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Comment by covercash | Hacker News Reader

I hate Slice. They basically came in and registered similar domains to existing pizza shops but because they are better at SEO than the mom & pop places, their results out rank the real sites.

They even went in and updated unclaimed listings on yelp, google, Foursquare, etc. and put their site.

That would be fine if the pizza shops were on board with this. But none of the shops I order from had any clue their orders were being hijacked. Oh, and Slice charges more than if you ordered directly from the shop.

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The download.cnet.com of the pizza world.

I spoke to the my local pizza shop in NYC. He said between grubhub, uberRush, yelp and now slice, they are eating his pizza profit margins. He said he has to deal with 3-4 software / hardware POS products for EACH service. They are sucking him dry. He can't make money BUT needs them to bring the business. Slice takes a 20% "slice" per order / of his business. Flour costs going up, he makes his own mozzerella. UberRush takes 33%. I don't know about grubhub / yelp % but its not good for him. His pizza is authentic neopolitina with homemade ingredients. You Actually taste the marinara sauce and fresh mozzerella. Dominos goal is to "squeeze" out and maximize profits using the cheapest possible ingredients they find! Then tell you its good!

>UberRush takes 33%. //

Man, that is terrible. This is a major problem with capitalism, the optimisation doesn't work when it gets corrupted with marketing - in theory these frontends would compete until they were making practically nothing above their costs, in practice the one(s) with the most capital behind them (or best marketing department) will win and leech the money away from the producers and to the people who commissioned a clever app. It all seems pretty evil to me.

Delivery is a cost.

And you think the firm charging 33% has a 65% percent higher cost than the one charging 20%?

If it's Uber, probably yeah. Gotta pay the drivers comparable to what they would be making hauling people instead of pizzas.

Which will inevitably lead him to use poorer quality ingredients in order to survive. 3-4 POS is ridiculous for a small business. Why hasn’t this been solved yet?

Later on ProductHunt: PizzaCo unifies all your pizza POS services!

He said he gets called from india about some app / software that offers a dashboard to connect uberRush, slice, yelp, grubhub guess what? they take a fee on top of the fees from each POS / Software provider he is using. Its a "Layer Cake" fee. Like that movie. Fee on top of fee. Each morning he wakes up to further confusion when what he REALLY wants todo is make damn good pizza. He also said no one comes to eat in his spot EVERYONE orders out or take out using one of those apps above. He can't figure out all these different apps / services and has to hire someone todo it. Each time he tries to call one of these service providers, he can't get through to an actual human.

love "Layer Cake". Sienna Miller at the peak of her powers.

Damn she was HOT in that movie. First time i saw her.

Is he wondering what would happen if he ad never gotten onboard of any of those services? With such extreme cuts they take it sound like a shop with his unique selling point (neapolitan pizza, home made cheese) may be able to survive fine with less business but more profit per order.

Venturing to guess / IMO:

Seems risky for a startup "integrator" (hypothetical company who would solve this) to have their business depend on providing specific integrations per startup + POS system. You would need to keep tabs on any changes ea. of the companies like Slice, GrubHub etc. made from both a service standpoint, and a hardware standpoint, right?

To top it off, it would just be one more layer ontop of this, so how would the company make money? Doesn't seem to solve the Pizza guys problems.

Or perhaps you just generally meant, why hasn't someone built a more modular POS unit that would work with any of these guys. That I have no idea about.

Sounds like a FOSS problem.

I worked in the restaurant POS space until very recently.

We (and our competitors) are partnering up with Grubhub, Eat24, etc. to solve the hassle of multiple tablets at the counter. Orders can just flow seamlessly from Grubhub's web site / app to our software (which the restaurant already uses), and the restaurant staff just has to confirm the order.

Unfortunately the margins all pretty thin, and ultimately you try to make money off payment processing.

> 3-4 POS is ridiculous for a small business. Why hasn’t this been solved yet?

My guess is that the companies would otherwise have trouble enforcing their cuts if the customer chooses to pay when they pick up

just curious what the name of his shop is? I'm always looking for good neopolitan pizza in this town.

Not OP but Kesté is great.

This is their site: http://kestepizzeria.com/en/home/

Not to be confused with the Slice site, which is linked on Google Maps (https://www.kestepizzavinonewyork.com/)

Keste is delicious! They also have good prices.

I love Keste, also checkout motorinos (my top 2 fav)

Just made a suggested Google edit to change this.

Same here, I will visit when I'm in NYC soon.

try lombardies in Manhattan, frannies in brooklyn. You want the very next level stuff? then you gotta go old school Lucali in carol cardens ( Brooklyn) he makes his own Burrata ( its liquid mozzerlla) oh lets not forget Roberta's in Bushwick ( JUST WOW)

> He said he has to deal with 3-4 software / hardware POS products for EACH service

I see this in some small shops. Their order counter is crammed with an iPads for each delivery service usually (4-6). Just to run ONE APP. It's ridiculous with what they have to put up with.

Is there no service that provides one platform to manage all of them?

They want a cut, too.

I'm curious why he simply hasn't raised prices for orders through those platforms?

Customers tend to be insanely price sensitive when it comes to low-end food such as pizza. So you can’t just raise prices because there is a certain limit to what people will be willing to pay before they decide to get pizza from one of the five other pizzarias on that street.

> Customers tend to be insanely price sensitive when it comes to low-end food such as pizza

Then he’s in the wrong market or marketing his product wrong. Lots of cities put a premium on well-made pizza over cheap, “I’m drunk” pizza.

Hmm yes let’s tell someone they are in the wrong market and are doing things wrong when we know literally nothing about their situation. That is not supremely arrogant at all.

I asked a pizza shop owner and they said everytime they’ve raised prices in the past revenue still went up.

If he can't raise prices then he's in a de facto war of attrition.

Sometimes I get upset that my favorite pizza spots in NYC are cash only and non-delivery but after reading this I’m sure the quality wouldn’t be the same if they switched.

20-33 percent? That's crazy! I often encounter MAVN for restaurants in Austin. Looking them up, they $50 a month and $0.25 an order, which is way more reasonable.

http://www.whatismavn.com

You would think that competition between the tech companies would drive down prices for the shops.

Sharing percentages are interesting. 33% seems just too high.

That is why I wonder, if these food delivery apps are actually going to be a boon or bane for small mom and pop shops. Sure, they bring in customers but if it comes at the cost of reducing margins it is not good.

Many of the smaller shops might end up going out of business - either because of reducing margins or because they can't find customers later - all their customers might actually expect them to provide service through these apps.

> They even went in and updated unclaimed listings on yelp, google, Foursquare, etc. and put their site.

"growth hacking"

Now I hate them too. I hate companies with no decency and values.

There needs to be a new movement like the eco or fair trade stuff, where you know that the owners get a fair deal. I’m sure there is a market for that

Sounds almost like a protection racket.

"Nice pizza shop you got there. Be a shame if someone was to burn down its search engine rankings and hold unclaimed profiles to ransom".

This literally sounds like the kind of things OrderAhead pulled a couple years ago.

Gross. I wonder if they were the inspiration for Sliceline or if that was just a happy coincidence?

Na that was just a pun. ;)

How can this be legal?

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