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Comment by mattmanser | Hacker News Reader

While I agree this self-employed farce has to stop, the service itself is good. Previously takeaways were all the more greasy options, the deliveroo options are nicer food and it's aimed at a different market segment. It allows venues access to a market that was previously denied to them because they couldn't justify running their own delivery service full-time.

They charge £2.50 per delivery. If they were paying couriers minimum wage I assume they'd be able to make money off it still.

I think that price probably includes the high risk that the self-employed status will be rescinded.

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While I agree this self-employed farce has to stop, the service itself is good

I think they are having issues then with scaling out - I've used Deliveroo a grand total of 3 times, all for restaurants that I know are about a mile from my house, every time Deliveroo have been 45-60 minutes after their estimated time, the food was cold and it would literally have been quicker to walk to the restaurant, eat, and walk home. Anecdata I know but I don't see how they can make it work without hiring a lot more people. And this business can only work financially if they don't.

Deliveroo also take 30% of the food sale so I always assumed the £2.50 went to the rider, which seems like decent amount.

Yeah, I forgot to say that. 30% is very similar to just eat's take too. Seeing as the minimum order is invariably £10, the minimum take for deliveroo is £5 per order, but I'm guessing it's usually more like £7-£10.

They'll definitely still be able to make money after a change in status.

Where have you got that 30% number from? I am pretty sure it was around 10% four years ago in most parts of western Europe and it would surprise me seeing it tripled.

Oh yeah, no idea why I got 30% stuck in my head.

Are they going to make people use their local restaurant 30% more? Otherwise it's just eating the restaurant's profits (pardon the pun).

30% to remove the tables & waiting staff (plus toilets, waiting area) for those customers? Seems like a decent deal.

Only if you never want to eat out or be waited on now and again.

Wow, 30%? So restaurants that use deliveroo I should be able to ask for at least a 20% discount for collecting food? Sounds like Groupon's modus, once the restaurants realise they're giving away such a large part of their profits surely they stop using them? Isn't it cheaper to have your own delivery people?

Edit: Thinking about it, if I order pizza for £20, the company adds £2.50 for delivery. So £8.50 is being spent on delivery (?) .. a normal taxi is about £5 for that trip; an Uber or similar must be cheaper still?

  a normal taxi is about £5 for that trip;
  an Uber or similar must be cheaper

Uber's fares are subsidised (59%) by their VC funding [1], so they make a poor long-term comparison. Expect them to either corner the market, at which point fares go up, or run out of runway.

[1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9a3vye/uber-true-...

The source of that article - https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-delive... - makes no sense to me.

The cost of sales and operating expenses seem non-sensical. What are Uber's cost of sale? What are it's operating expenses? How are they different?

If Uber takes a 20% cut, the only cost of sale I can't see is credit card costs. Everything else - including servers - is just an operating expense.

More than likely the lifetime value of a ride sharing customer is huge, so rather than subsidising riders, they are likely front loading acquisition costs, and hoping to make it back in lifetime value. That seems to me a pretty darned solid strategy.

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