3 ms·

For food delivery, I imagine going back to pre-apps and have restaurant employed couriers for local takeout could be beneficial for both parties.

rob74 2y ago
Well, you can also - shock horror - drive (or bike, if possible) over to the restaurant and pick up your order yourself! That's of course assuming that the restaurant has another means of placing orders than through the delivery apps (e.g. a phone number)...
- nullstyle 2y ago
  [flagged]
- ebiester 2y ago
  While I personally make 95% of my food, I order delivery when I am so busy that if I don't, I will not eat.
  - reaperducer 2y ago
    While I personally make 95% of my food, I order delivery when I am so busy that if I don't, I will not eat. Sounds like a problem that solves itself. Or at least a wake-up call that you're doing something wrong. Unless you're safeguarding nuclear launch codes, there's no such thing as "too busy to eat." It's just people trying to make themselves and others think they're important. Guess what? You're not. The actually important people do eat. It's their lackies who pretend they're too busy to do the same. Yes, I've owned my own company. Yes, it required extensive complicated international travel. It's still true. If you can't plan meal breaks, you can't plan. And even the nuclear launch people get lunch.
    - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
      "Important people" eat because they can afford to pay people to make eating convenient for them. "Unimportant people" are busy because they have to actually work to pay their bills and do their laundry and dishes and clean their homes and take out the trash and do all the stuff that "important people" magically don't have to do, because "unimportant people" do it for them.
- Yeul 2y ago
  I like food delivered to me but I am willing to pay for it. The minimum wag applies to gig workers too- and with an aging society and shrinking workforce the pay is usually a lot better than that. Ofcourse in the US with tens of millions of illegal immigrants who will do anything to survive the situation must be very different.
- florbo 2y ago
  This is what I do. Dealing with the uncertainty of the delivery apps as a customer in my area is approaching the levels of nightmare it is as a driver in others. I didn't keep track when I was using them but let's just say it was a pleasant surprise when I received everything I ordered. Usually something was "forgotten".
chongli 2y ago
The problem for restaurant-employed delivery staff is nearly the same as the customer-employed delivery staff mentioned above. The driver sits around in the restaurant parking lot twiddling his thumbs and then 10 lunch orders come in over the course of an hour, most of which while the driver’s out delivering the first order. The last order ends up taking 2 hours to get to the customer who is not at all pleased with cold, soggy food long after the lunch break ended. The food delivery app business works like the insurance business: the aggregate drivers form a risk pool [1] to protect restaurants from the variability of demand. This allows a single restaurant to be able to accept 10 food delivery orders in a matter of minutes just as easily as they would for orders coming in from the tables in their dining room. The app would dispatch up to 10 drivers to handle those orders and even automatically batch them according to proximity of destination. Of course the app can also handle multiple restaurants in a similar area in the same way so that drivers can be dispatched most efficiently to handle all the demand for an entire city. The more drivers, restaurants, and customers centralize on a single delivery app, the more efficient the system can be (assuming the app developers know how to optimize the transshipment problem [2]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_pool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_pool [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transshipment_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transshipment_problem
- eecc 2y ago
  Lovely, it’s really a useful tool. Unfortunately it’s management is opaque and manipulative, in the hands of a one self-interested actor. If anything, this sort of market would be well served by a publicly funded (not necessarily by a Government, let’s throw blockchains into the mix) neutral and transparent platform
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  What businesses need is delivery drivers. If the business has a delivery driver, that driver should get priority on the app. But that'll never happen, because that's a slippery slope to just being an ordering platform - a much smaller moat. I was a driver. When not delivering, we waited, checked out, cooked food, got ahead on end-of-night cleaning, etc. If the orders piled in, we made them ourselves then delivered them. If it was a slow night, they let a line cook go and we took over, while the manager filled in while we were out on delivery. We were the ones who stayed late to clean the kitchen, because we delivered right up until close. On slow nights, we got out the door right at close. On busy nights, it might be two hours later as we handled the backlog of cleanup / closeout. Delivery drivers are efficient flexible resources with less overhead than the apps.

rob74 2y ago

Well, you can also - shock horror - drive (or bike, if possible) over to the restaurant and pick up your order yourself! That's of course assuming that the restaurant has another means of placing orders than through the delivery apps (e.g. a phone number)...

nullstyle 2y ago
[flagged]
ebiester 2y ago
While I personally make 95% of my food, I order delivery when I am so busy that if I don't, I will not eat.
- reaperducer 2y ago
  While I personally make 95% of my food, I order delivery when I am so busy that if I don't, I will not eat. Sounds like a problem that solves itself. Or at least a wake-up call that you're doing something wrong. Unless you're safeguarding nuclear launch codes, there's no such thing as "too busy to eat." It's just people trying to make themselves and others think they're important. Guess what? You're not. The actually important people do eat. It's their lackies who pretend they're too busy to do the same. Yes, I've owned my own company. Yes, it required extensive complicated international travel. It's still true. If you can't plan meal breaks, you can't plan. And even the nuclear launch people get lunch.
  - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
    "Important people" eat because they can afford to pay people to make eating convenient for them. "Unimportant people" are busy because they have to actually work to pay their bills and do their laundry and dishes and clean their homes and take out the trash and do all the stuff that "important people" magically don't have to do, because "unimportant people" do it for them.
Yeul 2y ago
I like food delivered to me but I am willing to pay for it. The minimum wag applies to gig workers too- and with an aging society and shrinking workforce the pay is usually a lot better than that. Ofcourse in the US with tens of millions of illegal immigrants who will do anything to survive the situation must be very different.
florbo 2y ago
This is what I do. Dealing with the uncertainty of the delivery apps as a customer in my area is approaching the levels of nightmare it is as a driver in others. I didn't keep track when I was using them but let's just say it was a pleasant surprise when I received everything I ordered. Usually something was "forgotten".

chongli 2y ago

The problem for restaurant-employed delivery staff is nearly the same as the customer-employed delivery staff mentioned above. The driver sits around in the restaurant parking lot twiddling his thumbs and then 10 lunch orders come in over the course of an hour, most of which while the driver’s out delivering the first order. The last order ends up taking 2 hours to get to the customer who is not at all pleased with cold, soggy food long after the lunch break ended. The food delivery app business works like the insurance business: the aggregate drivers form a risk pool [1] to protect restaurants from the variability of demand. This allows a single restaurant to be able to accept 10 food delivery orders in a matter of minutes just as easily as they would for orders coming in from the tables in their dining room. The app would dispatch up to 10 drivers to handle those orders and even automatically batch them according to proximity of destination. Of course the app can also handle multiple restaurants in a similar area in the same way so that drivers can be dispatched most efficiently to handle all the demand for an entire city. The more drivers, restaurants, and customers centralize on a single delivery app, the more efficient the system can be (assuming the app developers know how to optimize the transshipment problem [2]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_pool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_pool [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transshipment_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transshipment_problem

eecc 2y ago
Lovely, it’s really a useful tool. Unfortunately it’s management is opaque and manipulative, in the hands of a one self-interested actor. If anything, this sort of market would be well served by a publicly funded (not necessarily by a Government, let’s throw blockchains into the mix) neutral and transparent platform
jvanderbot 2y ago
What businesses need is delivery drivers. If the business has a delivery driver, that driver should get priority on the app. But that'll never happen, because that's a slippery slope to just being an ordering platform - a much smaller moat. I was a driver. When not delivering, we waited, checked out, cooked food, got ahead on end-of-night cleaning, etc. If the orders piled in, we made them ourselves then delivered them. If it was a slow night, they let a line cook go and we took over, while the manager filled in while we were out on delivery. We were the ones who stayed late to clean the kitchen, because we delivered right up until close. On slow nights, we got out the door right at close. On busy nights, it might be two hours later as we handled the backlog of cleanup / closeout. Delivery drivers are efficient flexible resources with less overhead than the apps.