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Comment by the_mitsuhiko | Hacker News Reader

I use Flink a lot in Vienna. Largely also because shopping hours are so incredibly restrictive here that using Flink is even more convenient than elsewhere. Grocery stores are required by law to close at around 8, but Flink operates two hours longer. And having even larger orders show up within 10 minutes obviously makes this even more convenient.

I'm pretty sure this type of business actually fills a niche here.

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I use it for the same reason. But to be honest the real solution is to expand opening hours of normal grocery stores, or to allow something similar to Off License in the UK / Späti in Germany. It doesn’t make sense that it’s cheaper to have someone bring me beer than it is to go buy it myself.

> But to be honest the real solution is to expand opening hours of normal grocery stores.

Well, those hours need to be filled in by someone. Just like Uber, these services managed to drive down costs by paying some “contractors” to deliver food to mostly rich and well-off people. Maybe we should offer better working schedules for everyone, instead of exploiting some. Living in a state in Germany where stores close at 8 and on Sunday, I really got used to it and managed to adapt, and I’m sure a lot of the people working there do like the fact they don’t have to work until 10 or on Sundays.

> It doesn’t make sense that it’s cheaper to have someone bring me beer than it is to go buy it myself.

Yeah, because some of those costs come from the guy delivering your stuff not being an employee.

As a student, I wasn't able to work a 9-5 job, but 5PM-10PM and weekend work was a good way to make money. The alternative for many people with other obligations besides work isn't to simply work comfortable hours, it's to lose their job entirely.

Also, at least in the US, you'll often see different crowds shopping at night compared to during the day. The privileged person has a flexible work situation or a partner who goes shopping during the day, but someone who has has inflexible commitments during the day appreciates the opportunity to be able to shop at irregular hours.

At the moment, it seems those delivery brands mostly use employees and do not pay bad at all and there is just an awful lot of venture capital being poored into these companies to try and become dominant players

I see no reason why opening hours should be regulated. Then again I'm partial to the hyper market near me being open 24h every day since the change in law. Ofc, during night some services aren't available. And on other had it probably remove competitive advantage from small stores and gas stations. Still, the opening times often don't seem unreasonable.

> I see no reason why opening hours should be regulated.

Society here apparently thinks that restricting opening hours helps employees at grocery stores. I can't judge that, but public opinion is unlikely to change, so there is not much hoping for these restrictions to be lifted.

I once heard the argument about that. Somehow the whole thing does apply to shops, but not bars and restaurants. It was like that allows families to visit them, but when I asked when do those working at bars or restaurants get to visit anything I got answer they get free weekdays... The logic escapes me, why wouldn't we limit everyone equally. The families and friends can then take time off to visit restaurants in business hours during week.

Waiters tend to be paid better than supermarket staff (at least here in Austria) due to tips.

I could imagine a future system where outside of regular operating hours supermarket prices increase by x% and in return hourly salaries during that time increase by y%.

Shifting the off-core hours work from grocery store staff who are salaried employees to delivery people who are contractors (let’s be honest, as soon as one of these companies is dominating they’ll try to pull an Uber) doesn’t help anyone IMO. It’s just looking away and pretending the issue doesn’t exist.

I used to live on Fagelstraat (the street quoted in the article), directly opposite this garage. Within 4 minutes you can walk to 2 different supermarkets which are open 8am-10pm each day.

I've used one of these services (Gorillas), and while it is amazingly fast with pretty decent pricing, I'm not convinced its filling a crucial in densely populated Dutch cities, due to already easy supermarket access.

There's no doubt that a business niche is getting filled.

It's just a question of what are the true net costs of these services - and who ends up really paying for them.

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