5 ms·

There is no world in which you get food delivered to your door whenever you want for ~$0 extra while the person delivering it makes $20/hr + benefits, healthcar

• babypuncher 3y ago
  1 and 4 are the only viable options, full stop. If a business cannot sustain itself without piling on debt or abusing its employees, then it simply should not exist.
  • potatolicious 3y ago
    What we've suddenly discovered is that having servants on-call costs a substantial amount of money. Which is what all of the gig economy services are - you have always been able to get driven around - they were called limos and chauffeurs. Likewise the wealthy have been having servants fetch their dinner for decades, if not centuries. With a container ship full of VC money our industry was able to sustain an illusion for some years that servants can be had for cheap. Turns out the basic economics of having servant(s) hasn't been disrupted by technology.
    • NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
      >you have always been able to get driven around - they were called limos and chauffeurs ... or taxis, but that's not quite so consistent with the class-war narrative.
      • cupcakecommons 3y ago
        The class-war narrative is all this has ever been. Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, among others are all falling apart because of this incredibly stupid narrative. I'm not sure how it could get more obvious.
        • paxys 3y ago
          How are Seattle, Portland and San Francisco "falling apart" (outside of the narrative you see on Fox News)?
          • cupcakecommons 3y ago
            I've lived in Portland my whole life. It's pretty obvious how the city has changed for the worse in the last couple years. The commercial real estate market particularly reflects this - and many of the policies that created the downturn were completely avoidable if it wasn't for monoculture that's also present in the other cities mentioned. Do you want some kind of point by point with references? I get that it's easy to feel frustrated that places that are ostensibly progressive are so dysfunctional - and that it feels better to blame it on moronic news coverage on Fox. I really wish it wasn't the way it seems to actually be here.
          • RestlessMind 3y ago
            (As someone who voted D in 2020 election) Try standing at an intersection in SF for 5 min with kids without them getting scared. I had to do it unfortunately in SOMA (long story why) and a sketchy guy mostly on drugs scared the hell out of my kids. That is not normal and is what I personally consider "falling apart" - kids should be able to roam around freely in a healthy city.
            • elevatedastalt 3y ago
              Kids? I am a fully-grown adult man and I feel scared in SF.
  • NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
    ... and yet there were so many people who wanted to do the job for the existing pay. I'm not in any sense suggesting these were great jobs, but I'm pretty sure people made at least minimum wage (based on how much I tipped and how long deliveries took). If you took a straw poll, I think you'd find a lot of drivers in favor of higher pay and not so many in favor of higher pay but zero hours.
    • cupcakecommons 3y ago
      Sure seems like many people would rather destroy low paying jobs and feel better about themselves than acknowledge that there will always be a place for such jobs - especially at the rate we are importing many segments of the world with much lower standards of living. I'm not sure the point is to actually help people for whom something is better than nothing, it's to demonstrate resentment and frustration and a worldview that sees all wage labor as exploitative. If you want the services to fail don't use them and don't work for them, it's simple.
      • pierat 3y ago
        This is also counterbalanced by the idea: "If you work, your basic needs should be absolutely met and with a little bit more." > I'm not sure the point is to actually help people for whom something is better than nothing, it's to demonstrate resentment and frustration and a worldview that sees all wage labor as exploitative. The "gig" companies are the ones taking the bulk of the money, and then disbursing pittances and stealing tips. They can definitely pay better.
        • NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
          >"If you work, your basic needs should be absolutely met and with a little bit more." So, how many hours do I need to work before this logic kicks in? Presumably not just one per week, right? Does my employer get the right to pay me less because my needs are met in part by an inheritance or because I share the rent with someone else who works? At what level of granularity does the basic cost of living get decided? i.e. if I flip burgers at the McDonald's at the corner of Chambers and Greenwich (in the middle of TriBeCa) does that mean I should be paid enough to live there too? The basic ideal of dignity of work is fine, you just can't get there from here.
• lock-the-spock 3y ago
  All depends on the setup. Pizza delivery run by the individual small shop has worked for 50+ years; they pay two cooks and two drivers and a waiter and feed hundreds of people a night while earning just fine. A single place to order all food from all restaurants at any point? Well something needs to give... Alternatively it's simply time for people to learn to cook simple foods again, a pasta with alfredo sauce, fried potatoes with eggs and a salad, or a spinach quiche (with a 1€ supermarket crust) are all quicker to make myself than I get through any app's ordering process (ignoring here the waiting time for both processes to finish).
  • paxys 3y ago
    It only "worked" because pizza delivery drivers had to bring their own vehicles, made below minimum wage and were working for tips (AKA exactly what we don't tolerate today).
    • philipkglass 3y ago
      Does that mean there are no more pizzerias that offer delivery in Seattle? I don't live in the region and I genuinely don't know.
      • paxys 3y ago
        Not sure about Seattle but in my area they have all moved over to using Doordash & co for delivery.
        • pierat 3y ago
          And the point behind all those "apps" is that the actual workers get paid peanuts, wear and tear on their vehicle, likely defrauding insurance by doing commercial driving on residential insurance, and getting paid LESS than the total cost to do the job. And Im sure this ordinance is "hurting gig workers". Well, so is working the fucking gig jobs, but that hurt comes 'down the road' with much more wear and tear on the vehicle, higher incidence of wrecks, no workers compensation, pay double tax for "self employed". But those billionaire gig companies are doing the rake JUST FINE.
• balderdash 3y ago
  Or option 5) restaurants pay for their own delivery people which seemed to work just fine (pizza places have been doing it forever (I’m assuming profitably))
  • cupcakecommons 3y ago
    The key here is that it's worked for restaurants with historically decent margins (pizza) it likely won't work for most restaurants
    • NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
      In cities like NYC, it worked for vast numbers of restaurants. Anyone who lived in the city before Seamless etc. remembers having masses of restaurant menus with phone numbers for ordering - some were for pick-up only, but most would do local delivery.
      • cupcakecommons 3y ago
        NYC is also extremely abnormal because of the density
        • paxys 3y ago
          Also the economics of NYC are very different today then in the 80s and 90s when people remember getting cheap delivery.
  • elevatedastalt 3y ago
    Pizza delivery drivers drove their own cars (and paid for maintenance and everything) and replied heavily on tips. So basically the same situation as now, but unlike earlier, it's apparently no longer acceptable.
    • drewcoo 3y ago
      This. They were basically Uber attached to a single pizza restaurant. A great investment for a manager. Not so good long-term for the employees. Good thing there's a lot of turnover!
• neltnerb 3y ago
  I don't so much mind paying extra to the person doing the delivery, I get frustrated when I have no insight (intentionally) into how much of the fees and surcharges (or even tips) are supporting delivery driver salary and benefits versus being a convenient way for a company that mostly exists virtually to increase their fees without it being obvious. I will absolutely call a place and order on the phone if it avoids grubhub extracting an extra $10 in fees from both sides of the transaction... and give the delivery driver the difference in tips. But yeah, less frequently than I did when VCs were subsidizing the cost.
  • xboxnolifes 3y ago
    So much this. I'm the asshole if I tip $0, but I have no insight into how much the delivery driver is making. Am I tipping on-top of a full salary? Am I tipping to someone who is paid entirely through tips? No idea. Instead you play the game of guessing how much you're supposed to pay for services. Either bundle in the driver's payment into the fees entirely, or don't at all. Let's drop this game of having to guess how much to tip to make up for what the company is not paying the drivers.
• hakdbha 3y ago
  [dead]
• seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  (5) automation. Take the humans out of the delivery business and you get more flexibility on pricing. Self driving cars could do it if you are willing to meet the outside. Drones also, although I think the power costs will never work for air delivery, so it will need to be grounded somehow.
  • NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
    Right; I guess the only reason investor money keeps flowing in here is the need to maintain market position (and the implied flow of data) until automation displaces enough of the people. That's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
    • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      That was Uber’s plan with ride sharing and it didn’t pan out. Delivery just isn’t very viable without automation, humans are simply too expensive to do it, so someone will figure it out or we will make do without.
  • drewcoo 3y ago
    I suspect it might be easier and less open to litigation to have robots make the food. Or manage the restaurants.
    • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      Eventually they will do it all. Human labor keeps becoming more expensive, and restaurants will need to automate more and more to survive.