Comment by MattGaiser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MattGaiser | Hacker News Reader

Reading this article, I realized that DoorDash and UberEats now own me as a customer.

I have never been particularly picky about my restaurants. Chinese food is Chinese food. McDonalds vs Wendys is not something I have strong feelings about. Plenty of places have good ribs. Obviously there are places I will avoid due to bad experiences, but I am not highly opinionated as long as I find the food tasty. I am one of those people who would go to a different BBQ place if I found a cheaper one or a more interesting menu.

Even when I don't want to cook, I don't search for a particular food item anymore and probably take the top DoorDash deal half the time. Even within that, I don't choose a restaurant anymore. I choose food and am generally satisfied with whoever DoorDash has to supply that food.

That is a major shift for the food industry if even a small percentage of people are like myself as it means I must be won as a customer every single time I order and can easily have any restaurant in my quadrant of the city (rather than just going to the local one).

This is so interesting to me because I just never use these services. I think I've ordered on Grubhub's website maybe once, and I've never used DoorDash or UberEats, and I eat a lot of takeout. Though I don't do much delivery and maybe it's really just down to that.

The context of these (perfectly valid) complaints often comes down to, "wow this is a parasitic business model and we hate these guys, but we have to use them" from the business owner, and I guess I've just never gotten how much of the market they've apparently eaten up.

I'll use the restaurant's own online ordering system (a lot of the ones I've visited lately are using the Toast POS system which seems to include online ordering, and I've used some of the apps and websites of the bigger chains), or call them, but the generic apps just seem like an unnecessary middleman and I can't quite get why I would use them, and that's without even considering that they're skimming off the restaurant's profits. It's also quite rare that I want "just anything" within some category vs. some specific restaurant.

Maybe there's something I'm missing...

I suspect we have different thought processes.

I can't Google for a restaurant as the only thing I have decided is that I want to eat takeout food by the time I open DoorDash. So DoorDash is not only a mechanism for delivery, but it is a mechanism for selecting the food.

I think there is a large portion of people, including me, that really just wants to maximize the reward to effort ratio of ordering from restaurants. The apps give you a one-stop place to filter on quality (reviews are generally good directionally), make it quite easy to get refunds if there are issues with your order, and streamline the payment/tipping process.

I’m in your camp. Don’t use it much. But not a heavy take away user in general. I have a preference for fresh food even if it’s McDonald’s (10 minute old McDonald’s is worse to me). I don’t even like drive thru much and they proliferate in Texas.

That said, when I order delivery (usually pizza), I just call. I feel like any amount of web/app UI, doing the ordering and account creation/management is a huge hassle. The telephone is easy and fast. It’s like Alexa except with a real human. Y’all should try it out /s

But seriously, I’m a little older (that weird pre-millennial gen), but I find it crazy/funny how extreme the younger generations avoidance of voice calls has become. I don’t like talking on the phone, but sometimes it’s the best UI.

I used to work at a pizza place and often times phone orders will actually disrupt the pizza making since pizza makers have to go take the calls if there aren't any or not enough delivery drivers (who are the primary call takers). It takes just one problem customer to hold up a pizza maker for enough time and cause a huge pain.

Not saying you're wrong to call though, just a little random anecdote.

What you describe is a valuable innovation on the part of the platforms, though. They allow you to search and order a specific menu item, without wading through a list of restaurants guessing what may or may not be on their menu.

Oh certainly. The only thing I order now without a delivery app is pizza.

That’s true, they’re definitely creating value, and probably increasing total delivery and takeout revenue industry-wide. But I suspect that they’re capturing even more value than they’re creating, with the bulk of the difference coming out of restaurants margins, which were razor thin to begin with.

I don't believe UberEats engaged in this practice of fake online presence of local restaurants. They also did not reduce payment to drivers when customers tip, unlike DoorDash.

Is DoorDash still doing that? I thought they promised to stop.

Yep, great perspective. We can apply it to Amazon and Netflix next, then the platforms where we get information - search results, news, social media, etc.

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