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Comment by puranjay | Hacker News Reader

I still don't understand why there is a single global (or rather, country-wide) app for food delivery. Unlike getting cabs, this is hardly something you do when you're away from your home city.

If you had an app that only served, say, NYC, you can reduce burn drastically, not worry about scale issues too much, and run a business that's profitable without screwing over either the restaurant or the delivery person.

This is absolutely a problem that can and should be solved at a local level. As a consumer, you gain nothing by using an app that serves 100+ cities.

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I still don't understand the idea of "apps" for everything. There no reason these aren't just web apps which can be accessed by people who don't have phones. Dividing these apps into arbitrary regions seems pointless. And if it's just a web app who cares if I visit fooddeliversite.com/region or fooddeliverysiteforregion.com. The only difference is I have to create an account for each site with the latter which is very inconvenient.

>I still don't understand the idea of "apps" for everything.

how would apple and google get a 30% commission off a web-app?! you must create an app!

There's an massive ecosystem built around the current model and a lot of money that can be siphoned off. Just take a look at the AdTech space

>Probe finds middlemen siphon off half of online advertising spend

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/07/ad_tech_fees_sucked...

Anecdotal, but I only use food delivery apps when I travel, specifically for business trips. After flights + a long day in a possibly unfamiliar area, I defer to the app.

I admittedly tend to do business travel to cities but TBH, eating out at a nice restaurant is one of the perks of having to travel--not having a probably lousy pizza delivered to my hotel.

But then, I know a lot of people who do room service and I haven't in literally decades.

90% of the time, I agree with you. Expensing nice restaurants I want to try is one of the best perks of business travel.

The other 10% of the time, my flight got delayed and I arrived at my hotel at midnight. I want nothing more than to eat something quick and simple, and get to sleep. That's where room service or a food delivery app comes in, and at a lot of hotels the room service after midnight is a lot worse than a delivery app.

But where are you getting the food delivered to if you aren't at home?

The hotel or office.

I didn't know you could do that. Most hotels I visit have key cards for the elevators. Are you meeting them in the lobby? Isn't that awkward?

If you live in a gated residential complex, how is the food delivery person supposed to meet you? Same issue. In my experience, you meet them in the lobby.

Service delivered directly to your hotel room door is typically offered by the hotel exclusively.

> If you live in a gated residential complex, how is the food delivery person supposed to meet you? Same issue.

I know some people who just provides the gate code in the delivery instructions that UPS and FedEx uses to open the gate. This is becoming more necessary in my experience because of Amazon using gig workers for delivery.

Hasn't been an issue.

I would have thought part of what you pay for with a gated community is someone at the gate to receive your parcels at the gate for you?

That only applies to large, sprawling residential communities that have guards. Smaller-scale multi-family housing buildings (that have say, 20 units) with a locked gate at the entrance won't have the type of service you're describing.

The delivery person goes to the reception and either the call you or send the delivery guy to the room. Also works for packages and other things and hotels are used to this.

Not that I've used them, but I've had hotels offer delivery menus at the desk, especially if their own food options were closed.

Yes. How is it awkward?

Are hotels happy with delivery people hanging around their lobbies with smelly hot food? I imagine they'd ask you to not do that and it'd be awkward.

Huh? Ordering food to a hotel is totally normal, the concierge is not offended by "smelly hot food" and certainly I've never heard of a hotel asking guests not to order food.

um yes, guest order delivery food all the time. How is it going to be smelly ? the food is most of the time is inside a container, box or similar.

There are substantial fixed costs around developing an app that are cheaper when amortized over a larger market. It’s more efficient to write one app to be used globally than 100 apps for 100 different cities.

Also people definitely get food delivered while on vacation or traveling for work. Probably even more often than they do at home since they don’t have access to a kitchen to cook in.

Also brand recognition. Over here pizza.de for a long time was the market leader. You can't beat that name and push it with a national merketing campaign. Wehreve in the country, go to pizza.de. (Meanwhile deliveryhero / Lieferheld acquired them using VC money (Rocket Internet and others))

I used grubhub pretty exclusively as a consultant who was unfamiliar with my surroundings and too tired/jetlagged after a day of work to find food. The same chain restaurants and hotel food gets old very quickly.

It's very helpful for travel – e.g., I could use Ubereats even while I was in Japan, despite not knowing the language or which apps are good. And I'm much more likely to order delivery while traveling, since I can't cook.

I'm also not really sure what advantages there are to having 100+ local apps as opposed to a few national ones, there genuinely is a lot of infrastructure involved, and it's easier to push back against bad behavior on large companies (e.g. when PostMates was pocketing their drivers' tips.)

This is a somewhat myopic take on the subject. As a digital nomad, I like the fact that I can use Uber/Uber Eats in multiple cities/countries.

As a digital nomad, you are in a small minority and there can be experiences created specifically for your needs.

In principle you could make the same argument about lots of businesses. There are reasons Blockbuster, Wal-Mart, Target, Starbucks and the like dominated or destroyed their local competitors. The same would most likely happen to a local food delivery business.

>I still don't understand why there is a single global (or rather, country-wide) app for food delivery

uber eats works in a lot of countries. i've ordered food using it on south america, north america and europe all on the same account with the same experience.

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