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Comment by mydongle | Hacker News Reader

No, you're right. Many people on HN would scoff at UberEats taking a 30% cut or whatever from orders, but how much would it cost for every mom and pop to try and implement something like that themselves? And have someone to maintain it? Whatever people want to say about it, these are orders (or at least a signficant number of them) that the restaurants would've never received, if not for the app existing. 70% is better than 0%.

And that 30% isn't in stone. Last place I worked at, they were able to negotiate for 15% because of how desperate Uber was.

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Hey if this is exposed there can certainly be non profits who setup delivery systems like this with a goal of providing a service, getting paid, but not trying to keep growing and growing.

It would allow users to understand this isn't free and actually pay for a subscription that essentially does this.

This regulation creates an opportunity for new business models.

Very good point. I hadn't considered this, transparency allowing for potential competitors to differentiate.

Remember before uber, yellow cabs had their own app. The experience was shitty. Nonprofits are not known for great software products and operational skills.

Yellow Cab Company is the furthest thing in the world from a nonprofit. They recently went bankrupt, but a century of monopoly tactics and mafia ties preceded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Cab_Company

As much as consumers would love the idea of non-profits sweeping in and doing the same service as businesses sans the profit margin, this is simply not what we observe in real world very often. Running an organization is hard, and people doing that usually want to be compensated for their efforts.

> people doing that usually want to be compensated for their efforts.

Non profit does not mean free. People can be paid salary, but the business does not need a 30% Profit margin.

If anything non profits have a somewhat of a reputation for being a way to pay the top people big salaries without the pressure of having investors pushing for more profits & getting the image of being "good" mostly for free since it's a non profit.

Most of the food deliveries services are running using VC funds. I don't think there's much scope of profit here for a ~$5-$7/delivery charge having someone someone pickup and deliver a package along with other costs like building/maintaining the system, credit card charges etc,

Frankly, I feel something like peach which bundles multiple orders from a few restaurants is the way to go if you want to make money as a food delivery service.

It will probably be hard for a non-profit to do all of that (especially ethically like paying fair wages) considering Uber, Grubhub and Doordash are all losing money while charging 30%+ for the current services.

Non profits don't need to make money for investors.

Just enough to pay their workers and themselves.

70% isn't always better than 0%. But if a small restaurant did this, they would tack on delivery charges. The customer should be paying for the service, not the restaurant. I realize that a delivery charge is also added on. But it feels like the restaurant does most of the work, and the delivery company makes all the money

70% is better than 0%.

This really depends on their margins.

Exactly you can’t make up the losses with volume as the bank in the SNL skit.

If the restaurants were losing money on every order then they wouldn't be on Uber Eats in the first place.

Tock To Go only charges 3% for this service.

What about the people who use the app instead of ordering directly? They lose 30% on that sale for no reason.

The food still has to get to your house somehow.

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