4 ms·

$26 for a cup of coffee, hand delivered. Is that an outrageous price? Compare with a circuit board I designed and had manufactured in China, and shipped to my

by rhelz 3y ago

$26 for a cup of coffee, hand delivered. Is that an outrageous price? Compare with a circuit board I designed and had manufactured in China, and shipped to my front door for $10. The difference, of course, is that my order wasn't the only thing on the boat. There were probably dozens of shipping containers full of stuff. Even the last mile, it was on a UPS truck, with dozens of other packages. Huge economies of scale mean low overhead per item. I think this warps our perception of how much a delivery driver should be paid. Frankly, I'm amazed that delivering a single cup of coffee, to a single customer, where the driver had to drive to the store, buy the coffee, drive to the customer, and drive back, can even be done for that cheap really. "But it was so much cheaper, and the drivers were making so much more money before this stupid law was passed!" you might say. We'll.....I wonder whether they were really tallying up all of the externalities. E.g. if I fill out an expense report for a trip where I had to drive, I get comped 75 cents a mile for gas, insurance, wear-n-tear on the car, etc. If a driver has to drive 5 miles to the store, 5 miles to the customer, and 5 miles back to home base, that eats up a fair bit of the $26 right there. And that's before the driver even bought the $7.50 grande latte. When the article reports the utopic amounts of money they were making pre-bill, I don't think either the reporter, or even the drivers themselves, were properly discounting those figures to reflect the true costs. Not to mention that venture capitalists are also subsidizing those prices, because they want keep prices low so they can expand fast enough to get a network-effect lockout of other competitors. The article deftly deploys some fine rhetoric borrowed from bleeding heart liberals--"think of the elderly who are relying on these deliveries!! Think of the CHILDREN!!!" But yeah, not that long ago everybody was doing without delivery services, and we didn't even notice that we didn't have it. I guess it would be nice if there were a permanent underclass, who you could afford to hire for this kind of thing. If you weren't in the underclass, of course.

idiotsecant 3y ago
Yeah, this article clearly has some significant bias on this issue.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  There's not a warning sign big enough to hang in that domain name.
treme 3y ago
while you make your high-brow comment at how the $26 is a fair price for a cup of delivery coffee, the coffee shop owner, delivery driver, customer's are all worse off than before because some politicians thought they 'knew' better, as you purport to here.
- kibwen 3y ago
  Meanwhile, the rest of society is better off because they're no longer paying the societal cost of effectively subsidizing the infrastructure of rich people who're paying to have a single lukewarm diet coke hand-delivered from the McDonald's down the block.
  - jimbokun 3y ago
    Why the hyperbole? Restaurant delivery service has been around for decades but it’s never had such a high overhead as it does today. It’s amazing how throwing all kinds of computing power and fancy apps at the problem has made the process so much less efficient than when someone picked up the phone and called the restaurant and food would show up at their door.
    - yodon 3y ago
      >Restaurant delivery service has been around for decades but it’s never had such a high overhead as it does today. Delivery used to be primarily (not exclusively, but primarily) pizza. Pizza is a special, nearly optimal case for delivery because it translates to small volume, lightweight, uniform, packing efficient, equal temperature containers enabling a single driver to carry enough product for a large number of endpoints while maintaining the temperature and quality of the food. These conditions do not apply to most food options, and are critical to the cost efficiency of pizza delivery.
- rhelz 3y ago
  > high-brow comment You say that like its a bad thing :-) > all worse off than before. Let's stipulate, for sake of argument, that is true. Coffee shop owners are selling less coffee, delivery drivers are getting paid more per hour, but get less hours in, and erstwhile customers can no longer afford hand-delivered coffee. Further stipulate that its this bill which us the cause. The question is, wouldn't all of that happened anyways? The bill might have made it happen now, and not 6 months from now. But can you show everybody was not just living in a fool's paradise? I know it's unusual these days to make public policy based on calculation and not ideological conviction, but lets do some math. If a driver is making $20 an hour, and it costs him 75 cents a mile to drive his car, how fast, in MPH, can the driver go before just running the car uses up the entire $20? I calculate 20/.75 = 26.7 MPH. So anybody driving at over 30 MPH is already wearing their car out faster than they can earn money to maintain it. 6 months later, there will be no money set aside for replacing the tires. When the break pads are worn away, well, just hope that the calipers digging into the brake discs can keep you going. And we'll just hope the timing belt--which should have been replaced 50k miles ago, doesn't break, or we'll have to pay for an engine rebuild. Seriously guys in what universe does it make any sense that you can get coffee hand-delivered to your house for a few bucks extra? If something looks too good to be true, that's because it is too good to be true.
jimbokun 3y ago
Food delivery has been happening for many decades, if not longer, and the price for delivery as a percentage of the overall cost has never been higher. Why has it become so much less efficient recently?
- sorenk 3y ago
  Food delivery used to be done mainly by employees of each restaurant. Not every restaurant offered delivery and the delivery area was usually limited to a few miles.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  VC money dried up, and lighting piles of cash on fire stopped being as cool.
  - jimbokun 3y ago
    But the VC backed apps had much higher delivery charges than the old “call the restaurant” approach, even when they were being subsidized. Why was it so much more expensive?
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      They definitely didn't, at least at the beginning. You could often get $0 delivery charge, with no order minimum.
- toast0 3y ago
  Food delivery used to be arranged by source, and multiple orders per outing. A pizza delivery driver would usually do 3, maybe 4 orders in a run. Similar with other places, if they had enough business to justify a delivery driver. Good delivery restaurants would coordinate kitchen and drivers so neither orders nor drivers would wait long for the other. Pizza in particular is ideal for delivery, because most people want to let it sit for a bit before they eat it. Food delivery as an external service from anywhere has poor coordination. Many restauarants don't get enough orders to have a batch delivery. Many food items need to be eaten right away, so the driver needs to idle at the restaurant for best service, which kills efficiency.
throwup238 3y ago
> The difference, of course, is that my order wasn't the only thing on the boat. The difference is the Universal Postal Union. China gets preferential treatment including $1 terminal fees and the ability to subsidize the cost for export. It’s only cheap because everyone else is required to pay more than their fair share. Sounds a lot like food delivery.
FireBeyond 3y ago
> The article deftly deploys some fine rhetoric borrowed from bleeding heart liberals--"think of the elderly who are relying on these deliveries!! Think of the CHILDREN!!!" But yeah, not that long ago everybody was doing without delivery services, and we didn't even notice that we didn't have it. I see myself as very liberal, but this sounds like quite a straw man. What do I think of people deleting DoorDash, et al, en masse? "Good". Very good. It's a wasteful racket. Let alone dealing with the entitlement of some of the drivers who think that they deserve special treatment at stores and restaurants because they're "on the clock", or "late", or whatever. A non-trivial amount of times, I've had them ask to cut in line (or just straight attempt to), or serve up attitude to servers and other customers alike just to get back to the "hustle".

by rhelz 3y ago

idiotsecant 3y ago

Yeah, this article clearly has some significant bias on this issue.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago
There's not a warning sign big enough to hang in that domain name.

treme 3y ago

while you make your high-brow comment at how the $26 is a fair price for a cup of delivery coffee, the coffee shop owner, delivery driver, customer's are all worse off than before because some politicians thought they 'knew' better, as you purport to here.

kibwen 3y ago
Meanwhile, the rest of society is better off because they're no longer paying the societal cost of effectively subsidizing the infrastructure of rich people who're paying to have a single lukewarm diet coke hand-delivered from the McDonald's down the block.
- jimbokun 3y ago
  Why the hyperbole? Restaurant delivery service has been around for decades but it’s never had such a high overhead as it does today. It’s amazing how throwing all kinds of computing power and fancy apps at the problem has made the process so much less efficient than when someone picked up the phone and called the restaurant and food would show up at their door.
  - yodon 3y ago
    >Restaurant delivery service has been around for decades but it’s never had such a high overhead as it does today. Delivery used to be primarily (not exclusively, but primarily) pizza. Pizza is a special, nearly optimal case for delivery because it translates to small volume, lightweight, uniform, packing efficient, equal temperature containers enabling a single driver to carry enough product for a large number of endpoints while maintaining the temperature and quality of the food. These conditions do not apply to most food options, and are critical to the cost efficiency of pizza delivery.
rhelz 3y ago
> high-brow comment You say that like its a bad thing :-) > all worse off than before. Let's stipulate, for sake of argument, that is true. Coffee shop owners are selling less coffee, delivery drivers are getting paid more per hour, but get less hours in, and erstwhile customers can no longer afford hand-delivered coffee. Further stipulate that its this bill which us the cause. The question is, wouldn't all of that happened anyways? The bill might have made it happen now, and not 6 months from now. But can you show everybody was not just living in a fool's paradise? I know it's unusual these days to make public policy based on calculation and not ideological conviction, but lets do some math. If a driver is making $20 an hour, and it costs him 75 cents a mile to drive his car, how fast, in MPH, can the driver go before just running the car uses up the entire $20? I calculate 20/.75 = 26.7 MPH. So anybody driving at over 30 MPH is already wearing their car out faster than they can earn money to maintain it. 6 months later, there will be no money set aside for replacing the tires. When the break pads are worn away, well, just hope that the calipers digging into the brake discs can keep you going. And we'll just hope the timing belt--which should have been replaced 50k miles ago, doesn't break, or we'll have to pay for an engine rebuild. Seriously guys in what universe does it make any sense that you can get coffee hand-delivered to your house for a few bucks extra? If something looks too good to be true, that's because it is too good to be true.

jimbokun 3y ago

Food delivery has been happening for many decades, if not longer, and the price for delivery as a percentage of the overall cost has never been higher. Why has it become so much less efficient recently?

sorenk 3y ago
Food delivery used to be done mainly by employees of each restaurant. Not every restaurant offered delivery and the delivery area was usually limited to a few miles.
ethbr1 3y ago
VC money dried up, and lighting piles of cash on fire stopped being as cool.
- jimbokun 3y ago
  But the VC backed apps had much higher delivery charges than the old “call the restaurant” approach, even when they were being subsidized. Why was it so much more expensive?
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    They definitely didn't, at least at the beginning. You could often get $0 delivery charge, with no order minimum.
toast0 3y ago
Food delivery used to be arranged by source, and multiple orders per outing. A pizza delivery driver would usually do 3, maybe 4 orders in a run. Similar with other places, if they had enough business to justify a delivery driver. Good delivery restaurants would coordinate kitchen and drivers so neither orders nor drivers would wait long for the other. Pizza in particular is ideal for delivery, because most people want to let it sit for a bit before they eat it. Food delivery as an external service from anywhere has poor coordination. Many restauarants don't get enough orders to have a batch delivery. Many food items need to be eaten right away, so the driver needs to idle at the restaurant for best service, which kills efficiency.

throwup238 3y ago

> The difference, of course, is that my order wasn't the only thing on the boat. The difference is the Universal Postal Union. China gets preferential treatment including $1 terminal fees and the ability to subsidize the cost for export. It’s only cheap because everyone else is required to pay more than their fair share. Sounds a lot like food delivery.

FireBeyond 3y ago

> The article deftly deploys some fine rhetoric borrowed from bleeding heart liberals--"think of the elderly who are relying on these deliveries!! Think of the CHILDREN!!!" But yeah, not that long ago everybody was doing without delivery services, and we didn't even notice that we didn't have it. I see myself as very liberal, but this sounds like quite a straw man. What do I think of people deleting DoorDash, et al, en masse? "Good". Very good. It's a wasteful racket. Let alone dealing with the entitlement of some of the drivers who think that they deserve special treatment at stores and restaurants because they're "on the clock", or "late", or whatever. A non-trivial amount of times, I've had them ask to cut in line (or just straight attempt to), or serve up attitude to servers and other customers alike just to get back to the "hustle".