DoorDash Joins Forces with Wolt
ir.doordash.com
ir.doordash.com
Other companies I used ranged from "Your order never arrived? Ok, we'll refund you after some time if you jump through enough hoops" (Glovo) to non-existent: "Your order never arrived? Not our problem, talk to the restaurant. Restaurant ignores your email and calls? Well, still not our problem." (pyszne.pl, polish-only).
Where I live we have no cyclist lanes so all food delivery gig workers use motorbikes. I personally see a traffic accident involving these people almost every week.
I think if construction work didn't have strict health and safety regulations we would see/hear about construction accidents every day.
This (new) industry should be regulated in the same way.
It's just that they don't get enough time to do the commute safely, or at least safety is gravely disincentivized with extra pay.
Red light, but the cross street is empty? They'll probably blow through it. And they'll be making these kinds of stupid risk assessments every few seconds, and statistics would say the chances of 100% success are against them...
Wolt has been getting most things right and I hope this acquisition doesn't change that.
I was shocked when I traveled to Germany and used their popular app Lieferando. That app didn't even have a dynamic GPS based map, instead it showed a static map with a constant "ETA 30min". They might as well have just sent me a text with "ETA 30min" as there was no functional difference. Best part was that the courrier never arrived and the app kept showing me "ETA 30min" even two days later. Of course there was no in-app support contact. Only way to contact them was via e-mail and it took them multiple days to respond. The response was very hostile and they claimed that because the courrier couldn't find the address (a giant hotel building) they just didn't make the delivery and that's how it is. Ended up having to do a chargeback.
Contrasting this to Wolt, where I've never had any issues with delivery (and there's a real time map of the courrier's location). When I've had wrong items delivered, the in-app customer support chat has been reasonable and they've just given me credit for a new order.
I'm not sure where DoorDash falls on this spectrum. I've certainly read horror stories about DoorDash here on HN, but hopefully they've improved. Would be a real shame to lose Wolt's premium experience.
Yeah I get it, there's a gap there (uncaring governments and lack of good-enough jobs), and it's not their fault that they can profit from this gap. Although I suppose the moralistic issue is that these rent-seeking companies are paying as low as possible to attract/keep the workers and pocketing the rest (not to mention the other dodgy shit like trying to extract the maximum from restaurants, e.g. by hijacking their ordering system). But hey, as a child of capitalism, I'd do the same too.
Maybe I should change jobs and be a pimp...
I don't know if Glovo as their only real competitor is held onto the same standard, I refuse to use them because they approached the market by throwing money at it, buying competitors and every ad they could in whichever media they could (TV, radio, newspapers, billboards, for months it was the only ad you'd get on YouTube, etc).
The amount of people that can afford to do that all the time will always be small enough not to make any difference in how a city operates.
What can we do so there is less incentive for entrepreneurs to sell themselves to the US companies? Is the sustainable enterprise model dead today?
Nowadays it's completely different. All the temp drivers got replaced by cheap Indians/Pakistanis doing it as a full time job (but without any insurance or benefits). And most of the restaurants don't even exist, they are literally just some guy cooking in his basement under a fake restaurant name, sometimes multiple names pretending to be competing restaurants - and they keep changing the names and logos all the time so you never even know who you're actually ordering your food from.
Just a shady business with shady "consultants" delivering food from shady places.
Texan here. You just described every good TexMex place I've been to.
From what I've heard about DoorDash, this doesn't bode well, but I guess we'll have to see. Either way, I enjoyed seeing the awful JE get pushed off its pedestal and then scramble to stay relevant. It's like a textbook lesson in what happens if your company dominates a market and then decides to just chill for 10 years.
Now that US big tech has their dirty fingers all over Wolt, I’ll guess all that will be gone in 3 years as the bullshit starts creeping in.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
p.s. in case anyone is worried: yes, we post these moderation comments regardless of country.
Happy to cite, and this might be a giant rabbit hole, but I would posit there’s massive disagreement (both for and against) your statement.
Believing free speech is context dependent (outside of yelling fire in a movie theater) seems like a future worth avoiding no matter what the benefits are when viewed in a historical context. You can stretch the analogy and say the same thing about Iran. Sorry just not interested, we’re going to have to disagree here.
And wolt is not exactly sensitive to national security interests or at risk of creating a monopoly
However "having a say" goes even further, because Wolt operates also outside the EU. Any country it operates in will have a clear say. Even countries it doesn't operate in will have a say if they have leverage over any of the countries where Wolt operates in. So in this case, the US will have a say, even though Wolt doesn't even operate in the US.
Now if we assume a more interesting situation where neither of the companies are headquartered in the EU, but still do business in the EU. Then the number of mechanisms shrinks, but not by much. The EU could just fine the companies out of existance for not complying. See examples of the EU fining Microsoft, Google, or Facebook. Not that they stopped existing, but it shows that the EU can successfully fine these companies. Another example more closely related to buying is ARM. ARM is owned by a Japanese company, and Nvidia (a US company) is seeking to buy it. Yet the EU is looking into whether they'll allow it. [1]
The fewest options are in the case where both companies are fully located outside the EU and do no business in the EU. However if some of their subcontractors are in the EU, then go back to the paragraph above. Now if these two companies are are fully, along with their full supply chain, outside of EU jurisdiction. Then the options get pretty slim. Most efficient mechanism probably being diplomatic talks. EU diplomats could ask a country that has jurisdiction (say the US) to block the sale, and in return the US would get some sweet gains elsewhere. Classic diplomatic bargaining.
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[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/27/22266504/nvidia-arm-deal...
Wait do you mean that someone like a janitor has all these benefits?
It of course depends on the country how things are implemented, but here there is a central insurance fund that all employees pay into. Then when an employee needs to take time off for parental leave the company applies to the fund and the fund covers the expenses. The company can then choose to pay out more than the fund does, or not. As is normal for benefits. This means though that every employee has a right to at least 16 weeks of leave at somewhere between 70-100% of pay. Details change the specifics.
Healthcare has little to nothing to do with companies. Technically you can sometimes get a discount by applying to a group scheme through your work, but mostly it is done independently. It costs about €170 a month a person. Depending upon how much you earn you can get a subsidy from the government for up to 100% of your monthly expense. That €170 covers most things you could need healthcare wise, although somethings aren't covered unless you buy addons, for example eyeglasses. Everyone is required to have health insurance.
I guess this is why lots of startups use 'contractor' services because things like cleaning are not their core competency but what you describe could apply to many early stage startups. In that stage many companies are in a vulnerable position and death is likely. What you describe would only further reduce the chances of the company surviving. If all we have are entrenched businesses that can afford these additional expenses we end up in stagnation over time. Maybe thats one part of the reason why we don't see many big shot companies coming out of Europe today? I don't know.
On the other hand, €170 a month seems very reasonable. From a quick search it seems like in the US the average monthly healthcare cost covered by an employer is around $1,100 or around $13,200 per year. This is in additional to the portion that employees may have to pay. This varies depending on employer and plan.
How would pensions work? That is actually what I really wanted to know about. Pensions would be an additional added cost and it seems like only the big established companies can afford to offer it.
As for pensions it depends a lot on the specifics of the company. There are state run pensions here in the NL. Additionally you have some that unions, or the government have negotiated industry wide. So if you are involved in hospitality, restaurants, and similar then there is a special pension that automatically gets paid into every month. I don't really know the specifics because I'm not part of said pension.
The state pension is somewhere between 700 (each if in a couple) or 1100 (if single) a month. This is then supplemented by private pensions which are afaik basically required to be offered by all companies, even if they aren't created equally, and as mentioned above there are special industry or union pensions. Then add in things like socialized housing (which is much nicer than in the US or UK), and the lack of need for a car here and you can get by much more easily.
If they are doing necessary labor, by what basis should they be excluded from social benefits?
Instead, all Wolt couriers in Finland have been "independent contractors" and had to have their own business name or do other paperwork, that because of how Finnish law works for small business owners, means they get cut off from any public health insurance, unemployment insurance, etc.
Courier work doesn't pay nearly enough to afford private insurance here, and since they aren't unionized (because after all they're not "workers" but business owners), they can't join a union unemployment benefit either.
There has been an ongoing attempt at unionization but it has been difficult to push through; the apps are fighting against it tooth and nail because they already run at a loss and underpay the drivers as it is. Wolt deliberately obfuscates how much couriers are making an hour in the driver app, runs propaganda articles on the customer app, and both it and Foodora have continued to fight against employee or union recognition in the courts.
It's become apparent for a while they are running scared, and running out of money. Quality of service has massively degraded over the last two years, as they've stripped support staff to the bone, manipulated delivery fees and ranges to nickle-and-dime customers, massive order delays and fudged estimates, started manipulating algorithms to push certain restaurants and promotions, rushed couriers causing constant order failures, which then mean more cost in customer refunds. It's god bad enough I stopped using it completely, because I just could no longer trust that I'd even get what I ordered, or that it wouldn't be left a sodden mess leaking all over my entryway.
It's an app that was probably going to implode if they didn't get a buyout and soon, so this move is incredibly predictable. My only surprise is just how greedy they went with the bogus valuation here.
This is not true. Finnish public health insurance is residency based: Every resident has it [1]. What you are probably thinking of, is the extra occupational private health insurance, that most Finnish employers provide for their employees (so that during work days, the employees don't need to wait in line in the public health services, but can get back to work sooner after seeing a private doctor).
[1] https://www.kela.fi/ulkomailta-suomeen-sairaanhoito-suomessa
It's possible to buy private insurance of course, a common solution for tech freelancers here is to make your own business and then hire yourself as an employee, so at least you can get an occupational health care plan.
But private health insurance here is a joke anyway, they don't cover a ton of things because they assume they can just refer you to the public care for any of the complicated stuff. Mine wouldn't even cover a CPAP machine, I had to get on a public waiting list and borrow one from the state, and it took months.
This is not true, for Finland. Residence permit for an entrepreneur [1] is still a residence permit. You get residency, home municipality, and everything that goes with it.
In he meantime it seems that their executive + lead level salaries took quite a hike between 2019 and 2020. At the sametime there were stories about how cost conscious they are. Funny.
(Just stating facts here, don't have an opinion myself on this)
[1] https://blog.wolt.com/fin/2021/06/23/taloustutkimus-majority...
This is why this model is very frowned upon by European societies as it inevitably leaves taxpayers to pick up the tab in the form of basic social security.
There's a reason most of their couriers are immigrants: anyone else can get paid more stocking a supermarket or driving a cab.
Certainly the freeing could have been done better, but the system before wasn't exactly healthy either. There was a fixed number of taxi licenses, and taxi companies were of course heavily lobbying against increasing the number. Since there were so few of them, good luck getting a taxi on a weekend night. Then again, if you were lucky and got a taxi, it was a shiny clean Mercedes (which perhaps tells something about the profit margins they were running at).
I think licensing system we had made sense, prices were capped, service was at least controlled and availability during all times was guaranteed. Ofc, this lead to some issues when there was extreme demand...
It would be ridiculously easy to just copy the US and do away with the social welfare system. See how many will actually save for their retirement lol.
It only really starts to become reasonable if you can bill yourself as consultant in fields like IT.
In my opinion it should be even more than €3 for most deliveries, I think this is subsidized by VC money and unfair conditions to the delivery people.
Disabled and elderly people not being able to procure their own food isn't really a new problem and also isn't a problem that most first world societies have ignored.
So I'm not really sure what disabled people using a service have to do with the (allegedly) unfair wages of the delivery drivers.
It was a direct response to the idea that the only people ordering from food delivery services are lazy, which is simply not true. I was incapacitated last year due to an injury and wasn't able to leave the house for a couple of weeks. I would have really struggled without Wolt.
If you're incapacitated for a longer time, you might still want to check out if any meals on wheels services are available to you. I actually know a few colleagues (in their 30s) that started getting those since working 100% from home. It can be quite a bit cheaper. And if you're like me it would also be healthier, because every time I order food it turns out to be something like burgers with fries ;-)
If people will go get their own food, try to guess how much the delivery guy earn then when the whole business goes down?
From user of the service point-of-view, the salary of a middleman delivery guy is irrelevant. It's only about what service is being given and how much does it cost. If the cost is too high then people will simply not buy the service. Food delivery is not a necessity after all.
3€ for delivery isn't really unreasonable, it's actually quite cheap. Let's say that it takes 10 minutes all together with going to restaurant pick-up/waiting, then going to drop off. With full utilization that would be 18€ an hour. Now remove 24% of VAT: 13.68€. Rest of the taxes and so on... In the end 3€ is probably too low. Even with some 30% from whole order price.
Here in China (major cities) delivery is often free and when buying from delivery apps there are additional discount available that you can't get when visiting the restaurant.
So basically it's often cheaper to get food delivered to your home than going to the restaurant itself.
Delivery prices are astronomical here. For something 5min away with car (assuming no traffic) I have to pay around 7.90e. For something 1 minute drive away I pay 1.90e. Then there's ranges inbetween from 3.90 to 5.90.
so by your actions you basically agree that in your case it is worth it, otherwise you'd just take the 10 minute walk.
Did I miss something?
That and the extra service fees they charge to customers (they are a lot more in the US [0]), means you can end up paying double what it would be if you got off your ass and walked down the street to order :-)
[0] https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/technology/uber-eat...
Wouldn't be surprised if they start splitting into separate legal entities soon to get out of the pickup price matching restrictions.