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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

Uber Eats like Uber ride sharing are marketplace businesses.

In order for a new entrant to come in they need to grow both businesses and consumers at the same time. Which is hard with no competitors. But very hard with cash rich companies like Uber trying to stop you.

We saw this all play out in Australia where we initially had Foodora and Deliveroo. Then Uber joined with aggressive marketing and pricing. They pushed Foodora out and the number of businesses in Deliveroo is dropping. It is going to be a winner take all situation. At which point prices will rise and the profits will roll in.

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I've found that this isn't the experience. Most options I'm after are available in multiple apps.

More to the point, all drivers seem to use multiple apps. I often get my food in bags from the wrong company. The barrier to switching for drivers _and_ the customers is zero.

As a result this feels less like money spent on a unique strategy and more like money spent buying the business.

It's worth pointing out that in my area of Melbourne the number of places available on any of the platforms is rising, but the platform that is increasing the quickest in my area is Menulog.

Uber Eats just changed their delivery price to be based on distance, which has vastly increased the average delivery fee, and the prices on Uber Eats are inflated over every other delivery platform because of the cut they take.

And in Melbourne CBD, by far the largest number of bikes I see are delivering for Easi.

Not sure that the market is actually struggling here.

Melbourne CBD is a bit of an anomaly as you have a super high concentration of Asian students in one area. Hence the growth of Easi.

But everywhere else Uber is still by far the leader. Foodora couldn't compete. Deliveroo is struggling and Menulog isn't really competitive given lack of marketing spend.

Uber eats doesn't even operate in outer suburbs, Menulog/eatnow does

Restaurants aren't limited to a single service, though. This isn't a winner take all situation. We will end up with an oligopoly but the barriers will be low enough to prevent the winners from being too greedy or complacent.

I’m not sure I agree with your conclusion because the cost of switching is almost zero, and none of the parties involved have an incentive for loyalty. Here in DC, the restaurants heavily promote whoever is giving them the best rate and the drivers all work for multiple vendors, to the point that I’ve had orders from one accompanied by a suggestion to switch to a competitor. If anyone starts raising prices business can shift overnight, and there’s a ceiling over which people stop buying or fallback to the non-app delivery guy.

At which point prices will rise and the profits will roll in

That was Moviepass’s theory too, it didn’t work out so well in practice. Once the price went up people simply stopped using it.

I don't understand why providing subsidized services like this to grow market share is not made illegal. It seems clearly anticompetitive.

I think they claim the prices are not unsustainable once they get economies of scale. Every new company "subsidizes" their customers until they reach a critical mass that allows them to achieve profitability.

Isn't it possible that the sole reason that this market niche exist is because of competitive prices?

Maybe Uber is killing the market it is trying to monopolize and by the time it gets it all, the pricing it will have to practice to actually make it profitable will drive customers back to eating in person in the restaurant

Menulog seems to be getting creamed here too. At this point I'd say it's UberEats' race to lose.

Did you end up trying all three? Was the experience essentially the same?

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