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This feels a little short-sighted. Just this year, New York City implemented new minimum payment schedules for "self employed" app delivery drivers, which bring

This feels a little short-sighted. Just this year, New York City implemented new minimum payment schedules for "self employed" app delivery drivers, which brings their minimum hourly payment to nearly $30/hr. I will strongly suspect that the big centres in california will do likewise, or potentially the state as whole.

tekla 3y ago
Yeah, stopped using delivery for that reason. It got hilariously too expensive.
- jpalawaga 3y ago
  the pay bump i'm talking about is very recent, but yes, I agree, delivery became too expensive. And it's no wonder. Restaurants delivering have very low overhead. A phone line and a delivery driver. When you're on grubhub/doordash/etc, now somebody has to pay for a mountain of software engineers, marketing expenses, servers, customer service people, executive comp, etc. It inserted an expensive middleman where there was none. alas, it's probably still a better option than each restaurant trying to build their own website/app. But not better than picking up food or calling the restaurant for delivery.
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    The issue of pay for delivery drivers is that the job is very low productivity (cannot make that many deliveries per hour and consumers are not willing to pay much for delivery). I think in general it works for pizzas because pizzas have very high margins so that some or all delivery costs can be bundled in the retail price of the pizza.
  - anon291 3y ago
    Doordash provides the service of matching delivery drivers (which most restaurants cannot justify having, since delivery is not a big portion) with orders. If each restaurant had their own fleet there would be a lot of inefficiency. Doordash can (theoretically... don't know how they actually work) schedule several routes with several orders on them simultaneously, thus reducing cost. I'm not sure how many SW engineers they would need. My SW engineering experience says they'd need a few dozen of very competent, well compensated engineers. My engineering management experience tells me they probably have hundreds of underpaid, overworked, barely competent new graduates that cost a lot of money in aggregate.
    - mattzito 3y ago
      For years that was how delivery operated in NYC, and in fact, in NYC there was Seamless.com which was an aggregator, but deliveries were handled by the restaurant. That model was vastly preferable, as delivery people were familiar with the neighborhood and you wouldn’t find yourself accidentally ordering from a restaurant on the other side of Manhattan that will essentially guarantee your food will be cold. As far as the number of engineers required, I think you vastly underestimate the tech and infrastructure required. Sure a few dozen engineers could build the core matching and routing engine and the restaurant and delivery person apps, but all of the scaffolding around that is huge. Who does customer support? How does the customer get ahold of the delivery person? What happens when an order gets misdelivered? How do you deal with the various regulations in different municipalities around pay? Heck, paying people is a few dozen people alone. And then you have to think about supporting all of these things in places where the delivery models might be totally different- car delivery is totally different than walking delivery. What about users whose orders are late? In some places they have health regulations that preclude delivering food that has been waiting for over a certain time. The list goes on and on.
- morkalork 3y ago
  Between service fees, driver tip and the face prices on the menu not even being the same I just gave up.
deepthunder 3y ago
When wages become too expensive, you automate. That's economics. Keeping wages artificially low (with Immigration for example) disincentivizes businesses from investing in new technology (aka LSDs => Labor Saving Devices). Productivity declines. The economy stagnates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBRJ8_cUhKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBRJ8_cUhKU

tekla 3y ago

Yeah, stopped using delivery for that reason. It got hilariously too expensive.

jpalawaga 3y ago
the pay bump i'm talking about is very recent, but yes, I agree, delivery became too expensive. And it's no wonder. Restaurants delivering have very low overhead. A phone line and a delivery driver. When you're on grubhub/doordash/etc, now somebody has to pay for a mountain of software engineers, marketing expenses, servers, customer service people, executive comp, etc. It inserted an expensive middleman where there was none. alas, it's probably still a better option than each restaurant trying to build their own website/app. But not better than picking up food or calling the restaurant for delivery.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  The issue of pay for delivery drivers is that the job is very low productivity (cannot make that many deliveries per hour and consumers are not willing to pay much for delivery). I think in general it works for pizzas because pizzas have very high margins so that some or all delivery costs can be bundled in the retail price of the pizza.
- anon291 3y ago
  Doordash provides the service of matching delivery drivers (which most restaurants cannot justify having, since delivery is not a big portion) with orders. If each restaurant had their own fleet there would be a lot of inefficiency. Doordash can (theoretically... don't know how they actually work) schedule several routes with several orders on them simultaneously, thus reducing cost. I'm not sure how many SW engineers they would need. My SW engineering experience says they'd need a few dozen of very competent, well compensated engineers. My engineering management experience tells me they probably have hundreds of underpaid, overworked, barely competent new graduates that cost a lot of money in aggregate.
  - mattzito 3y ago
    For years that was how delivery operated in NYC, and in fact, in NYC there was Seamless.com which was an aggregator, but deliveries were handled by the restaurant. That model was vastly preferable, as delivery people were familiar with the neighborhood and you wouldn’t find yourself accidentally ordering from a restaurant on the other side of Manhattan that will essentially guarantee your food will be cold. As far as the number of engineers required, I think you vastly underestimate the tech and infrastructure required. Sure a few dozen engineers could build the core matching and routing engine and the restaurant and delivery person apps, but all of the scaffolding around that is huge. Who does customer support? How does the customer get ahold of the delivery person? What happens when an order gets misdelivered? How do you deal with the various regulations in different municipalities around pay? Heck, paying people is a few dozen people alone. And then you have to think about supporting all of these things in places where the delivery models might be totally different- car delivery is totally different than walking delivery. What about users whose orders are late? In some places they have health regulations that preclude delivering food that has been waiting for over a certain time. The list goes on and on.
morkalork 3y ago
Between service fees, driver tip and the face prices on the menu not even being the same I just gave up.

deepthunder 3y ago

When wages become too expensive, you automate. That's economics. Keeping wages artificially low (with Immigration for example) disincentivizes businesses from investing in new technology (aka LSDs => Labor Saving Devices). Productivity declines. The economy stagnates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBRJ8_cUhKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBRJ8_cUhKU