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Comment by giarc | Hacker News Reader

> Bento Club: Customers pre-order food from a select set of restaurants, and Bento picks it up and brings all orders to a shared pickup spot within one block of the customer’s office.

Unless it's 10x cheaper, I don't see how this is any better than Uber eats, Doordash etc (that actually bring food to your door).

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This one might seem like a minor shift for the consumer experience, but a key difference with other services is that it's actually a sustainable business model. Because they do batched deliveries with hub-and-spoke distribution, the cost for deliveries is lower, so they'll have way higher profit margins than something like Postmates. Uber eats will be able to hold out since profits realistically don't matter to them, but I think the main stronghold something like Bento Club could have is the fact that the current courier model doesn't really work in the long-run.

I thought we’d been through this?

https://sf.eater.com/2017/1/10/14231188/bento-closed-san-fra...

Weren't they on the Gimlet Startup podcast too? [1] Looks to be a different company/founder though.

The other bento started out trying to make the meals themselves but couldnt make them cheap enough. They were losing money on every one sold. Eventually, if I remember right, they tried to pivot to a service like this that got meals from restaurants, but didnt fair much better. They were doing last mile delivery though if I recall.

[1] https://www.gimletmedia.com/startup/kitchen-confidential-sea...

Seems like they're trying to squeeze somewhere between pickup services (e.g. MealPal) and delivery services (e.g. Uber Eats). Cheaper than delivery thanks to reduced labor and logistics costs, more expensive than pickup services because those costs still exist. I guess they're banking on people being willing to pay a little more than pickup service rates in exchange for more options.

Yeah that was my read too. Taking the MealPal offering (cheaper lunches in exchange for pre-ordering and limiting your selection) and adding group delivery to it (adding a bit of cost in exchange for convenience).

If they essentially do "MealPal, but delivered," then I could see it working. Noticeable price point difference from other delivery options, but maintaining a range of restaurant meal options for people to choose from.

But yeah, they look like sink or swim based largely on what price they can offer consumers

I think the competition is Eat Club, not any of those individual delivery services.

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