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> But since it's all investor and profit driven for the bigger company, costs get cut on every side. These services basically don't work with Western level wag

> But since it's all investor and profit driven for the bigger company, costs get cut on every side. These services basically don't work with Western level wages. The economics are just not there.

johnnyanmac 2y ago
But it worked 20 years ago. That's the issue. We didn't get worse at driving and (apparently...) we didn't get poorer over the last few decades to pay for stuff. Cost of living from the fallout of '08 simply skyrocketed and most of the country didn't not increase compensation to make up for that. Despite that company simply charged more while cutting costs at the same time. So the driver and the customer lost out.
- nbaugh1 2y ago
  I think by "these services" they mean apps like Doordash, not delivery as a concept
  - immibis 2y ago
    And they're saying: Why couldn't Doordash work when pizza delivery worked 20 years ago? Doordash is just pizza delivery scaled up, right? If pizza delivery had continued, it should work the same way as doordash for the same price as doordash but limited to pizza restaurants (by definition), right?
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      It is odd.. It's such an easy middlemen to apply and should theoretically be operated on modest margims. Instead it sounds like they for this stupid extortion of a cut behind the scenes which ruins it for everyon. Based on Cowto's operations, few would complain about a 14% uptick on delivery (and the tip was already culturally accepted. No more work to do there). Instead, you can double your meal price nowadays. I know much of the answer is a mix of private equityb and an overload of debt taken from insane evaluations.
    - disgruntledphd2 2y ago
      For a few reasons: 1. Pizza travels very very very well 2. Pizza is pretty cheap to make 3. Wages (and costs of transportation) were lower 20 years ago. More generally, delivery as a model can work, but not when you have an organisation of really expensive engineers/salespeople working on a frontend to it.
pc86 2y ago
DoorDash is just a means to extract revenue from users, contractors, and restaurants and give it to the owners of DoorDash. It's not a sustainable business and I'm not convinced it was ever intended to be. COVID was a fluke that made it hang around a lot longer than it otherwise would have. Edit: ooo someone's mad I don't like DoorDash
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  The killer feature of doordash/ubereats/grubhub/whatever is the ability to shop for food from a ton of different restaurants in one place with one payment button. Back when I was doing food delivery before the pandemic, we would actively promote placing orders with our restaurant directly. I would tell repeat doordash customers that they can save 15% if they just call or use the website. None of them converted. The convenience of the app is just too strong for people to care.
  - pc86 2y ago
    The only time I've seen people care is if you lay out an identical order and show the percentage increase over ordering delivery through the restaurant, or picking it up yourself. DoorDash adds upwards of a couple dollars to every item. They charge a 5-10% service fee depending on if you pay them monthly. The default tip options are pretty egregiously high - it's not uncommon to see double-digit tips in all three options. I once saw a $22 tip in the top option for a single bag of food with no drinks less than a 10 minute drive away but that's likely an outlier. All in if you don't have DashPass you're easily looking at a 30-40% increase if you get cheaper items which are more likely to be marked up only $.5-1 but represent a larger percentage of the total. Nobody in their right mind would tip a delivery driver 40% of their entire meal, why are you happy to give most of that to a corporation that is doing very little for the transactions? Edit: I just did this for an example order for a nearby restaurant - 1 appetizer and 1 entree so probably good for two people not super hungry to share or one hungry person to eat. $31.59 in food, $2 delivery fee and $5.50 in fees (I subtracted sales taxes manually). This restaurant is 5 miles away and it's 11:30 local time. Tip suggestions are $9.50 (30%), $11.50, and $13.50 (42%). So at the lowest suggested tip amount, which is offensively high, you're looking at $49 before sales tax. The exact same order is $26.36 including an online order service fee but before sales tax. Even if you were going to get it delivered and tip the driver 30% you're still saving a ton of money and this is on one meal with enough food for 1-2 people. The appetizer alone is $10 on their website and $14 on DoorDash. It's a crazy system and I can't believe how much money people burn on this every year.
maxsilver 2y ago
> These services basically don't work with Western level wages. The economics are just not there. Only because the service is disrupting the business model for those wages. It worked well(ish) in 2019, it failed by 2022. It's not some kind of mystery around wages or inflation, the introduction of these services (and their popularity and growth, due to COVID closing in-person restaurants for a while) is the thing that killed the economics around delivery, for much of the US.

> But since it's all investor and profit driven for the bigger company, costs get cut on every side. These services basically don't work with Western level wages. The economics are just not there.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

But it worked 20 years ago. That's the issue. We didn't get worse at driving and (apparently...) we didn't get poorer over the last few decades to pay for stuff. Cost of living from the fallout of '08 simply skyrocketed and most of the country didn't not increase compensation to make up for that. Despite that company simply charged more while cutting costs at the same time. So the driver and the customer lost out.

nbaugh1 2y ago
I think by "these services" they mean apps like Doordash, not delivery as a concept
- immibis 2y ago
  And they're saying: Why couldn't Doordash work when pizza delivery worked 20 years ago? Doordash is just pizza delivery scaled up, right? If pizza delivery had continued, it should work the same way as doordash for the same price as doordash but limited to pizza restaurants (by definition), right?
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    It is odd.. It's such an easy middlemen to apply and should theoretically be operated on modest margims. Instead it sounds like they for this stupid extortion of a cut behind the scenes which ruins it for everyon. Based on Cowto's operations, few would complain about a 14% uptick on delivery (and the tip was already culturally accepted. No more work to do there). Instead, you can double your meal price nowadays. I know much of the answer is a mix of private equityb and an overload of debt taken from insane evaluations.
  - disgruntledphd2 2y ago
    For a few reasons: 1. Pizza travels very very very well 2. Pizza is pretty cheap to make 3. Wages (and costs of transportation) were lower 20 years ago. More generally, delivery as a model can work, but not when you have an organisation of really expensive engineers/salespeople working on a frontend to it.

pc86 2y ago

DoorDash is just a means to extract revenue from users, contractors, and restaurants and give it to the owners of DoorDash. It's not a sustainable business and I'm not convinced it was ever intended to be. COVID was a fluke that made it hang around a lot longer than it otherwise would have. Edit: ooo someone's mad I don't like DoorDash

Workaccount2 2y ago
The killer feature of doordash/ubereats/grubhub/whatever is the ability to shop for food from a ton of different restaurants in one place with one payment button. Back when I was doing food delivery before the pandemic, we would actively promote placing orders with our restaurant directly. I would tell repeat doordash customers that they can save 15% if they just call or use the website. None of them converted. The convenience of the app is just too strong for people to care.
- pc86 2y ago
  The only time I've seen people care is if you lay out an identical order and show the percentage increase over ordering delivery through the restaurant, or picking it up yourself. DoorDash adds upwards of a couple dollars to every item. They charge a 5-10% service fee depending on if you pay them monthly. The default tip options are pretty egregiously high - it's not uncommon to see double-digit tips in all three options. I once saw a $22 tip in the top option for a single bag of food with no drinks less than a 10 minute drive away but that's likely an outlier. All in if you don't have DashPass you're easily looking at a 30-40% increase if you get cheaper items which are more likely to be marked up only $.5-1 but represent a larger percentage of the total. Nobody in their right mind would tip a delivery driver 40% of their entire meal, why are you happy to give most of that to a corporation that is doing very little for the transactions? Edit: I just did this for an example order for a nearby restaurant - 1 appetizer and 1 entree so probably good for two people not super hungry to share or one hungry person to eat. $31.59 in food, $2 delivery fee and $5.50 in fees (I subtracted sales taxes manually). This restaurant is 5 miles away and it's 11:30 local time. Tip suggestions are $9.50 (30%), $11.50, and $13.50 (42%). So at the lowest suggested tip amount, which is offensively high, you're looking at $49 before sales tax. The exact same order is $26.36 including an online order service fee but before sales tax. Even if you were going to get it delivered and tip the driver 30% you're still saving a ton of money and this is on one meal with enough food for 1-2 people. The appetizer alone is $10 on their website and $14 on DoorDash. It's a crazy system and I can't believe how much money people burn on this every year.

maxsilver 2y ago

> These services basically don't work with Western level wages. The economics are just not there. Only because the service is disrupting the business model for those wages. It worked well(ish) in 2019, it failed by 2022. It's not some kind of mystery around wages or inflation, the introduction of these services (and their popularity and growth, due to COVID closing in-person restaurants for a while) is the thing that killed the economics around delivery, for much of the US.