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> The only way it works is if someone else's time is an order of magnitude less valuable than yours. Ish. There's clearly a logistics problem here. 1-meal bei

> The only way it works is if someone else's time is an order of magnitude less valuable than yours. Ish. There's clearly a logistics problem here. 1-meal being delivered promptly on time scales poorly. But 15 meals delivered to 15 different people within 45 minutes is in fact, a net gain. Alas, Doordash and Uber have gone about it in all the wrong ways. Its the drivers who double-book this process (ie: picking up more orders than they can handle), leading to inconsistent quality, cold food, late deliveries and more. Its a legitimate model though. A more "proper" company that's doing this officially is Foodsby, where one Restaraunt makes a single delivery to 15-ish people in one trip at a designated time and location (usually within 5 minutes walking distance of an office complex. IE: One particular office building has a Foodsby drop-off point). Everyone pays $2 each, the driver is happy, the restaraunt is happy (their personal staff deliver and therefore ensure quality food / hot food at the appropriate, predesignated time), and a ~5 minute walk for a bunch of office workers is a good idea anyway cause we're all sitting on our asses all day. --------- It double-benefits because professional chefs like doing ~15 or 20 of the same order all at once, its more efficient for them... especially if they can plan such an order ahead of time (Foodsby isn't offered every day for a Restaraunt, they pick-and-choose the days that they'll offer the service). So the chefs can cut-down on scheduling if they're burning out, or they can plan ahead and offer more days if they know some days are lulls / they have extra freetime. Doordash / Grubhub / Uber is almost malicious for everyone involved. There's some ideas of convenience to some people, but its not good enough for the overall environment. In contrast, Foodsby (and hopefully more companies that adopt that model) has proven itself sustainable, at least in my area.

Consultant32452 3y ago
I spent a number of years working at a pizza place in high school/college and on busy nights they had a dedicated "router", a human who was sometimes also a driver, who grouped orders together so they got where they needed to go in a timely fashion and the food was always warm. When I order DoorDash my driver either only has my order or they have a secondary delivery that is insanely out of the way. This is a very inefficient use of driver time. The pizza place is practically all delivery and it's easy to bunch up the orders heading in the same direction. Comparing that to UE/DD, a single restaurant might have 2-3 delivery orders at any given time, but what are the odds they are all headed in the same direction? I wonder if extreme density cities have less of a problem with this. For reference, I live in a "2nd tier" city. Not NY/LA, but a city everyone has heard of. On an unrelated note, I've always thought the big problem is their market is too narrow. These companies should deliver literally anything that can fit in a passenger car. One example I know of is that auto shops do not keep parts for every car in the shop all the time. They contract out to parts warehouses. Those warehouses have employees which deliver your new carburetor to the auto shop that's installing it. There's no reason your Uber driver can't pick up pasta and a carburetor.
- oldandboring 3y ago
  > On an unrelated note, I've always thought the big problem is their market is too narrow. These companies should deliver literally anything that can fit in a passenger car. One example I know of is that auto shops do not keep parts for every car in the shop all the time. They contract out to parts warehouses. Those warehouses have employees which deliver your new carburetor to the auto shop that's installing it. There's no reason your Uber driver can't pick up pasta and a carburetor. Looking at the Uber app, under Delivery > Services it actually looks like they do purport to offer delivery for basically anything. Groceries, Alcohol, Pharmacy, Flowers etc. I have never once tried it or met anyone who has. Maybe I'll give it a shot tho.
handy2000 3y ago
You are describing a completely different service though. Prep-meal delivery also works, but it's addressing a different usage pattern. In the same way you could propose to replace Uber with... buses? 15 people get on the same bus at a specific time and get dropped off within 5 miles, thus optimizing the process.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  UberEats is a "bus" that pretends otherwise. I've seen the Uber drivers come in. They always grab like 4 or 5 orders, and possibly drive to a 2nd or 3rd restaraunt before they start delivering. Its not like those UberEats drivers have a big penalty if they arrive late or if the food is cold. ----------- What I'm saying is, consolidated food delivery services is *already* what we have with DoorDash/UberEats/whatever, they just lie to you about the details. The reason why Foodsby works (albeit on a smaller scale) is because they're honest about it. There's nothing wrong with consolidating orders to minimize driving time, the problem occurs because those other services _PRETEND_ they're a 1-to-1 order service with dedicated drivers. IE: Its the lies where things have gone wrong, not necessarily the practice. If all the drivers are double-booking / consolidating orders anyway, then work it into the model. Embrace it, rather than pretend otherwise.
  - handy2000 3y ago
    You are partially correct describing that some delivery drivers already batch their orders. But that's still a different use case. Foodsby can't scale to 15 min increments for all restaurants in the city. While some people can preplan and are OK ordering food from a specific restaurant that Foodsby works with, most people don't want that. How many people want to order food from an expensive Spanish (i.e. Spanish, not Mexican) restaurant I order from sometimes? So my options are going to be: #1 not ordering from this restaurant because it's not a common food preference and is expensive or #2 wait for 15 people to join the order for this restaurant and get food hours or days later. It's a good business idea, it's just a different usage pattern. I order food when I am hungry. I don't preplan, don't like food from the majority of popular local places (pizza, Mexican, Chinese).

Consultant32452 3y ago

I spent a number of years working at a pizza place in high school/college and on busy nights they had a dedicated "router", a human who was sometimes also a driver, who grouped orders together so they got where they needed to go in a timely fashion and the food was always warm. When I order DoorDash my driver either only has my order or they have a secondary delivery that is insanely out of the way. This is a very inefficient use of driver time. The pizza place is practically all delivery and it's easy to bunch up the orders heading in the same direction. Comparing that to UE/DD, a single restaurant might have 2-3 delivery orders at any given time, but what are the odds they are all headed in the same direction? I wonder if extreme density cities have less of a problem with this. For reference, I live in a "2nd tier" city. Not NY/LA, but a city everyone has heard of. On an unrelated note, I've always thought the big problem is their market is too narrow. These companies should deliver literally anything that can fit in a passenger car. One example I know of is that auto shops do not keep parts for every car in the shop all the time. They contract out to parts warehouses. Those warehouses have employees which deliver your new carburetor to the auto shop that's installing it. There's no reason your Uber driver can't pick up pasta and a carburetor.

oldandboring 3y ago
> On an unrelated note, I've always thought the big problem is their market is too narrow. These companies should deliver literally anything that can fit in a passenger car. One example I know of is that auto shops do not keep parts for every car in the shop all the time. They contract out to parts warehouses. Those warehouses have employees which deliver your new carburetor to the auto shop that's installing it. There's no reason your Uber driver can't pick up pasta and a carburetor. Looking at the Uber app, under Delivery > Services it actually looks like they do purport to offer delivery for basically anything. Groceries, Alcohol, Pharmacy, Flowers etc. I have never once tried it or met anyone who has. Maybe I'll give it a shot tho.

handy2000 3y ago

You are describing a completely different service though. Prep-meal delivery also works, but it's addressing a different usage pattern. In the same way you could propose to replace Uber with... buses? 15 people get on the same bus at a specific time and get dropped off within 5 miles, thus optimizing the process.

dragontamer 3y ago
UberEats is a "bus" that pretends otherwise. I've seen the Uber drivers come in. They always grab like 4 or 5 orders, and possibly drive to a 2nd or 3rd restaraunt before they start delivering. Its not like those UberEats drivers have a big penalty if they arrive late or if the food is cold. ----------- What I'm saying is, consolidated food delivery services is *already* what we have with DoorDash/UberEats/whatever, they just lie to you about the details. The reason why Foodsby works (albeit on a smaller scale) is because they're honest about it. There's nothing wrong with consolidating orders to minimize driving time, the problem occurs because those other services _PRETEND_ they're a 1-to-1 order service with dedicated drivers. IE: Its the lies where things have gone wrong, not necessarily the practice. If all the drivers are double-booking / consolidating orders anyway, then work it into the model. Embrace it, rather than pretend otherwise.
- handy2000 3y ago
  You are partially correct describing that some delivery drivers already batch their orders. But that's still a different use case. Foodsby can't scale to 15 min increments for all restaurants in the city. While some people can preplan and are OK ordering food from a specific restaurant that Foodsby works with, most people don't want that. How many people want to order food from an expensive Spanish (i.e. Spanish, not Mexican) restaurant I order from sometimes? So my options are going to be: #1 not ordering from this restaurant because it's not a common food preference and is expensive or #2 wait for 15 people to join the order for this restaurant and get food hours or days later. It's a good business idea, it's just a different usage pattern. I order food when I am hungry. I don't preplan, don't like food from the majority of popular local places (pizza, Mexican, Chinese).