16 ms·

DoorDash and pizza arbitrage (2020)

191 points by jer0me 4y ago

jer0me 4y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852
kache_ 4y ago
I started boycotting food delivery services because the quality & service was just god awful. I found that if I drive, I actually don't spend that much time, and I get wayyyy better service.
- mr_cyborg 4y ago
  What I've found is that normally, the consumer - restaurant contract is between two parties. I pay food, I get to eat. If there's a problem, I tell the restaurant, and they fix it. There's ample opportunity to find an amicable resolution to any issues that arise. When you add DoorDash or any other third party delivery service into the equation, you add two more parties to this - the service itself, and the driver, who is usually an independent contractor. What this has led to in my experience is that when something goes wrong, instead of me working it out with the restaurant, I am left frustrated, hungry, and hung out to dry by three parties - the restaurant, the platform, and the contractor. If you read enough of the DoorDash subreddit[1], you realize that a tip is not a gratuity for good service, it's a bid for an independent contractor to take up your delivery. However, you have no ability to choose which Dasher takes it, and they are under no obligation to represent you as your agent or look out for your interests. So if they show up and the food is cold, not their problem, they get the tip because they accepted the bid. When DoorDash had a major outage some time back, I had placed an order for about $70, generous tip (because I realize it's really a bid) and fees included. My order was prepared and ready for pick up just as the whole platform went down. It was impossible to cancel my order, because DoorDash was down, so I made alternate arrangements for dinner and figure I'll reach out for a refund when things are back up. About three hours later, I get a notification that my order is out for delivery. The optimist in me hoped that the restaurant saw that some food sat out in the "danger zone" for several hours and remade it, or that the Dasher realized that the containers weren't the slightest bit warm, or something like that, but nope. I got dropped off a lot of food that was beyond safe to eat, not even worth saving to have as leftovers for a later meal, and now I have to dispose of all of it. When I finally got through to support later that night, I asked for a refund, and they said they could only give me a credit for the meal, not the tip. I said I want the whole order refunded to my original payment, they said well, here's a credit and it will convert over to that later. One week and several phone calls later, they stopped telling me it was "too late to get a refund" and I got my refund and uninstalled the app. I don't need that negative energy in my life. 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/doordash/ https://www.reddit.com/r/doordash/
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > What this has led to in my experience is that when something goes wrong, instead of me working it out with the restaurant, I am left frustrated, hungry, and hung out to dry by three parties - the restaurant, the platform, and the contractor. My experience with delivery services (mostly, but not exclusively, Postmates) is that they are usually very good at giving refunds (your experience clearly sucked, though!), which is nice (but I’m guessing not for the drivers, who may or may not be at fault), but that restaurants with their own delivery services have been more willing to send out the missing food on an expedited basis, which is often a better resolution (if I didn’t want the food more than the money, I wouldn’t have ordered in the first place.) I’ve also noticed that wrong or missing food items are more common with third-party delivery services.
    - scarface_74 4y ago
      I've gotten plenty of certificates from restaurants who gave me "a bad delivery experience", without my asking. I didn't even consider the experience "bad". It was something like the driver had a flat tire, called me and said he was going to be late and then said he would have the food remade. I said don't worry about it, bring the food cold (pizza) and I would just heat it up. I didn't even think about it anymore. But I still got a free coupon.
    - rhino369 4y ago
      Doordash's refund algorithm is usually pretty fair, but sometimes it isn't. I order a lot, and once in a blue moon the order will be significantly messed up (missing entrees, for example) and they give a low ball offer.
    - kelnos 4y ago
      > My experience with delivery services (mostly, but not exclusively, Postmates) is that they are usually very good at giving refunds This has changed over time, though. For the first year or so of Postmates' existence, refunds were easy and near-automatic. It was trivial to get in touch with a support person, and their response to pretty much any complaint was either a refund or a (usually generous) credit. But after Postmates grew beyond a certain point, they got more stingy with refunds, and credit they offered -- if any! -- would be much lower. I remember the same thing happening with Uber when it was new. Rating a driver under 4 stars would win you an unsolicited email from support, asking what went wrong, with a credit or refund for the ride. That pretty much never happens anymore. Agree with you on restaurants, though. Restaurants that do their own first-party delivery are almost always better at customer experience and fixing things when something goes wrong. And it makes sense, too: DoorDash and the driver don't care if you end up with a negative impression of a restaurant because the food arrived cold. The consequences for DD are much less than the consequences for the restaurant. And even if you do call the restaurant, there's usually not much they can do, because they're not able to get DD to redo the delivery for free, and have no leverage over DD to give refunds.
- petrikapu 4y ago
  Premium is that you get to do other things while waiting for delivery
- krisroadruck 4y ago
  You also pay way less. DoorDash and all the others don't just charge the fees and the tips and what not, they also inflate the food cost by a pretty hefty amount. A simple example: McDonalds has a 2 for $2 deal on sausage mcmuffins & hashbrowns - been around forever. Let's say you and the wife want a McMuffin & a hashbrown each - you're in for $4 dollars and a bit of change for tax. Here is the same meal via DoorDash: McMuffins: $2.87ea Hash browns: $1.91ea Subtotal: $9.56 (just below the 10 dollar minimum to wave the fee if you have DD+) Delivery fee: $1.99 Service fee: $3.00 Tax: $0.91 Dasher Tip: $5 (good luck getting your order on time if you tip less than this) Grand Total: $20.46 for $4 of food. You can "optimize" by ordering an additional hash brown to get over the $10 hump so you can wave the delivery fee and reduce the service fee - which will instead cost you a total of $17.91 for $5 worth of food. Either way it's a shit deal. Not included here are the costs associated with 1 in every 4-5 orders being incorrect, or delivered to the wrong house and the hassle that adds to your life. Obviously I went with low cost items to illustrate a point but often any food prices you see on DD are a good 50% markup vs going in person regardless of the restaurant before you even get into fees and tips.
  - shyn3 4y ago
    UberEats in Canada inflates the regular menu price as well.
  - scarface_74 4y ago
    But guess how much money I can save by not having a car?
    - krisroadruck 4y ago
      None. If you live in a city that has enough stuff nearby or public transit sufficient to be considered "walkable" your housing costs are 2-3x higher than they would be otherwise and your taxes are probably higher as well. Far more than the cost of a car.
      - scarface_74 4y ago
        You keep forgetting other scenarios - someone who works remotely and can just take Uber when he needs to go somewhere during the weekend. In fact, my son started working at a pizza place before he had his driver's license. It was cheaper to pay Uber $350 a month than his current car note + car insurance. Just to give you a hint about "affordability", we paid $335K in 2016 to have our house built - 3100 square feet - in the "good school system" in the burbs of a major metropolitan area.
- scarface_74 4y ago
  I found: 1. When I am on business trips and getting reimbursed, I don't care. It's "other people's money" 2. The food delivery services have made it possible for us to have one car off an on since 2020 and not have to pay for two cars. In fact, we just sold our newer car back to the dealer and are sharing one car now saving us $900+ a month in car insurance, car payments, gas, maintenance, etc. We don't plan to have a car for the next three years as we embark on our "digital nomad" existence. If I can get away without ever having a car again, I will. It just doesn't make sense for me as someone who works remotely and has grown kids and really only needs to get out on the weekend to deal with paying for a car just to sit in the garage most of the time.
  - happyopossum 4y ago
    > $900+ a month in car insurance, car payments, gas, maintenance, etc. There's a huge gap between 'no car' and $900/mo in car expenses. Buy a used car, not too old, and do basic maintenance (oil/filter, brakes, etc) yourself where you can. It's trivial to own and operate a car for well under $200-$300/mo - millions of people do it.
    - scarface_74 4y ago
      Millions of people fix their own brakes? The average price people paid for a car is $27K https://www.statista.com/statistics/274928/used-vehicle-average-selling-price-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/274928/used-vehicle-aver... The average price of a new car is $47k. https://www.kbb.com/car-news/average-new-car-price-tops-47000/ https://www.kbb.com/car-news/average-new-car-price-tops-4700... The average cost of maintaining a car is between $7K - $10K https://www.thebalance.com/average-car-maintenance-cost-4775765 https://www.thebalance.com/average-car-maintenance-cost-4775... Even the IRS says the average cost of a car is now $0.63 a mile.
    - toast0 4y ago
      > do basic maintenance (oil/filter, brakes, etc) yourself Basic maintenance doesn't get you much of the way to $900/month anyway. An oil change is like $50-$100 depending on things, and most OEM service schedules have those once a year (unless you put on a lot of miles... but if you put on a lot of miles, it's unlikely that you can realistically forgo a car). Brakes cost more, but depending on how you drive, shouldn't be too frequent; and you really should be competent at brakes before maintaining them or you're likely to cause safety issues. An incompetent oil change my ruin your engine and as a result your pocketbook, but an incompetent brake servicing can result in no ability to stop which has much bigger life safety implications.
- tomjakubowski 4y ago
  I avoid them too. Delivery apps: - Give hilariously bad estimates for delivery time. Dan Luu tracked this. https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1469755162004582400?s=20&t=ZRs5ZzDtZVdK5zXlLTt3mA https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1469755162004582400?s=20&t... - Cause huge pileups for restaurant workers, who in pre-delivery app times were shielded by the presence of "a line", which puts a natural limit on order throughput (people drop out of line or don't enter when it's too long) - Generally aren't good at giving prompt notifications, which sucks for both the driver and the order maker I'm starting to believe two sided marketplaces tend to be worse for everyone except for the intermediary
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    People who do not understand the role of balking and price information act at their own peril. This economic backpressure is something that executives hate - it keeps line from going up - but people who actually do the work love, because it keeps workloads manageable. If you ever wanted a feature-length explanation of queueing theory and how ignoring it makes everything worse, well... here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yjZpBq1XBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yjZpBq1XBE . The context is Disney parks and Fastpass, but the lessons are applicable to basically any business. Everything is a queue.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    > Give hilariously bad estimates for delivery time. Huh, I wonder how universal this is. I agree with this take for Lyft and Uber (for rides), but for Uber Eats, at least, it's been incredibly rare for it to take longer than the estimate, and in the majority of cases the food arrives 5-10 minutes faster than the estimate suggests.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      If the majority of time the delivery happens 5-10 minutes faster than the estimate, then either the delivery was scheduled to take a huge amount of time (50 minutes) and we are looking at a small error, or indeed, the estimates are hilariously bad.
    - deleted 4y ago
- mywittyname 4y ago
  DD drivers definitely take their frustration out on both restaurants and DD customers. I've seen a lot of drama from DD drivers at restaurants, one thing that sticks in my mine was during a midnight run to White Castle. The place was packed and the workers kept asking about this huge bag of food for DD. The bag was easily 2 foot tall and completely packed full of food. The entire time I'm waiting on my food, people keep asking "any word on this door dash?" Then some lady comes in screaming, "f- y'all, I've been waiting 20 f- minutes for a f- order and y'all slow mfers won't do shit!" The manager tells her the order is here and has been ready for 15 minutes. She goes up to the counter, takes the food, then throws the drink at the manager, screaming "f- you", throws the bag of food back at them yelling, "f- door dash" and "f- this $4 tip!" So, not only did the person not get their food (and probably didn't find out for a long time afterwards), the restaurant had to cover the costs of all of it, and the delivery driver was out like her time and gas.
  - fundad 4y ago
    She was out her mind if she was waiting but not checking inside and then abused people and didn't realize most people are bad tippers.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    I sure hope the restaurant didn't have to cover the cost. If they did, they need to sign a less abusive deal with DD.
- harles 4y ago
  Interestingly, I found tipping less will get you way better service and quicker food. I did some experiments after I found food always comes quicker when my wife orders - turns out she doesn’t overtip like I do. I tried a bunch more times and found this to be true, at least with Uber Eats. What I’m guessing happens is that if you tip high, less scrupulous but tech savvy drivers will snag the delivery. These folks have multiple accounts and work for multiple services at once, so your order is way down on their list. It frequently comes with location spoofing, where the driver is supposedly waiting at the restaurant for nearly an hour, and once they’re actually on their way, they’ll teleport miles away (having unlocked their location). When I tip less, I don’t see this behavior. It’s probably folks not gaming the system that will take whatever delivery pops up.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    It's bonkers to me that the drivers can see the tip before they accept the delivery. Hell, weird that they can see it before the delivery is completed, even. Tips are supposed to be for good service! I know they've been perverted into more than that by a combination of unscrupulous business owners and the US's broken tax code, but... c'mon. These services shouldn't even ask for a tip until the delivery is complete, let alone show the amount to the driver before they accept the job. (I'm fine with them asking for the tip as a part of the initial checkout, though, since I imagine many people won't remember to revisit the app post-delivery within the tipping window, even if they did want to leave a tip, and that alone would unfairly take money out of drivers' pockets. But the tip should be adjustable for some amount of time after the delivery completes, and the driver shouldn't see it until that time expires. Amazon's grocery delivery has this right.) If drivers can see the tip before accepting the job, then it's not a tip: it's a competitive bid that the customer makes for delivery drivers... though if your theory is correct, it's already gamed into uselessness.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Sounds like the best deal would be to “tip” normal like OPs wife does, and then add cash on hand at the door. But even better would get to know the local dasher and contract directly. Heh.
pyrolistical 4y ago
Seems like all restaurants should charge an extra fee to delivery services they didn’t sign up for. If the policy for the driver is just to pay whatever then there is no crime here. Restaurants use this extra fee to compensate for the bad reviews. If the policy changes for the driver then a customer is screwed over with a canceled order, guess who gets the blame? The delivery service!
- shagie 4y ago
  Name mismatch fee. For carry out orders, there is an additional $5 surcharge added. This is in place to cover issues arising from stolen orders and poor 3rd party delivery experiences. Display your ID matching the name on the order to receive a refund of the fee.
  - na85 4y ago
    So I gotta pay extra if my wife orders Thai but I'm the one that picks it up?
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      Only if your wife can't remember your name when she makes the order.
      - prawn 4y ago
        The suggestion was made because the delivery service hasn't allocated a driver at the point of the order. It's plausible that someone ordering directly would be in the same position - either you or your partner might eventually go pick it up, or one of a group of friends, etc.
      - na85 4y ago
        Yeah plans never change, right?
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    Showing ID to get food sounds a bit dystopian.
karaterobot 4y ago
I liked this article, and I like the cleverness of the scheme. But I wish it had offered more of an explanation about the economics of delivery. He said his friend was just figuring it out: two years later, can he offer a reason for why Doordash can be losing so much money, other than a network of pizza arbitrageurs? One thing that bothered me a little was the "fuck Doordash" mentality as an excuse for something which may not legally be stealing, but is ethically equivalent to it. I think "fuck X, they deserve it" is an excuse a lot of people use, but obviously it's still wrong even if you don't like your victim, or if you can get away with it.
- scarface_74 4y ago
  DoorDash is ruining the reputation of a legitimate business. The correct approach is "fuck DoorDash". Delivery economics makes sense when the restaurant is doing it because the delivery drivers are also employees helping to make the order. They are getting paid for each hour they work and the stores have a set delivery area and a base.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  I agree that in general, people use "fuck X, they deserve it" way too much and way inappropriately. I think, though, that when a company's whole business is dishonest and based on screwing all their stakeholders (restaurant, driver, customer) and loses money despite all that, then one may look at it differently. Your parish priest or rabbi might not, but I might.
- mcculley 4y ago
  It is the duty of every capitalist to exploit market inefficiencies once they are discovered. How else would the VC funds learn?
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    "Here at meta-dasher, we don't actually exploit market inefficiencies -- we offer an app that connects individuals to local arbitrage opportunities, and allows them to correct the market."
- 4y ago
ejb999 4y ago
this is pure genius.
dang 4y ago
Related: Ex-Grubhub exec calls delivery apps “payday lenders for restaurants and drivers” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23278157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23278157 - May 2020 (8 comments) Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852 - May 2020 (514 comments)
rascul 4y ago
I'm about six miles from the restaurants and neither DoorDash nor any other delivery service or in house delivery will deliver to me, except Walmart. I wouldn't mind getting 1/3 off my pizza price as it would cover the delivery fee.
- Victerius 4y ago
  > neither DoorDash nor any other delivery service or in house delivery will deliver to me Why?
  - milkytron 4y ago
    Maybe outside the delivery radius, or not enough drivers to have one cover that distance when they could perform two deliveries closer in the same time. Not certain, but maybe that's why.
- MerelyMortal 4y ago
  If your address is blacklisted because of a previous owner, I wonder if you could try reaching out to customer service, or appending something like a fake apartment number.
  - atlasunshrugged 4y ago
    I think it's probably because of the distance right? At least to me 6 miles is pretty far out for a delivery
    - site-packages1 4y ago
      In Seattle, yes. In Houston, no.
  - rascul 4y ago
    You may be on to something. I might try appending a fake apartment number in the future.
simonebrunozzi 4y ago
> Was this a bit shady? Maybe, but fuck Doordash. Note: I did confirm with my friend that he was okay with me writing this, and we both agreed, fuck Doordash. Loved it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
gnicholas 4y ago
I was recently offered an affiliate link for a company that charges $20/mo for its service. They offered me $25 per sign up, and the end-user gets 50% off using my affiliate link. I am not an unethical person, but the thought of arbitrage did cross my mind...
- dfee 4y ago
  I’m not clear where ethics fits in here. Was that expressly limited? They’re offering you an affiliate link to drive conversions - they’ve externalized sales to you - what (more) permission do you need from them?
  - seoaeu 4y ago
    They’re paying you to get real people to sign up with the intention of using the service. If you sign up a bunch of sock puppet accounts, or pay a bunch of people to sign up for a month and then cancel, then you aren’t holding up your part of the (perhaps unwritten) deal
    - dfee 4y ago
      That would indeed be unethical. But not passing along a referral code and subdividing profits from there.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  This seems pretty different -- you have a relationship with that company. Probably there's like a contract, right? They must have included something in the fine print about not taking advantage of the service yourself (unless they are, like, real dumb). Restaurants have no obligations to random people on the internet who decide to re-sell their food without permission.
- kelnos 4y ago
  Not the same, but this reminds me of years and years ago when Google was giving away free AdWords credit. I think I got $75, and spent it on ads using my affiliate link for another service that offered credit for affiliate signups. I very easily maxed out my credit allowance for that. Not long after, the company got wind of what was going on and added something to their affiliate terms to disallow that. It's funny, because there was no deception involved: the ad text I used was something like "Sign up for [service] and get $[discount] off", which was true, as the affiliate link offered a discount for the person signing up (in addition to the credit I would get as the affiliate). The company in the end just didn't like that I spent $75 of someone else's money to acquire customers for them.
gnicholas 4y ago
I created a DD account but never placed an order. Quite some time later, they emailed to try to convince me to place my first order — with a $35-off coupon (min $30 order). I ordered $41 of food and was stuck with a $22 bill (including a $5 tip I added). Delivery was "free" for this order. This taught me a valuable lesson: if DD sends you a coupon for less than $20, it is worth zero. If it's between $20 and $35, it is worth about 10 bucks (especially when you consider how they inflate prices for dishes).
- rvnx 4y ago
  I don't understand, isn't 41-35=6 USD ?
  - newfonewhodis 4y ago
    I'm guessing the coupon only applied to the value of the order items and not to taxes + fees (lol) + tips.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    There were a bunch of fees that were added on top. I added a $5 tip, but was expecting the total would be around $12.
- lkbm 4y ago
  If I'm understanding correctly, it's worth zero iff you attribute $0 of value to the delivery. DD's value prop is that they deliver. If you don't want that, then yes it's probably not for you.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    With Doordash and co the fees over the normal cost of food are so high that even vs traditional delivery fees you're overpaying. - Off the top of my head, yesterday I passed a billboard for McDonalds advertising two large sandwiches for $6. Lets open Uber Eats and try ordering two Big Macs... $13.68 So they don't carry the deals. Not looking good already. Went to checkout... $1.49 delivery fee for a place 6 minutes away. Fair enough. $3.27 service fee. The explanation text is implying the cost of servicing my order (orchestration essentially) is more than double the cost of delivery. $2.00 CA Driver Benefits fee. Delivery drivers were always employees of independent stores, but Uber took such offense to being forced to provide healthcare that they itemize the cost. Grand total comes out to $20 before tax. For a $6 meal in store. - And in case you were thinking "Well Uber isn't DoorDash" this whole time... DoorDash comes out to $22 before tax. Has a "traditional" delivery place ever charged you a 60% delivery fee? It's so absurd I even tried increasing the order size... the ratio of price of fees to price of food actually went up! And all this is before tips!
notpushkin 4y ago
What's the fuss with SoftBank?
system2 4y ago
Did I just read someone scamming a corporate in fine detail?
- kelnos 4y ago
  I remember reading this around when it was first posted, and I cringed at that too. I saw no problem with their first test: providing 10 perfectly-good pizzas and pocketing the $10 arbitrage; I think DoorDash would be hard-pressed to argue about that. But just putting dough in the boxes for the later purchases felt like something that DD could sue for, and possibly win. I think it's hilarious, and DD got what they deserved in this case, but it seemed legally risky to write about something like that.
  - batiudrami 4y ago
    If the restaurant had signed up for this service then I would feel ethically weird about it; but actually Doordash is trading on the restaurant’s brand without permission so I think it’s ethically fine. My biggest concern is waste of food!
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Startups and "corporates" never feel bad about breaking the law (only pretending to do so when it's good for PR), why should this guy? Not to mention, I'm not even sure any law was actually broken here. I too wish we lived in a society where illegal and unethical behavior was called out and shunned regardless of who's doing it, but let's drop the double-standards since we're not living in such a society and things don't look like they're even heading in that direction.
evan_ 4y ago
If DoorDash literally just gives their runners a credit card and pays whatever the restaurant charges, can restaurants just charge them like $1000 for a pizza? There must be a limit but I wonder what it is...
Overtonwindow 4y ago
With regard to the Chinese restaurants, some of those are family operations, and so their delivery charges are much less because the person is not really earning a salary. Perhaps they only work for tips.
rgj 4y ago
You should have set up two pizza restaurants and just sell the same set of pizzas back and forth between them. That would have removed the cost of making the pizzas from the equation entirely.
- vzqx 4y ago
  No need to use two restaurants. Just order 1000 pizzas to your own address. When the delivery person shows up, hand one pizza back and forth between you 1000 times (or until the delivery person gets bored and leaves). Question - at what point does "abuse of promotional pricing" get classified as fraud?
kuharich 4y ago
Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23278157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23278157
dwighttk 4y ago
I saw a few ads towards the beginning of the pandemic for Dominoes doing delivery from local non-Dominoes restaurants... what happened with that? Did it not work out or are they still doing it?
0xbadcafebee 4y ago
Capitalism, n. A machine for CEOs to transform money from VCs into money for luxury yacht builders. Maybe we should just cut out the middle man and stop creating businesses. Have a CEO pitch an idea, the VC can hand them a check, they can buy a yacht, and the VC can keep the rest of the money that would have been wasted on jobs that created no value, avoiding the "externalities" of destroying small pizza shops. Or better yet, give that non-yacht money straight to the government to pay for health care, housing, job training, infrastructure, the homeless, veterans, education, social security, regulatory enforcement, thus creating an environment where American citizens can create more real businesses, more people are eligible for good jobs, and the overall quality of life skyrockets. While I'm dreaming I'd also like a unicorn and a garden robot that zaps snails.
- treme 4y ago
  or a machine that lifted humans out of zero sum game of war & conquer which brought about the biggest increase in quality of life to biggest proportion of people in the world since dawn of time.
  - sli 4y ago
    It is frankly just delusional to act like there aren't solvable problems with the capitalist mode of production and the problems it's caused in, esp., the past two decades. Current wars enrich already massive corporations at the expense of what they see as disposable lives on all sides of those wars. It's very easy to claim people have been lifted out of poverty when we define the poverty line as an absurdly low number. Just looking at the US, the poverty line is $13,590/yr for a single person, and $4,720 for each additional person. You cannot afford to live anywhere on that income. The global poverty line is $1.90/day, not even $700/yr. That is still poverty no matter how much we pretend it's not, as you cannot just define poverty away, ignore the actual material conditions that these income levels experience, and call it success. That's simply lying on paper and has predictably produced this very persistent and dubious claim.
    - treme 4y ago
afterburner 4y ago
Top comment on that post is great, I'll just quote it in its entirety: Collin May 19, 2020 Liked by Can Duruk I was the former Head of Innovation at Grubhub, so I have seen the truth behind many of these claims first hand. Sadly, I invented a lot of the food delivery technologies that are now being used for evil. There were so many great points made here, and I’m glad people are finally paying attention to this. I will try to only add to a few. COVID-19 is exposing the fact that delivery platforms are not actually in the business of delivery. They are in the business of finance. In many ways, they are like payday lenders for restaurants and drivers. They give you the sensation of cash-flow, but at the expense of your long term future and financial stability. Once you “take out this loan” you will never pay it back and it will ultimately kill your business. In the case of restaurants, these platforms slowly siphon off your customers and then charge you to have access to them. They are simultaneously selling these same customers to your competitor across the street, but, don’t worry, they are also selling their customers to you. For drivers, they are banking on a workforce that is willing to mortgage their assets, like cars and time, well below market value, in exchange for money now. They know that most delivery drivers are simply not doing the math on the actual cost of providing delivery (time, gas, car maintenance, payroll taxes...etc). If they did, drivers would realize that they are actually the ones subsidizing the cost of delivery. Delivery platforms are “hyper-growth” businesses that are trying to grow into a no-growth industry. Food consumption really only grows at the rate of population growth, so if you want to grow faster than that, you have to take market share from someone else. Ideally, you take it from someone weaker, who has less information. In this industry, the delivery platforms have found unsuspecting victims in restaurants and drivers. The competition for customers has not gone away. It has simply moved online. Many restaurants have been too slow, or unwilling to adapt. Delivery platforms and other restaurants are taking advantage of this to gobble up market share. Restaurants need to realize that they are now running e-commerce businesses and they need to act accordingly. Being proficient on Google, Yelp, Facebook and the dozens of other platforms is no longer optional, it is essential. My team is trying to do everything we can to help restaurants transition, but restaurants have to be willing to change. You can learn more about what we are doing to fight back at zero.eatgeek.com. Stay hungry.
- civilized 4y ago

191 points by jer0me 4y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852

I started boycotting food delivery services because the quality & service was just god awful. I found that if I drive, I actually don't spend that much time, and I get wayyyy better service.

mr_cyborg 4y ago
What I've found is that normally, the consumer - restaurant contract is between two parties. I pay food, I get to eat. If there's a problem, I tell the restaurant, and they fix it. There's ample opportunity to find an amicable resolution to any issues that arise. When you add DoorDash or any other third party delivery service into the equation, you add two more parties to this - the service itself, and the driver, who is usually an independent contractor. What this has led to in my experience is that when something goes wrong, instead of me working it out with the restaurant, I am left frustrated, hungry, and hung out to dry by three parties - the restaurant, the platform, and the contractor. If you read enough of the DoorDash subreddit[1], you realize that a tip is not a gratuity for good service, it's a bid for an independent contractor to take up your delivery. However, you have no ability to choose which Dasher takes it, and they are under no obligation to represent you as your agent or look out for your interests. So if they show up and the food is cold, not their problem, they get the tip because they accepted the bid. When DoorDash had a major outage some time back, I had placed an order for about $70, generous tip (because I realize it's really a bid) and fees included. My order was prepared and ready for pick up just as the whole platform went down. It was impossible to cancel my order, because DoorDash was down, so I made alternate arrangements for dinner and figure I'll reach out for a refund when things are back up. About three hours later, I get a notification that my order is out for delivery. The optimist in me hoped that the restaurant saw that some food sat out in the "danger zone" for several hours and remade it, or that the Dasher realized that the containers weren't the slightest bit warm, or something like that, but nope. I got dropped off a lot of food that was beyond safe to eat, not even worth saving to have as leftovers for a later meal, and now I have to dispose of all of it. When I finally got through to support later that night, I asked for a refund, and they said they could only give me a credit for the meal, not the tip. I said I want the whole order refunded to my original payment, they said well, here's a credit and it will convert over to that later. One week and several phone calls later, they stopped telling me it was "too late to get a refund" and I got my refund and uninstalled the app. I don't need that negative energy in my life. 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/doordash/ https://www.reddit.com/r/doordash/
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > What this has led to in my experience is that when something goes wrong, instead of me working it out with the restaurant, I am left frustrated, hungry, and hung out to dry by three parties - the restaurant, the platform, and the contractor. My experience with delivery services (mostly, but not exclusively, Postmates) is that they are usually very good at giving refunds (your experience clearly sucked, though!), which is nice (but I’m guessing not for the drivers, who may or may not be at fault), but that restaurants with their own delivery services have been more willing to send out the missing food on an expedited basis, which is often a better resolution (if I didn’t want the food more than the money, I wouldn’t have ordered in the first place.) I’ve also noticed that wrong or missing food items are more common with third-party delivery services.
  - scarface_74 4y ago
    I've gotten plenty of certificates from restaurants who gave me "a bad delivery experience", without my asking. I didn't even consider the experience "bad". It was something like the driver had a flat tire, called me and said he was going to be late and then said he would have the food remade. I said don't worry about it, bring the food cold (pizza) and I would just heat it up. I didn't even think about it anymore. But I still got a free coupon.
  - rhino369 4y ago
    Doordash's refund algorithm is usually pretty fair, but sometimes it isn't. I order a lot, and once in a blue moon the order will be significantly messed up (missing entrees, for example) and they give a low ball offer.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    > My experience with delivery services (mostly, but not exclusively, Postmates) is that they are usually very good at giving refunds This has changed over time, though. For the first year or so of Postmates' existence, refunds were easy and near-automatic. It was trivial to get in touch with a support person, and their response to pretty much any complaint was either a refund or a (usually generous) credit. But after Postmates grew beyond a certain point, they got more stingy with refunds, and credit they offered -- if any! -- would be much lower. I remember the same thing happening with Uber when it was new. Rating a driver under 4 stars would win you an unsolicited email from support, asking what went wrong, with a credit or refund for the ride. That pretty much never happens anymore. Agree with you on restaurants, though. Restaurants that do their own first-party delivery are almost always better at customer experience and fixing things when something goes wrong. And it makes sense, too: DoorDash and the driver don't care if you end up with a negative impression of a restaurant because the food arrived cold. The consequences for DD are much less than the consequences for the restaurant. And even if you do call the restaurant, there's usually not much they can do, because they're not able to get DD to redo the delivery for free, and have no leverage over DD to give refunds.
petrikapu 4y ago
Premium is that you get to do other things while waiting for delivery
krisroadruck 4y ago
You also pay way less. DoorDash and all the others don't just charge the fees and the tips and what not, they also inflate the food cost by a pretty hefty amount. A simple example: McDonalds has a 2 for $2 deal on sausage mcmuffins & hashbrowns - been around forever. Let's say you and the wife want a McMuffin & a hashbrown each - you're in for $4 dollars and a bit of change for tax. Here is the same meal via DoorDash: McMuffins: $2.87ea Hash browns: $1.91ea Subtotal: $9.56 (just below the 10 dollar minimum to wave the fee if you have DD+) Delivery fee: $1.99 Service fee: $3.00 Tax: $0.91 Dasher Tip: $5 (good luck getting your order on time if you tip less than this) Grand Total: $20.46 for $4 of food. You can "optimize" by ordering an additional hash brown to get over the $10 hump so you can wave the delivery fee and reduce the service fee - which will instead cost you a total of $17.91 for $5 worth of food. Either way it's a shit deal. Not included here are the costs associated with 1 in every 4-5 orders being incorrect, or delivered to the wrong house and the hassle that adds to your life. Obviously I went with low cost items to illustrate a point but often any food prices you see on DD are a good 50% markup vs going in person regardless of the restaurant before you even get into fees and tips.
- shyn3 4y ago
  UberEats in Canada inflates the regular menu price as well.
- scarface_74 4y ago
  But guess how much money I can save by not having a car?
  - krisroadruck 4y ago
    None. If you live in a city that has enough stuff nearby or public transit sufficient to be considered "walkable" your housing costs are 2-3x higher than they would be otherwise and your taxes are probably higher as well. Far more than the cost of a car.
    - scarface_74 4y ago
      You keep forgetting other scenarios - someone who works remotely and can just take Uber when he needs to go somewhere during the weekend. In fact, my son started working at a pizza place before he had his driver's license. It was cheaper to pay Uber $350 a month than his current car note + car insurance. Just to give you a hint about "affordability", we paid $335K in 2016 to have our house built - 3100 square feet - in the "good school system" in the burbs of a major metropolitan area.
scarface_74 4y ago
I found: 1. When I am on business trips and getting reimbursed, I don't care. It's "other people's money" 2. The food delivery services have made it possible for us to have one car off an on since 2020 and not have to pay for two cars. In fact, we just sold our newer car back to the dealer and are sharing one car now saving us $900+ a month in car insurance, car payments, gas, maintenance, etc. We don't plan to have a car for the next three years as we embark on our "digital nomad" existence. If I can get away without ever having a car again, I will. It just doesn't make sense for me as someone who works remotely and has grown kids and really only needs to get out on the weekend to deal with paying for a car just to sit in the garage most of the time.
- happyopossum 4y ago
  > $900+ a month in car insurance, car payments, gas, maintenance, etc. There's a huge gap between 'no car' and $900/mo in car expenses. Buy a used car, not too old, and do basic maintenance (oil/filter, brakes, etc) yourself where you can. It's trivial to own and operate a car for well under $200-$300/mo - millions of people do it.
  - scarface_74 4y ago
    Millions of people fix their own brakes? The average price people paid for a car is $27K https://www.statista.com/statistics/274928/used-vehicle-average-selling-price-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/274928/used-vehicle-aver... The average price of a new car is $47k. https://www.kbb.com/car-news/average-new-car-price-tops-47000/ https://www.kbb.com/car-news/average-new-car-price-tops-4700... The average cost of maintaining a car is between $7K - $10K https://www.thebalance.com/average-car-maintenance-cost-4775765 https://www.thebalance.com/average-car-maintenance-cost-4775... Even the IRS says the average cost of a car is now $0.63 a mile.
  - toast0 4y ago
    > do basic maintenance (oil/filter, brakes, etc) yourself Basic maintenance doesn't get you much of the way to $900/month anyway. An oil change is like $50-$100 depending on things, and most OEM service schedules have those once a year (unless you put on a lot of miles... but if you put on a lot of miles, it's unlikely that you can realistically forgo a car). Brakes cost more, but depending on how you drive, shouldn't be too frequent; and you really should be competent at brakes before maintaining them or you're likely to cause safety issues. An incompetent oil change my ruin your engine and as a result your pocketbook, but an incompetent brake servicing can result in no ability to stop which has much bigger life safety implications.
tomjakubowski 4y ago
I avoid them too. Delivery apps: - Give hilariously bad estimates for delivery time. Dan Luu tracked this. https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1469755162004582400?s=20&t=ZRs5ZzDtZVdK5zXlLTt3mA https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1469755162004582400?s=20&t... - Cause huge pileups for restaurant workers, who in pre-delivery app times were shielded by the presence of "a line", which puts a natural limit on order throughput (people drop out of line or don't enter when it's too long) - Generally aren't good at giving prompt notifications, which sucks for both the driver and the order maker I'm starting to believe two sided marketplaces tend to be worse for everyone except for the intermediary
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  People who do not understand the role of balking and price information act at their own peril. This economic backpressure is something that executives hate - it keeps line from going up - but people who actually do the work love, because it keeps workloads manageable. If you ever wanted a feature-length explanation of queueing theory and how ignoring it makes everything worse, well... here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yjZpBq1XBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yjZpBq1XBE . The context is Disney parks and Fastpass, but the lessons are applicable to basically any business. Everything is a queue.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > Give hilariously bad estimates for delivery time. Huh, I wonder how universal this is. I agree with this take for Lyft and Uber (for rides), but for Uber Eats, at least, it's been incredibly rare for it to take longer than the estimate, and in the majority of cases the food arrives 5-10 minutes faster than the estimate suggests.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    If the majority of time the delivery happens 5-10 minutes faster than the estimate, then either the delivery was scheduled to take a huge amount of time (50 minutes) and we are looking at a small error, or indeed, the estimates are hilariously bad.
  - deleted 4y ago
mywittyname 4y ago
DD drivers definitely take their frustration out on both restaurants and DD customers. I've seen a lot of drama from DD drivers at restaurants, one thing that sticks in my mine was during a midnight run to White Castle. The place was packed and the workers kept asking about this huge bag of food for DD. The bag was easily 2 foot tall and completely packed full of food. The entire time I'm waiting on my food, people keep asking "any word on this door dash?" Then some lady comes in screaming, "f- y'all, I've been waiting 20 f- minutes for a f- order and y'all slow mfers won't do shit!" The manager tells her the order is here and has been ready for 15 minutes. She goes up to the counter, takes the food, then throws the drink at the manager, screaming "f- you", throws the bag of food back at them yelling, "f- door dash" and "f- this $4 tip!" So, not only did the person not get their food (and probably didn't find out for a long time afterwards), the restaurant had to cover the costs of all of it, and the delivery driver was out like her time and gas.
- fundad 4y ago
  She was out her mind if she was waiting but not checking inside and then abused people and didn't realize most people are bad tippers.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  I sure hope the restaurant didn't have to cover the cost. If they did, they need to sign a less abusive deal with DD.
harles 4y ago
Interestingly, I found tipping less will get you way better service and quicker food. I did some experiments after I found food always comes quicker when my wife orders - turns out she doesn’t overtip like I do. I tried a bunch more times and found this to be true, at least with Uber Eats. What I’m guessing happens is that if you tip high, less scrupulous but tech savvy drivers will snag the delivery. These folks have multiple accounts and work for multiple services at once, so your order is way down on their list. It frequently comes with location spoofing, where the driver is supposedly waiting at the restaurant for nearly an hour, and once they’re actually on their way, they’ll teleport miles away (having unlocked their location). When I tip less, I don’t see this behavior. It’s probably folks not gaming the system that will take whatever delivery pops up.
- kelnos 4y ago
  It's bonkers to me that the drivers can see the tip before they accept the delivery. Hell, weird that they can see it before the delivery is completed, even. Tips are supposed to be for good service! I know they've been perverted into more than that by a combination of unscrupulous business owners and the US's broken tax code, but... c'mon. These services shouldn't even ask for a tip until the delivery is complete, let alone show the amount to the driver before they accept the job. (I'm fine with them asking for the tip as a part of the initial checkout, though, since I imagine many people won't remember to revisit the app post-delivery within the tipping window, even if they did want to leave a tip, and that alone would unfairly take money out of drivers' pockets. But the tip should be adjustable for some amount of time after the delivery completes, and the driver shouldn't see it until that time expires. Amazon's grocery delivery has this right.) If drivers can see the tip before accepting the job, then it's not a tip: it's a competitive bid that the customer makes for delivery drivers... though if your theory is correct, it's already gamed into uselessness.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Sounds like the best deal would be to “tip” normal like OPs wife does, and then add cash on hand at the door. But even better would get to know the local dasher and contract directly. Heh.

pyrolistical 4y ago

Seems like all restaurants should charge an extra fee to delivery services they didn’t sign up for. If the policy for the driver is just to pay whatever then there is no crime here. Restaurants use this extra fee to compensate for the bad reviews. If the policy changes for the driver then a customer is screwed over with a canceled order, guess who gets the blame? The delivery service!

shagie 4y ago
Name mismatch fee. For carry out orders, there is an additional $5 surcharge added. This is in place to cover issues arising from stolen orders and poor 3rd party delivery experiences. Display your ID matching the name on the order to receive a refund of the fee.
- na85 4y ago
  So I gotta pay extra if my wife orders Thai but I'm the one that picks it up?
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Only if your wife can't remember your name when she makes the order.
    - prawn 4y ago
      The suggestion was made because the delivery service hasn't allocated a driver at the point of the order. It's plausible that someone ordering directly would be in the same position - either you or your partner might eventually go pick it up, or one of a group of friends, etc.
    - na85 4y ago
      Yeah plans never change, right?
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  Showing ID to get food sounds a bit dystopian.

karaterobot 4y ago

I liked this article, and I like the cleverness of the scheme. But I wish it had offered more of an explanation about the economics of delivery. He said his friend was just figuring it out: two years later, can he offer a reason for why Doordash can be losing so much money, other than a network of pizza arbitrageurs? One thing that bothered me a little was the "fuck Doordash" mentality as an excuse for something which may not legally be stealing, but is ethically equivalent to it. I think "fuck X, they deserve it" is an excuse a lot of people use, but obviously it's still wrong even if you don't like your victim, or if you can get away with it.

scarface_74 4y ago
DoorDash is ruining the reputation of a legitimate business. The correct approach is "fuck DoorDash". Delivery economics makes sense when the restaurant is doing it because the delivery drivers are also employees helping to make the order. They are getting paid for each hour they work and the stores have a set delivery area and a base.
AlbertCory 4y ago
I agree that in general, people use "fuck X, they deserve it" way too much and way inappropriately. I think, though, that when a company's whole business is dishonest and based on screwing all their stakeholders (restaurant, driver, customer) and loses money despite all that, then one may look at it differently. Your parish priest or rabbi might not, but I might.
mcculley 4y ago
It is the duty of every capitalist to exploit market inefficiencies once they are discovered. How else would the VC funds learn?
- bee_rider 4y ago
  "Here at meta-dasher, we don't actually exploit market inefficiencies -- we offer an app that connects individuals to local arbitrage opportunities, and allows them to correct the market."
4y ago

ejb999 4y ago

this is pure genius.

dang 4y ago

Related: Ex-Grubhub exec calls delivery apps “payday lenders for restaurants and drivers” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23278157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23278157 - May 2020 (8 comments) Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852 - May 2020 (514 comments)

rascul 4y ago

I'm about six miles from the restaurants and neither DoorDash nor any other delivery service or in house delivery will deliver to me, except Walmart. I wouldn't mind getting 1/3 off my pizza price as it would cover the delivery fee.

Victerius 4y ago
> neither DoorDash nor any other delivery service or in house delivery will deliver to me Why?
- milkytron 4y ago
  Maybe outside the delivery radius, or not enough drivers to have one cover that distance when they could perform two deliveries closer in the same time. Not certain, but maybe that's why.
MerelyMortal 4y ago
If your address is blacklisted because of a previous owner, I wonder if you could try reaching out to customer service, or appending something like a fake apartment number.
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  I think it's probably because of the distance right? At least to me 6 miles is pretty far out for a delivery
  - site-packages1 4y ago
    In Seattle, yes. In Houston, no.
- rascul 4y ago
  You may be on to something. I might try appending a fake apartment number in the future.

simonebrunozzi 4y ago

> Was this a bit shady? Maybe, but fuck Doordash. Note: I did confirm with my friend that he was okay with me writing this, and we both agreed, fuck Doordash. Loved it.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

gnicholas 4y ago

I was recently offered an affiliate link for a company that charges $20/mo for its service. They offered me $25 per sign up, and the end-user gets 50% off using my affiliate link. I am not an unethical person, but the thought of arbitrage did cross my mind...

dfee 4y ago
I’m not clear where ethics fits in here. Was that expressly limited? They’re offering you an affiliate link to drive conversions - they’ve externalized sales to you - what (more) permission do you need from them?
- seoaeu 4y ago
  They’re paying you to get real people to sign up with the intention of using the service. If you sign up a bunch of sock puppet accounts, or pay a bunch of people to sign up for a month and then cancel, then you aren’t holding up your part of the (perhaps unwritten) deal
  - dfee 4y ago
    That would indeed be unethical. But not passing along a referral code and subdividing profits from there.
bee_rider 4y ago
This seems pretty different -- you have a relationship with that company. Probably there's like a contract, right? They must have included something in the fine print about not taking advantage of the service yourself (unless they are, like, real dumb). Restaurants have no obligations to random people on the internet who decide to re-sell their food without permission.
kelnos 4y ago
Not the same, but this reminds me of years and years ago when Google was giving away free AdWords credit. I think I got $75, and spent it on ads using my affiliate link for another service that offered credit for affiliate signups. I very easily maxed out my credit allowance for that. Not long after, the company got wind of what was going on and added something to their affiliate terms to disallow that. It's funny, because there was no deception involved: the ad text I used was something like "Sign up for [service] and get $[discount] off", which was true, as the affiliate link offered a discount for the person signing up (in addition to the credit I would get as the affiliate). The company in the end just didn't like that I spent $75 of someone else's money to acquire customers for them.

gnicholas 4y ago

I created a DD account but never placed an order. Quite some time later, they emailed to try to convince me to place my first order — with a $35-off coupon (min $30 order). I ordered $41 of food and was stuck with a $22 bill (including a $5 tip I added). Delivery was "free" for this order. This taught me a valuable lesson: if DD sends you a coupon for less than $20, it is worth zero. If it's between $20 and $35, it is worth about 10 bucks (especially when you consider how they inflate prices for dishes).

rvnx 4y ago
I don't understand, isn't 41-35=6 USD ?
- newfonewhodis 4y ago
  I'm guessing the coupon only applied to the value of the order items and not to taxes + fees (lol) + tips.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  There were a bunch of fees that were added on top. I added a $5 tip, but was expecting the total would be around $12.
lkbm 4y ago
If I'm understanding correctly, it's worth zero iff you attribute $0 of value to the delivery. DD's value prop is that they deliver. If you don't want that, then yes it's probably not for you.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  With Doordash and co the fees over the normal cost of food are so high that even vs traditional delivery fees you're overpaying. - Off the top of my head, yesterday I passed a billboard for McDonalds advertising two large sandwiches for $6. Lets open Uber Eats and try ordering two Big Macs... $13.68 So they don't carry the deals. Not looking good already. Went to checkout... $1.49 delivery fee for a place 6 minutes away. Fair enough. $3.27 service fee. The explanation text is implying the cost of servicing my order (orchestration essentially) is more than double the cost of delivery. $2.00 CA Driver Benefits fee. Delivery drivers were always employees of independent stores, but Uber took such offense to being forced to provide healthcare that they itemize the cost. Grand total comes out to $20 before tax. For a $6 meal in store. - And in case you were thinking "Well Uber isn't DoorDash" this whole time... DoorDash comes out to $22 before tax. Has a "traditional" delivery place ever charged you a 60% delivery fee? It's so absurd I even tried increasing the order size... the ratio of price of fees to price of food actually went up! And all this is before tips!

notpushkin 4y ago

What's the fuss with SoftBank?

system2 4y ago

Did I just read someone scamming a corporate in fine detail?

kelnos 4y ago
I remember reading this around when it was first posted, and I cringed at that too. I saw no problem with their first test: providing 10 perfectly-good pizzas and pocketing the $10 arbitrage; I think DoorDash would be hard-pressed to argue about that. But just putting dough in the boxes for the later purchases felt like something that DD could sue for, and possibly win. I think it's hilarious, and DD got what they deserved in this case, but it seemed legally risky to write about something like that.
- batiudrami 4y ago
  If the restaurant had signed up for this service then I would feel ethically weird about it; but actually Doordash is trading on the restaurant’s brand without permission so I think it’s ethically fine. My biggest concern is waste of food!
Nextgrid 4y ago
Startups and "corporates" never feel bad about breaking the law (only pretending to do so when it's good for PR), why should this guy? Not to mention, I'm not even sure any law was actually broken here. I too wish we lived in a society where illegal and unethical behavior was called out and shunned regardless of who's doing it, but let's drop the double-standards since we're not living in such a society and things don't look like they're even heading in that direction.

evan_ 4y ago

If DoorDash literally just gives their runners a credit card and pays whatever the restaurant charges, can restaurants just charge them like $1000 for a pizza? There must be a limit but I wonder what it is...

Overtonwindow 4y ago

With regard to the Chinese restaurants, some of those are family operations, and so their delivery charges are much less because the person is not really earning a salary. Perhaps they only work for tips.

rgj 4y ago

You should have set up two pizza restaurants and just sell the same set of pizzas back and forth between them. That would have removed the cost of making the pizzas from the equation entirely.

vzqx 4y ago
No need to use two restaurants. Just order 1000 pizzas to your own address. When the delivery person shows up, hand one pizza back and forth between you 1000 times (or until the delivery person gets bored and leaves). Question - at what point does "abuse of promotional pricing" get classified as fraud?

kuharich 4y ago

Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23278157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23278157

dwighttk 4y ago

I saw a few ads towards the beginning of the pandemic for Dominoes doing delivery from local non-Dominoes restaurants... what happened with that? Did it not work out or are they still doing it?

0xbadcafebee 4y ago

Capitalism, n. A machine for CEOs to transform money from VCs into money for luxury yacht builders. Maybe we should just cut out the middle man and stop creating businesses. Have a CEO pitch an idea, the VC can hand them a check, they can buy a yacht, and the VC can keep the rest of the money that would have been wasted on jobs that created no value, avoiding the "externalities" of destroying small pizza shops. Or better yet, give that non-yacht money straight to the government to pay for health care, housing, job training, infrastructure, the homeless, veterans, education, social security, regulatory enforcement, thus creating an environment where American citizens can create more real businesses, more people are eligible for good jobs, and the overall quality of life skyrockets. While I'm dreaming I'd also like a unicorn and a garden robot that zaps snails.

treme 4y ago
or a machine that lifted humans out of zero sum game of war & conquer which brought about the biggest increase in quality of life to biggest proportion of people in the world since dawn of time.
- sli 4y ago
  It is frankly just delusional to act like there aren't solvable problems with the capitalist mode of production and the problems it's caused in, esp., the past two decades. Current wars enrich already massive corporations at the expense of what they see as disposable lives on all sides of those wars. It's very easy to claim people have been lifted out of poverty when we define the poverty line as an absurdly low number. Just looking at the US, the poverty line is $13,590/yr for a single person, and $4,720 for each additional person. You cannot afford to live anywhere on that income. The global poverty line is $1.90/day, not even $700/yr. That is still poverty no matter how much we pretend it's not, as you cannot just define poverty away, ignore the actual material conditions that these income levels experience, and call it success. That's simply lying on paper and has predictably produced this very persistent and dubious claim.
  - treme 4y ago

afterburner 4y ago

Top comment on that post is great, I'll just quote it in its entirety: Collin May 19, 2020 Liked by Can Duruk I was the former Head of Innovation at Grubhub, so I have seen the truth behind many of these claims first hand. Sadly, I invented a lot of the food delivery technologies that are now being used for evil. There were so many great points made here, and I’m glad people are finally paying attention to this. I will try to only add to a few. COVID-19 is exposing the fact that delivery platforms are not actually in the business of delivery. They are in the business of finance. In many ways, they are like payday lenders for restaurants and drivers. They give you the sensation of cash-flow, but at the expense of your long term future and financial stability. Once you “take out this loan” you will never pay it back and it will ultimately kill your business. In the case of restaurants, these platforms slowly siphon off your customers and then charge you to have access to them. They are simultaneously selling these same customers to your competitor across the street, but, don’t worry, they are also selling their customers to you. For drivers, they are banking on a workforce that is willing to mortgage their assets, like cars and time, well below market value, in exchange for money now. They know that most delivery drivers are simply not doing the math on the actual cost of providing delivery (time, gas, car maintenance, payroll taxes...etc). If they did, drivers would realize that they are actually the ones subsidizing the cost of delivery. Delivery platforms are “hyper-growth” businesses that are trying to grow into a no-growth industry. Food consumption really only grows at the rate of population growth, so if you want to grow faster than that, you have to take market share from someone else. Ideally, you take it from someone weaker, who has less information. In this industry, the delivery platforms have found unsuspecting victims in restaurants and drivers. The competition for customers has not gone away. It has simply moved online. Many restaurants have been too slow, or unwilling to adapt. Delivery platforms and other restaurants are taking advantage of this to gobble up market share. Restaurants need to realize that they are now running e-commerce businesses and they need to act accordingly. Being proficient on Google, Yelp, Facebook and the dozens of other platforms is no longer optional, it is essential. My team is trying to do everything we can to help restaurants transition, but restaurants have to be willing to change. You can learn more about what we are doing to fight back at zero.eatgeek.com. Stay hungry.

civilized 4y ago