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Comment by throwaway66920 | Hacker News Reader

I think food delivery will come to be won by pseudo food trucks. Vehicles with minimal cooking capabilities, perhaps just warming, that go around delivering standard uncustomized meals.

The economics of one driver picking up one order and delivering it just don’t make sense to me.

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Food delivery in cities doesn't use cars, it use bicycles (increasingly of the e- variety).

Maybe in NYC and somewhat in SF, but Chicago is too cold and snowy for at least half the year for bikes to be a big factor, and LA is way too big

Delivery people in NYC still race around on their bikes during blizzards.

Seattle is extremely hilly so I see e-bikes, I assume e-bikes would help with long distances.

Lol there is PostMates, but my experience in SF and Boston is that Uber Eats and other car=based services are most common...

That's not what I see in Austin (not that I've been paying particularly close attention).

Do you happen to have a source for this? Also perhaps the average full trip distance/time for a runner? I.e. from where they are when they accept the delivery, how far do they travel to the store and then to their destination?

I suspect that Uber Eats, Door Dash et al. do not want those figures published because it makes the profitability issues glaringly obvious.

In Europe I only see bicycles delivering Uber Eats and in Sweden it's even illegal to deliver with car unless you have a special permit which is expensive.

In Mexico City it's bikes only.

Sure, but that doesn’t really change the issue that it’s quite a bit of labor to have one person carry one meal at a time. I think most delivery is in a weird spot of having lowish quality but highish prices. I think there’s an opportunity to go for the low end market. Vastly reduced choice, no branded restaurants, but damn is it cheap. Dark kitchens are a great idea, but I think you could go one step further.

/crackpot idea

It’s a great idea. Taco Bell on wheels, eight ingredients or whatever.

I went to a McDonalds today and the line of cars in the drive-thru was out of the lot. I went inside, and there was no line. People will go to lengths to not leave their bubble (in this case, their cars). A fast food company could make a killing if they can get the menu/vehicle right.

You're just describing food trucks, and there's plenty of cities which have a large number of them.

Importantly, though, the food trucks stay in a single location for at least the duration of an entire meal service. They aren't roving around the whole day.

Mmmmm, food trucks. Great idea!

The location thing is a pretty big deal because they need permits to occupy the space. They also require someone to take orders and exchange money. And to your point, since they sit in one spot all day, you order from them if you come across one, not because it pops into your mind that it’s an easy option at home.

I've ordered quite a bit from Uber Eats, DoorDash, GrubHub, and even good ol' fashioned "call the restaurant's landline" over the last few months in SF. I think my food's been delivered by bicycle exactly once, which would by my back-of-the-brain calculations put bike deliveries at, like, a single-digit percentage of total deliveries at most. This seems to be regardless of distance.

Maybe I'm just some weird statistical anomaly?

I think it really depends on the city's density, but on the aggregate (at least in the U.S.) something like the approach you describe will win out.

There is a reason pizza has been the primary delivery food for such a long time-- most other meals are more complex to prepare/transport and harder to keep at proper serving temperature & texture. When you add customization to the mix, it's even worse.

Other foods are slightly harder to keep in good condition during delivery, but not so much that they’re not viable. Maybe it is a US thing, but here in a medium sized UK city I can see 29 different restaurants delivering pizza, curry (Indian and Thai), Chinese, kebab, and two different varieties of chicken available in just one of the delivery apps I have installed. I’m pretty confident that any one of them would be edible, and it’s current 11:30pm. During the early evening I can easily get a choice of ten or so cuisines from 40-50 restaurants across a couple of apps.

Why even need vehicles ? Japan has outstanding food vending machines.

I’m not sure I’ve seen those. Their coffee ones are pretty good, and they have snack ones like everyone else. I’ve also seen vending machines giving tickets as a way to order food. But I’m not sure I saw a working model for meals

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