4 ms·
The idea is that it should be like pizza delivery. Fast. Clearly, it was achievable by pizza shops and profitable for ages, so what went wrong? I think the ans
by grumple 4y ago
The idea is that it should be like pizza delivery. Fast. Clearly, it was achievable by pizza shops and profitable for ages, so what went wrong?
I think the answer is that huge numbers of large engineering salaries really need to have a payoff. GoPuff was hiring in my area for years. During that time, I don't think I ever saw substantial changes in their app - which I know was originally designed for cheap by an overseas team in Ukraine or Russia from conversations with their recruiters. Meanwhile they had multiple bugs preventing checkout in their apps - that's the one thing you have to get right if you're selling products. Additionally, they had a poor system of estimating delivery time. Then they were often out of the desired products - you can't run out of your most popular products. Meanwhile they would have drivers lined up for several blocks around their warehouses - such an obvious inefficiency, but they seemingly haven't connected the "drivers are unhappy with waiting" and the "customers are unhappy with waiting", and I suspect they just don't give a shit about driver complaints. On two occasions, I had my order canceled because they couldn't fulfill it in time. I'm a few blocks away from their warehouse and half a mile from their corporate HQ. Yikes. If you can't get it right in your own backyard, how can you get it right anywhere?
The past couple years maybe you can blame supply chain issues in part. You could also blame low unemployment and rising wages - raising your highest costs while making it hard to hire and deliver on time. But at least with my local example, there seems to have been near-total stagnation on the tech side for the past 5 years, which you can't have with a fledgling product. As a software engineer, I'd never have let that happen, even if I had to rip the whole damn app apart and rebuild it.
- Finnucane 4y agoAt least around here delivery is often not that fast. I can usually do the pickup myself in half the time.
- icedchai 4y agoSame here. There is less opportunity for error picking it up yourself.
- marcosdumay 4y ago> so what went wrong? Low market diversification with companies competing on price, not quality, and offshoring the kernel of their work. Actually, things went surprisingly well. I expected much worse outcomes.
- spywaregorilla 4y agoThat's more about the pizza than the delivery. Pizza scales really well. If you order chinese food for 10 people you're getting a lot of different things. For pizza you're getting pizzas. They go in a standard stackable box that sits nicely in the front seat. If it's a busy time you can stack multiple orders of pizza together. Pizzas are higher margin than most foods, requiring not a lot of labor or expensive ingredients. People tend to order more pizza than they need because it saves pretty well. Pizza is pretty clean, at least to the extent that even the greasier ones won't leak through a good box. It's a common party food meaning you'll get more big group orders. It doesn't come with expensive ingredients. It's easy to package. If you start an order of 5 pizzas they should all be done at about the same time. And in some fiction your delivery workers work under threat of death from the mob itself.
- grumple 4y agoFunny enough, the Chinese and Japanese restaurants in my area are basically always on point and have the fastest delivery, despite having the most complex preparation. Why can I order sushi faster than I can order a few items that are pulled off a shelf and thrown in a bag? Especially when the cost of delivery as well as margins seem to be higher for the latter. You can't tell me it's harder to delivery a bag of snacks than a sushi roll.
- spywaregorilla 4y agoSushi is pretty quick to make, and maki rolls moreso. It tends to be a high margin item due to a high price. A sushi order with $10 of profit can be delivered for $5. A few snacks with a profit of $1 cannot be delivered for $5. Maybe you can shrug and just pay a higher delivery cost : item ratio to make it happen anyway. But in my area the reason the asian restaurants are only faster is because they have their own dedicated delivery staff. That would just not work for random convenience stores because the order volume is low due to stupid prices. Margin $, Margin %, Transportability and Order Volume are the big ones in my guesstimate. Pizza is the ultimate choice across those 4. I don't think asian restaurants are better at this across the board consistently.
- silisili 4y agoMaybe in the 90's and early 2000's. Pizza delivery has gotten to the point where I don't even try it anymore. Sometimes I'll see a deal - you know, 2 for 20 or something. Great. By the time you add tax, delivery fee(now around $4), and mandatory-but-not-really-mandatory 15% tip, it's up to 30. And half the places put a tip line on the receipt even when picking up...I leave 0, but assume they think I'm a tightwad(maybe I am, but what am I tipping for here?). Dominos even has deals carry out only to try to keep people from ordering delivery, it would seem.
- pessimizer 4y agoPizza delivery isn't profitable, it maybe breaks even. Pizza selling is profitable. Pizza delivery expands your range for pizza selling.