delivery charges.
- mellavora 5y agowait-- you are saying the unit of work is minimal ("a 10 minute walk") so you don't want to pay it, but you also aren't willing to do it yourself ('almost-daily user'). so by your actions you basically agree that in your case it is worth it, otherwise you'd just take the 10 minute walk. Did I miss something?
- mupuff1234 5y agoWhy would the EU approve the deal? Seems like a no brainer to reject it.
- arlort 5y agoBecause the EU and the member states don't have jurisdiction to block every single company in the market from being acquired. And wolt is not exactly sensitive to national security interests or at risk of creating a monopoly
- Ekaros 5y agoAnd at least in Finland Doordash really isn't a competitor, so there isn't even monopoly issues.
- jarcane 5y agoFinland is historically not especially concerned with monopoly issues in any case. Nearly the entire retail sector is controlled by only two companies.
- humppadumppa 5y agoThree, Lidl is big enough to be considered relevant competition.
- weberer 5y agoFor just the supermarkets, yes. But S-group and Kesko are huge. They own restaurants, banks, hotels, gas stations, home improvement stores, department stores, car dealerships, and a bunch of specialty stores.
- jarcane 5y agoYeah, I used "retail sector" quite carefully there. The breadth of the conglomerates here is vast. It's sort of surreal to me, even by American standards, that this level of market capture is even allowed.
- robert_foss 5y agoGross. Wolt was in my mind one of the less amoral delivery services. It's delivery staff are (soon to be were I'm sure) actual employees.
- slowmotiony 5y agoSurely this is not the case anymore, nowadays Wolt drivers are either fresh arrived immigrants with no language or actual illegals - it's definitely not because Wolt cares about their wellbeing and wants to hire them as employees.
- Hamuko 5y agoWolt's delivery staff haven't been treated as actual employees in its native Finland. It was actually quite recent when the occupational safety administration ruled that Wolt's delivery staff are actually employees, but Wolt is appealing.
- illuminati1911 5y agoI wonder if that's why they are now exiting. They can see that there is no future for this kind of business as governments crack down on the platform economy.
- Kkoala 5y agoThe same has been speculated in Finnish groups/forums, probably it affected the decision, but of course we can't know how much. They had also been thinking of going public, so this acquisition seems safer option
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoFood delivery is a multi billion industry and being the number one app is still lucrative.
- Kkoala 5y agoThe delivery staff definitely aren't/weren't actual employees. They all have some kind of business entity set up that they use to bill Wolt
- roenxi 5y agoAssuming that Wolt, similar to DoorDash, loses money... if Wolt loses less money than DoorDash, thereby having higher profits, does this make it a more or a less successful company than DoorDash?
- jwr 5y agoThis news worries me, because Wolt has been the only delivery service that I could use without frustration. Most others, in their crazy run towards customer acquisition and growth, are tripping over their own shoelaces: in some cases, even basic online ordering functionality is broken. Wolt has been getting most things right and I hope this acquisition doesn't change that.
- Strom 5y agoWolt is the first food delivery app I used years ago. It has been convenient, but I definitely started taking it for granted. I was shocked when I traveled to Germany and used their popular app Lieferando. That app didn't even have a dynamic GPS based map, instead it showed a static map with a constant "ETA 30min". They might as well have just sent me a text with "ETA 30min" as there was no functional difference. Best part was that the courrier never arrived and the app kept showing me "ETA 30min" even two days later. Of course there was no in-app support contact. Only way to contact them was via e-mail and it took them multiple days to respond. The response was very hostile and they claimed that because the courrier couldn't find the address (a giant hotel building) they just didn't make the delivery and that's how it is. Ended up having to do a chargeback. Contrasting this to Wolt, where I've never had any issues with delivery (and there's a real time map of the courrier's location). When I've had wrong items delivered, the in-app customer support chat has been reasonable and they've just given me credit for a new order. I'm not sure where DoorDash falls on this spectrum. I've certainly read horror stories about DoorDash here on HN, but hopefully they've improved. Would be a real shame to lose Wolt's premium experience.
- orangepanda 5y agoUnrelated to the story - Who thought its a good idea to change scrollbar's behaviour? I scroll down a little and suddenly it jumps to the bottom of the page.
- moffkalast 5y agoDoesn't seem to behave out of the ordinary on Chrome for me, are you on Firefox?
- tsywke44 5y agoWolt was a show of Northern European style software/business development, and it’s why Doordash acquired them. Now that US big tech has their dirty fingers all over Wolt, I’ll guess all that will be gone in 3 years as the bullshit starts creeping in.
- dang 5y agoPlease keep nationalistic swipes off HN, regardless of which nation you have a problem with. It reliably makes threads low-quality, leads to worse (usually much worse) from others, and is not at all what this site is supposed to be for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html p.s. in case anyone is worried: yes, we post these moderation comments regardless of country.
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoThat is the downside of free trade: foreigners can fly in and buy up all your companies. Which is exactly why China protects their tech industry like a wolf her cubs. Capitalism favours the strong.
- hasmolo 5y agoand that isolationism is the most sure way to grow financially and not socially
- tuukkah 5y agoPeople from China are not isolated though: they can study and spend time abroad, form social connections before returning to China if they so prefer.
- texasbigdata 5y agoRight, that’s why there’s a very large cultural crackdown on what can be shown, with pop stars being removed and wiped from the internet . With kids having their past times curfewed. Happy to cite, and this might be a giant rabbit hole, but I would posit there’s massive disagreement (both for and against) your statement.
- IceDane 5y agoWolt has been absolutely great. They suddenly appeared here in Northen Europe with superior technology(app, website, UI, UX, everything) than the otherwise dominating Just-Eat and since then I have barely used anyone else. Since then, Just-Eat have been trying(and failing miserably) at catching up. From what I've heard about DoorDash, this doesn't bode well, but I guess we'll have to see. Either way, I enjoyed seeing the awful JE get pushed off its pedestal and then scramble to stay relevant. It's like a textbook lesson in what happens if your company dominates a market and then decides to just chill for 10 years.
- thewarrior 5y agoThis is one reason why US tech will always win. Any tech company in EU or Asia that becomes big enough will be acquired by the heavily capitalized US companies or their employees will be hired away.
- solarkraft 5y agoCan you explain "this"? What mechanism is at play here?
- yosito 5y agoWolt fed me through the pandemic in Hungary. And it's easily one of the best food delivery apps I've used. The app itself is 4/5 stars. Reliable, but the search filters don't give enough control to users. But what really stood out about Wolt was their customer service. They have incredible response times, and always do everything in their power to resolve any issues. That's rare these days, and I hope it doesn't go away now that they've been acquired. I feel like this is a successful acquisition for the people at Wolt. And may be a good success story for a European tech company that paves the way for future success. I'm happy for them. That being said, I'm not as big of a fan of DoorDash, and I worry that this will move talent and value out of Europe, yet again.
- ren_engineer 5y agothese gig economy type startups only work if a monopoly is established. Competition results in users being subsidized by venture capital, so the logical option for both parties is to join forces and basically create a cartel
- JohnWhigham 5y agoGood customer service huh? Well, prepare for that to go away now that an American startup now owns them!
- d1sxeyes 5y agoAll they need to do is offer Szep card option and I'll be happy. Only reason I'm still using Netpincer.
- rednum 5y agoWell, that's sad news. Wolt used to be the only food delivery company that had actually functional customer service. They replied swiftly, sometimes automatically even granted some promo codes when the delivery was really late. I suppose that will be gone soon. Other companies I used ranged from "Your order never arrived? Ok, we'll refund you after some time if you jump through enough hoops" (Glovo) to non-existent: "Your order never arrived? Not our problem, talk to the restaurant. Restaurant ignores your email and calls? Well, still not our problem." (pyszne.pl, polish-only).
- pzduniak 5y agoPyszne is Takeaway.com, they just have a different brand name in every country. The rest of the branding is exactly the same.
- outime 5y agoI've never used pyszne but if I ever use such service I'd use my CC to pay and if I never get a refund I'd just file a chargeback. Sure, they may just ban you but you get your money back and you don't have to deal with their bs anymore.
- avree 5y agoWell, DoorDash has always a) instantly replied to me and b) fully refunded me for any order that doesn't arrive. In fact, they have an automatic flow to get refunds that takes a few seconds to complete.
- bkberry352 5y agoAgree, my experience with their customer service has been excellent. Missing side = automatic 50% refund for cost of that dish, don't have to talk to any customer service, you just tap a few buttons in the app.
- moffkalast 5y agoAs a non-user I only have negative feelings towards Wolt myself. They have their fleet of underpaid cyclists with gigantic boxes darting around the town at full speed without regard for traffic or anything else. The system where they get paid more the faster they go doesn't seem super healthy and one of them's gonna get killed by a car sooner or later.
- yhoneycomb 5y agoSounds like the city you’re in needs to fix its bike lanes rather than continue blaming cyclists
- rudasn 5y agoI'm not sure parent blamed cyclists, but rather their working conditions. Where I live we have no cyclist lanes so all food delivery gig workers use motorbikes. I personally see a traffic accident involving these people almost every week. I think if construction work didn't have strict health and safety regulations we would see/hear about construction accidents every day. This (new) industry should be regulated in the same way.
- relix 5y agoThere is regulation in place to avoid accidents. It's called traffic rules.
- moffkalast 5y agoOn the contrary, most of the city has pretty good bike lanes set up. It's just that they don't get enough time to do the commute safely, or at least safety is gravely disincentivized with extra pay.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoIf the payment model is every delivery = comission, then they'll go as fast as possible, even with good bike lanes. Red light, but the cross street is empty? They'll probably blow through it. And they'll be making these kinds of stupid risk assessments every few seconds, and statistics would say the chances of 100% success are against them...
- Readywater 5y agoBrutal. I don’t want to think about how much I’ve spent through Wolt (CPH) during the pandemic, but from a customer experience standpoint, they have been very fair. Quick response, predictable outcomes, no hoops. Congrats to wolt, thanks to all the delivery and service workers, and I’ll delete it at the first change in CS standards.
- slowmotiony 5y agoI used to use Wolt all the time back during the pandemic lockdowns, it had better choices than UberEats and you could see the drivers were either young students making some cash on the side or folks who had a lot of time and used it to bike around and make money. It also happened to have all my favourite restaurants to choose from. It just seemed honest. Nowadays it's completely different. All the temp drivers got replaced by cheap Indians/Pakistanis doing it as a full time job (but without any insurance or benefits). And most of the restaurants don't even exist, they are literally just some guy cooking in his basement under a fake restaurant name, sometimes multiple names pretending to be competing restaurants - and they keep changing the names and logos all the time so you never even know who you're actually ordering your food from. Just a shady business with shady "consultants" delivering food from shady places.
- geoduck14 5y ago>they are literally just some guy cooking in his basement under a fake restaurant name, Texan here. You just described every good TexMex place I've been to.
- slowmotiony 5y agoRight, but here in EU this sort of thing is illegal, and if you tried to cook shit in your basement and sell it for real money you'd get shut down instantly. Same with hiring illegals and making them work with no insurance. Same with providing no training. Same with taking no responsibility in case of accidents. Etc etc. These companies keep getting away with outright ignoring the laws where they operate - and how can you ever compete with a company that ignores regulations?
- ghaff 5y agoI assure you it's generally illegal in the US as well.
- RicoElectrico 5y agoThat's why we can't have nice things in Europe. I second other comments - Wolt customer service is top notch, I'd even say too proactive ;) What can we do so there is less incentive for entrepreneurs to sell themselves to the US companies? Is the sustainable enterprise model dead today?
- pavlov 5y agoIt’s not dead, but it doesn’t apply to companies like Wolt that take huge amounts of VC cash to lose tons of money competing in a crowded sector. This is the ideal exit for Wolt.
- discopicante 5y agoEuropeans need to be open to more financial risk in order to create a competitive and robust capital market compared to the United States. Until then, you can expect to read more stories like this.
- cblconfederate 5y agoI understand the convenience of delivered food esp. during the lockdowns, but people should not be glorifying these companies that are instituting a modern big-tech-powered serfdom by scraping the bottom of the barrel of gig work. We need a better model for this , not human-robots that carry food to the well-off.
- input_sh 5y agoThe one I'm using was recently forced to employ their workers full time. It means no more flexibility, losing about a 100 drivers instantly, and increasing delivery times by about 30-40 min in the short run, and I'm perfectly fine with that. I don't know if Glovo as their only real competitor is held onto the same standard, I refuse to use them because they approached the market by throwing money at it, buying competitors and every ad they could in whichever media they could (TV, radio, newspapers, billboards, for months it was the only ad you'd get on YouTube, etc).
- cblconfederate 5y agoBut what do you think about this lifestyle in which middle class people sit trapped in their homes all day while the peasants bring their food and groceries to them. Are we turning cities to prisons without bars?
- input_sh 5y agoI'm not "trapped indoors", I'm too lazy to cook every meal. You've made a pretty big leap between using a delivery app and using it all the time for everything. I do one meal a week, maybe two if I'm really lazy. I also buy my own groceries. Shocking, I know. The amount of people that can afford to do that all the time will always be small enough not to make any difference in how a city operates.
- agentdrtran 5y agothe only options here aren't full-time or serfdom.
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- jakub_g 5y agodocument.body.style.color = '#000'
- black_13 5y agoThey can underpay worldwide
- bradhe 5y agoAh I love wolt, best app of all the providers! So much churn in this industry.