Hacker News Reader

Comment by bragr | Hacker News Reader

"It’s used to subsidize an untenable customer expectation. You leverage a broken workforce to minimize your genuine labor expenses."

With the steady erosion of the quality of the drivers, I don't even expect to receive my order in a timely fashion, in good condition, and without any drama from the drivers. I've essentially stopped getting delivery which is a bad sign since I'm basically the target audience: single, urban dweller, disposable income, willing to pay $5-10 premium to not have to pick it up from myself.

No particularly noteworthy stories, mostly just a series of odd encounters. Probably the funniest (in retrospect) was the taco order where I could see on the app the guy parked the next block over, and I get a call from him like 20 minutes later that he's "lost" my order and is going back to go replace it. Well he finally shows up at my place like an hour late with a fresh order of tacos reeking of weed. So he probably burned one down in the car and ate my tacos, but at least he made good. Why he couldn't deliver my original tacos and go get his own, I will never know.

View on HN

> willing to pay $5-10 premium to not have to pick it up from myself

You're going to have to pay a lot more. The model can't be sustained at this price. Once the driver pays for gas and (over time) wear and tear on the car, even with healthy tips this ends up being sub-minimum wage. We got used to that price when VC money was subsidizing it and gas was half the price it is now.

Yeah you can read someone's personal account on how they are able to clear $20 an hour regularly doing delivery, but they have to employ all kinds of strategies to do so, including taking multiple orders at once, purposely ignoring orders that are unlikely to have significant tips, and completely ignoring entire sections of the city that aren't "hotspots" with tons of restaurants cranking through orders. Not to mention they are still probably undercounting the cost of wear on their car, and most people touting their delivery driver profitability are probably exaggerating.

Shockingly, most food delivery people don’t use cars…

This is the weirdest straw man. Scooters are cheaper to operate and faster if there’s any traffic.

Maybe most in large urban areas, but everywhere else 99.9% of delivery is happening in an automobile.

Here in NL 99.9% of delivery is not happening by automobile haha

There’s also fuck all food deliveries happening outside urban areas.

Not true at all. It's stupid expensive in most suburbs but its definitely there.

Yeah, it’s true. The amount of restaurants and amount of deliveries they make to suburbs is negligible when compared with urban areas.

That is a very different claim

No it’s not. It’s exactly the same claim. “fuck all” means nothing or very little, in this context it’s obviously “very little”.

In any case, we’re discussing the sustainability of delivery services. Most of the world lives in cities, it really doesn’t matter if they’re unsustainable in rural areas.

you changed your claim again. Suburbs app delivery is negligible compared to urban, but its still pretty hot. My area has farms but you can still see delivery pickups running constantly at popular restaurants.

Go on, explain how and where I changed my claim.

While you’re at it, maybe also explain how this has anything to do with the subject at hand?

(x < urban) != (x <= small)

Suburbs are urban.

The 'sub' is a reference to the proximity to the (likely denser) city, not a step between urban and rural.

So for instance, the small town I live in is also considered urban (but is located in a rural county).

What are you classing as "urban" ?

My town has just under 120k people and the majority of deliveries are done by car.

Wow, breaking news! Americans refuse to drive two wheeled vehicles for no particular reason!

Truly, a shocking new development.

Maybe you should consider weather, families and highways.

Yes, because they don’t have weather or families in London.

They also have public transportation so you can get by without a car and have a scooter for when it works. In the US most people need a car anyway so they have it already and anything with two wheels is there for fun and not neccesity.

So, what you’re saying is that two wheeled vehicles are equally unnecessary in both contexts?

I have no idea how you got there from what I said.

You said "americans avoid two wheeled vehicles for no reason".

They have cars anyway so they use them.

The reason they need cars is because it gets cold, there are highways that go fast and it's dangerous and illegal to take young kids or more than one kid on a scooter. This is not complicated.

All of those things are true in Europe too.

Nope. Car ownership is much higher in the US and Canada, especially compared to big cities where there would be delivery.

You should go on holiday in Vietnam and see how entire families ride on a single scooter, on the highway, in weather.

That sounds extremely dangerous. Sure it’s do-able and normalized for them, but I don’t want to expect that sort of thing where I live because it is now trendy to hate everything about cars.

It is extremely dangerous. But there surely must be a middle ground between cultural norms in USA and Vietnam.

People in developed economies shouldn't be carrying around sofas on the backs of mopeds as they do in Vietnam, but it should be reasonable enough to deliver a pizza on one where the weather allows in the USA.

FWIW: I'm very much a car guy.

Indeed, nobody is carrying their family on a scooter in London, but at the same time pretty much nobody is delivering food with a car either.

I've lived in Vietnam for multiple years and drove scooters around all the time. That doesn't have anything to do with the claim that "americans avoid two wheel vehicles for no reason".

Also the honda scoopy and yamaha scooters are 115cc and can't get up to american highway speeds. In Thailand it isn't even legal to drive scooters or even motorcycles on their highways.

Maybe you should go on holiday to Vietnam in the winter, you might realize there is no snow in Vietnam.

Americans usually need a car anyway so they already have one.

> That doesn't have anything to do with the claim that "americans avoid two wheel vehicles for no reason".

It has everything to do with your refutation of that claim, however.

My actual implicit claim is that there appears to be a degree of truth in the idea that US residents have a cultural aversion to two-wheeled transport that extends beyond the justifications you proffered to dismiss the claim.

appears to be a degree of truth in the idea that US residents have a cultural aversion to two-wheeled transport

No there isn't. People have jobs to go to and there isn't much public transportation, it gets cold, snows and people need to use the highways. People need to have a car so they already have a car and that's why scooters are usually something people buy for fun and not neccesity.

This is a very US-centric view. In most of the world, poor people (who are delivery drivers) don't own cars.

>Shockingly, most food delivery people don’t use cars…

Depending on geographic location, no doubt. Can you imagine risking your life on a scooter weaving through idiots in their lifted pickups in any American metro?

Pickups are more of a rural thing. They're hardly normative in urban areas.

Maybe where your familiar with?

Last I lived in Calgary, trucks were absolutely the norm.

>That's especially true in Alberta, where 89 per cent of spending on new vehicles this year has gone to trucks, vans and SUVs. That compares to about 80 per cent, nationwide.

>"We're basically a truck market," said Denis Ducharme, president of the Motor Dealers Association of Alberta.

SUVs and vans are very different from trucks

>"We're basically a truck market," said Denis Ducharme,

And, I mean... I lived there. Saw many more trucks than anything else on the road.

https://www.calgary.ca/roads/conditions/traffic-cameras.html

Traffic camera feeds suggest this is not the case by a long shot? I don't have a particular stake in this race though.

In the past 20 years or so we’ve seen the emergence of car-based SUVs and minivans, but large (and at one time, all) SUVs and vans are trucks with modified bodies.

They're a long shot from the big lifted pickups though

Car-based SUVs are not like trucks. All of the full size trucks sold in NA have SUV counterparts also on the road, and they are exactly like trucks.

For example, the Wagoneer is the SUV version of the RAM.

The Suburban and Tahoe are the SUV versions of GM trucks.

The Land Cruiser, Sequoia, and Lexus LX are the same platform as the Tundra.

Etc.

Automakers don’t do one-off light trucks. They are all shared platforms.

Not when you're on a scooter, I would think.

Having been to both (but not having driven a scooter in Atlanta) I'd suggest scooting around Paris is very different than scooting around Atlanta.

You'd think, right? Because very few people in urban areas have a real need for a pickup. But I live in a large city in the US, and I'd estimate that 20-40% of the vehicles I see on the road are enormous pickups like this one [1]. And I think this is fairly typical in most US cities.

[1] https://www.ramtrucks.com/ram-2500.html

It depends on where you go. I tend to see more pickups in cities in the U.S. South (dualies on the freeway with no trailer? Really?). More people with something to prove down there I guess.

Istanbul has a thriving delivery ecosystem that appears to be mainly mopeds. I think what really makes it work for them is how densely populated it is so drivers really don't need to go far, there's plenty of orders coming in from nearby. And Istanbuls traffic is way crazier than any I've seen in the US.

Not if you also moonlight as an Uber/Lyft driver

Anywhere you have snow is going to have to have deliveries done by car.

No? That’s definitely not the norm in places like Finland.

Sure, in the winter the proportion of couriers driving cars increases. You also see tons of people on fatbikes and similar.

You think "the norm" in Finland is for people to drive scooters through snow for delivery? Can you show a link that explains why you think that?

I’m not sure how you could take that away from my comment which did not mention scooters at all.

Not a single delivery driver from any service has shown up at my home in a major city in the US southwest using a scooter. Every single one drives a car (I see them pull up on our cameras). You would die of heat stroke pretty quickly delivering food on a scooter in the middle of summer out here.

>You would die of heat stroke pretty quickly delivering food on a scooter in the middle of summer out here.

Scooter deliveries are the norm even in the warmest areas of Europe.

Same goes for places like Tehran, in fact almost all of Asia.

Every single order (bar one) I ever got was delivered on a scooter.

The exception was riding a standard bicycle.

Sure, I live in mainland Europe, but you talk as if you talk for everywhere.

Meanwhile in my major european city, I'd say bikes have a 70% share among delivery drivers. (Although some of those bikes may have cost more than the cars the other 30% are driving, which is a bit of a "uber tesla driver" situation).

Why do you claim “most”? Are you certain? Do you have data? I saw a lot of delivery scooters in California, but they seem far less common in other cities. Lane splitting also isn’t legal everywhere either, so scooters aren’t necessarily faster. What cities & countries are you referring to?

Scooters are very limited in cargo capacity are not particularly viable in rainy or winter weather, not to mention just statistically increased injuries and danger for riders, which eventually translates into liability with scale. If you have to make multiple trips when one car trip would have sufficed, that completely undermines the cheap & fast argument. If you have to have cars around for bad weather days or bad weather seasons anyway…

Did you know that there are places outside of the US?

> Scooters are very limited in cargo capacity

Only Americans would be regularly ordering so much takeout as to worry about scooters not being able to transport it. You really need to reconsider your dietary choices if this is a serious concern.

> Scooters […] are not particularly viable in rainy or winter weather

Scooters are perfectly viable in rainy weather. Nobody does food deliveries with a car in London.

Sure I do, that’s part of my point. That doesn’t answer the question. Why do you claim “most”?

Because it’s the norm in Europe, in Asia and Africa. Probably Latin America too.

Do you have any data or other backup for your claim besides opinion? You might be right, I’m just curious. Do you know where scooters aren’t the norm? Do you know how often alternatives are used and for what reasons?

US and Canada are probably the only places where scooters aren't the norm. I guess in Kyiv and Bucharest you see a decent amount of deliveries with cars, but those people are mostly driving super cheap LPG vehicles.

Even in Dubai scooters are the norm, despite the city embracing a very American take on urban design.

No, I don't have data to back this up. I don't need to, this is obvious to anyone who has traveled the world. If you read this thread, you will only see Americans talking about food delivered by car.

> Only Americans would be regularly ordering so much takeout as to worry about scooters not being able to transport it. You really need to reconsider your dietary choices if this is a serious concern.

I’m sorry you felt the need to get snarky. Making assumptions undermines your argument. It’s not hard for the orders for 2 families of light eaters to not fit in a single scooter.

You can easily carry food for 10 people on a scooter unless the packaging is crazy.

This, again, is the norm in Europe.

Why should the average delivery guy be driving a car to be able to accept big orders that probably make up less than 1% of all deliveries?

Actually most of the delivery people here are on bikes, scooters (the motor ones) or electric scooters, I've never seen a car delivery. They are carrying big backpacks like this one https://search.brave.com/images?q=deliveroo+driver+backpack&...

Now I still dislike the services and it's really annoying that they caused this revival of motorscooters who are now driving recklessly on the bike paths, but transport volume is really not an issue.

That’s an unusually small one too. On scooters you tend to see much bigger rigid boxes, like this https://i.pinimg.com/736x/13/e1/1a/13e11aab642c5589b92ae570f...

Where’s “here”? What justifies claiming “most”? I’ve seen lots and lots of car delivery in the US. I’ve seen car delivery in China too. Also Iceland, Mexico and Spain. And I’ve seen scooters in all of those countries. I have no problem with people saying there’s a “lot” of scooters/motorcycles/bikes/whatever, relatively. It might be most, but “most” is a specific and strong claim that may not be true and can’t be backed up, and should be stated as such.

How about you present some evidence to the contrary? I get that you’re probably just trolling, but what you’re doing here is akin to asking for proof that the sky is blue or that most humans have two hands.

I wasn’t talking you to here, and in this case parent was (I assume) talking about scooter usage in the US, so you may in fact be wrong here, according to you (“US and Canada are probably the only places where scooters aren't the norm.”).

I don’t need to present any evidence to the contrary because I didn’t make any claims to the contrary. I’m not claiming scooter usage isn’t high, I didn’t say it’s not more than cars or bikes. I was more careful than that.

You made a strong claim that you can’t back up, and you’ve already admitted that you’re just making up. That’s on you, not me. I’m simply sensitive to people making assumptions and insisting on calling them facts, and that is what you did.

Just like your unfortunate and unnecessary anti-American comments that got you downvoted, you could have ended this by simply acknowledging gracefully that it’s your opinion, and you believe it’s most, rather than continuing to add hyperbole after hyperbole, exaggeration after exaggeration on top. Claiming scooter usage of scooters for food delivery is the same as the sky being blue is a pretty bad analogy, and weakens your point.

Adding an ad-hominem on top accusing me of trolling just becuase you can’t answer my question also reflects poorly on you and tends to undermine what you’re trying to say. It would be so much stronger if you simply qualified your claim as your own belief and left it at that, or did some Googling to find stats. I’m sorry that asking for evidence of what you said upset you so much.

> Just like your unfortunate and unnecessary anti-American comments that got you downvoted

anti-American? Seek help buddy.

> It would be so much stronger if you simply qualified your claim as your own belief and left it at that, or did some Googling to find stats.

Look, my claim is obvious to anyone who isn’t completely out of touch with the world outside of North America.

“Googling to find stats”? There obviously isn’t going to be any meaningful numbers to be found on Google wrt this.

Using cars for food deliveries is a completely ridiculous idea in most cities of the world. There’s no parking! How are you going to deliver food with a car when there’s no free parking?

Shit, what do you think are the odds that a food delivery guy can even afford a car in most of the world? There’s something like 1 billion passenger cars in the world, that leaves you with something like 1 8th of a car per person.

This really is as obvious as “the sky is blue”.

To suggest that you’re trolling is simply the most charitable way to interpret your comment.

By here I mean a large city in Sweden and by most I mean >90%. If you would be here you would see how completely obvious it that scooters and bikes are the majority. My reply was to someone who said that large deliveries could not be done with scooters or bikes. My experience here definitely falsified such a claim.

How come that many chains are able to employ (moped) delivery drivers above minimum wage, without surcharging the customer as much? Speaking of Europe.

They aren't paying thousands of software engineers for the work of a few dozen software engineers.

Isn't that because there is a significant fee going to the delivery service in the DoorDash/UberEats/etc model? The chain doesn't need to pay for as much additional marketing/sales/support costs for their delivery service, its baked into their operating costs. Also there is a centralized hub for the drivers where they are going back and forth between a single chain location rather than driving around to many different restaurants. I would assume there are efficiencies in having a tighter loop like that.

What if we factor in multiple deliveries per trip, and ghost kitchens?

For the former, I wish there was an app that notified me when a neighbor orders from a restaurant I’ve frequented, near a time of day I’ve ordered. They could offer a discount for piggyback orders, since the cost to the driver is negligible and they can convince the restaurant that they provided the value-add of the additional revenue.

“ wish there was an app that notified me when a neighbor orders from a restaurant I’ve frequented, near a time of day I’ve ordered.”

That’s a privacy nightmare.

The messaging from the app wouldnt/shouldn't be about what your neighbor did, just that you have a limited time offer for a discount.

That they take the data gathering and analytics they already do to provide some customer benefit?

Let's be clear, this will happen regardless if you get the notification or not. Your purchases are going to be analyzed down to the second you made the purchase.

Yes, but the metadata that is analyzed is not something that is being pushed to your neighbor's phone.

> ... when a neighbor orders from a restaurant ...

More to the point, it stays "safe" until (let's be real) there is a data breach. That's less of a privacy nightmare when you consider there's a much smaller range of actors that will use the data from a breach. Contrariwise, the ability to just query their API for some of that data gets turned into an app that someone's stalker ex downloads so they can proceed with stalking.

Privacy nightmare indeed.

I would say that there is a massive leap to go from "an app will occasionally tell you someone in your general area ordered from X" to "stalkers download this so they can stalk someone".

"Neighbors" is a loose term. It doesn't literally mean only the people you live immediately next to. Aside from the fact that the person receiving the notification has no information about the radius this notification was triggered by, there would also not be identifying information in the notification. You're not being told "That person across the hall, John Smith, bought a large pizza from ABC pizza ten minutes ago and is on his way to pick it up now".

A stalker would get no actionable information from "Someone in your area ordered sushi from XYZ".

There is also no indication that this would be available in any sort of publicly scrapable API, I really don't know where you pulled that from. Push notifications, by definition, are not queried for.

Just to be clear, I wasn’t suggesting that anyone outside the company get any information about you or your order. They would just find out that a neighbor (loosely defined) has placed an order from a restaurant you like. That’s it.

If a platform created this feature I imagine they would also prime the pump with dishonest notifications about “a neighbor ordered from X restaurant”, with the expectation that they could parlay a single fake order into many real ones.

I didn't even want to go into pumping notifications, but my mind also went there.

Postmates actually had this feature, called "party orders" where you can latch onto an existing order for no delivery fee (just your standard platform fees+tip). It'd show a rotating list of places you could order from, updating every five minutes.

I think the model is only really sustainable at "affordable prices" in high density areas. New York is a good example. You can watch videos following e-bike delivery drivers in these high density areas. They're sometimes retrieving and delivering multiple orders within a 15 minute period. Unfortunately New York isn't the greatest example because the high wages are offset by the extreme housing costs. It feels incredibly wasteful to send someone driving around to pick up some tacos, but as long as I can get it fairly cheaply, I'll continue to do it.

Yeah you can read someone's personal account on how they are able to clear $20 an hour regularly doing delivery, but they have to employ all kinds of strategies to do so,

So if they have the skills and tenacity to consistently make slightly better than a living wage (probably for only a few hours a day) they probably have what it takes to get and keep a regular job paying notably better?

30 years ago or so, I made roughly 14 an hour driving pizzas part time, 3x minimum wage at the time. The strategy was basically go fast, know where you’re going (no cell/ google maps), don’t get stuck with single pie runs to the end of the earth.

To see that 20/hr requires all kinds of strategies now — it’s a different world.

Whenever I saw "9735 Birchwood Ave"* pop up in the order queue, I would suddenly get inspired to go wash dishes or fold boxes or pop dough bubbles. Sometimes that inspiration would strike 2 or 3 of us at once!

Let the poor rookie go get stiffed on a tip.

* Address changed, but 25 year later I actually still remember the real address.

I suspect the avg take from an order is at least $10.

Grubhub, for example, will charge you an 18% service fee, a $1 "big/expensive city" fee, a tip (for the driver), and then also a delivery fee on top of that.

That's before the inflated menu prices and price gouging they do to the businesses.

Still, it's a lot more economical for reasonably busy delivery places to just employ their own drivers that can take care of a few deliveries in one shot.

Incredibly US-centric comment and responses.

If you think delivery is unsustainable because cars cost money, I got news for you: You live in a bubble, and it's the cars that are unsustainable.

Outside of the car-centric world of US suburbia, most of the western world is actually doing deliveries on scooters and ebikes, which are very quick to navigate medium-to-high-density cities and can do several deliveries per trip.

I've ordered a lot on Takeaway, at least once a week on average. The last time I saw somebody pull up in a car was during the COVID lockdowns, and I suspect it's because there was basically nobody on the streets.

The business model is broken, because car-centrism is broken. In the civilized world, things are ok.

Either way, fuck Uber. There's better alternatives.

Are food deliveries in densely populated US cities really done using cars? Why? All e-bikes/scooters here (city of >5 mil in Aus).

> densely populated US cities

Many big US cities really aren't densely populated. e,g, including 2 of the 4 largest: LA & Houston.

Which is why I specified that. Outside of the inner 15km radius big cities in Australia aren't at all densely populated either, and cars probably are used for delivery there. But 90% of the deliveries I observe are in that radius!

In Seattle, all of my DoorDash deliveries were people using cars.

Having spent a few days in downtown seattle that surprises me, I can't think why a delivery driver would choose to use a car over something smaller.

I'd guess rain. There's only a few dry summer months.

Seattle ain't the only place in the world it rains a fair bit! And I gather it's rarely particularly heavy rain.

Might be because I was specifically ordering from places that _weren't_ downtown. Like many others on the thread, I don't particularly care for the delivery services so I really only use them to grab things where it's infeasible for me to go get them myself. With public transit, getting food downtown was easy so I was ordering from places out to the east.

They probably already have a car.

I'm sure plenty of food delivery drivers have cars here too, but the cost/ parking/traffic issues involved in using one for such deliveries in a higher density metropolis make them kind of impractical...

Are the other companies better? Which ones have you used?

I used UberEats once (in Sydney) because I had one of those coupons. UberEats was garbage. Cost too much and I could have gone to the place myself and returned in half the time.

Takeaway is really nice in Europe IMO. I’ve also used Deliveroo and they are okay but less popular where I live.

I can’t advice beyond that but Uber is awful awful awful. Every time I give them a chance I regret it, be it on price, support, ethics, quality …

> Incredibly US-centric comment and responses.

Just because you might have a different experience doesn't mean this is US centric. The same happens across Canada and in several big cities in South America.

If you can demonstrate that the comment I was replying to was talking about South America, give me your address and I will snail mail you a cookie.

To your point about US suburbia, I'm not sure how it is in other big cities but I was blown away my first visit to Manhattan from suburbia when I realized that almost all the bikes parked on sidewalks were for delivery drivers. There were some amazing rigs. They'd tape over any identifying characteristic of the bike and fasten all sorts of hand warmers to the handle bars (everything from oven mitts to plastic bags). I got to travel to Manhattan for work for several years and it was neat watching the transition from bike, to retro-fitted e-bike, etc.

I ... think I'm calling NYC part of the "civilized world" and I'm not sure how to feel.

I agree with your comment, NYC is quite special (Manhattan at any rate).

I remember seeing a map of the US denoting whether the majority of commute was done by personal car vs public transport. The entirety of the US was by personal car… except for NYC. It had a bit of an Astérix feel to it.

>You're going to have to pay a lot more. The model can't be sustained at this price.

It will be much cheaper once there are self-driving cars. You don't have to pay for the drive, just for somebody doing the final delivery from the car to the door.

It will be even cheaper, if customers are willing to leave their house and fetch the food from the car at the street. Then you don't have to pay anybody, just some cents per mile for the vehicle.

Labour costs would be cheaper with self-driving cars, UberEats/SkipTheDishes/Arbritrary Food Delivery App would most likely own the cars. They would definitely factor the vehicle depreciation cost into delivery fees. If the gig worker provides the car, I'm not even sure if it would be that much cheaper to pay someone to sit in a self-driving car for the car to door delivery.

where I live, some restaurant's don't use cars, they use remote controlled robots. They are also extremely cute.

It might pay less than minimum wage - but will the drivers actually do the math?

I think that a solid portion of workers will accept significantly higher costs in exchange for slightly higher income, even if they come out worse. Lots of people will just look at the paycheck and won't think about their gas bill or how much time they actually spent.

Plus, one hour making $30 lets people rationalize 20 hours making $5/hr. That's how gambling works.

Add on the ability to "be your own boss," work when you want and start earning immediately, and I think people will keep doing delivery work even if the pay is shit.

When I used to deliver pizza, I received minimum wage, and tips, and 75 cents per delivery.

This was in 1990.

When I wasn't driving, I was grating cheese, or folding boxes, or cleaning. There were always slow times during the shift for this work.

I had a used car, and as a teenager, and later as an adult in college, the job paid quite well at the time.

Tips on busy nights would double or triple my wage.

Drivers can very much make a good wage delivering pizza! This is because a traditional pizza place only delivers within a certain range, has its own drivers, and each driver(when busy) can take 2 to 5 orders, and deliver them in an optimal route.

As a driver, you get very, very good at driving your neighborhood, knowing all the slow and fast spots, and the best route to deliver 4 orders in one trip optimally.

I'd often deliver 20 pizzas an hour on Friday nights, all hot, all fresh!

Yet an uber driver delivers for a dozen companies, each to different places, may drive miles to get to each company, then drive that single order to the customer. Uber drivers cannot optimize the same way.

Just the fact that when idle, I did work (so not a loss for the company), yet when a pizza popped out I was there, ready!.. is an optimization uber eats loses at. Idle for them is a loss.

Uber eats, all external delivery services are the worst. If your main business is delivery(pizza), you are nuts to even allow them to pick up at your establishment.

I wonder if the holy grail of food delivery is then is actually like a supply chain/transportation algorithm - instead of point-to-point deliveries, you could have order pickup and delivery distributed within an area and have drivers handoff as needed. If I can think of it, then I'm sure someone in the companies already has looked into it and has a reason why they can't, but I'm still proud of the insight at least.

For vehicle based delivery in cars...

Apps like these are relying on people who've already sunk some huge amount of money into a car and are not doing the fully loaded cost per mile calculation of operating a car in stop-and-go delivery service in an urban environment.

If you calculate the purchase cost of car, insurance, fuel, repairs/maintenance, tires, oil changes, depreciation etc, it's quite bad.

The actual amount of money earned by the delivery person after subtracting the fully loaded cost of the car is often near minimum wage in some states.

Much the same as Lyft and Uber actually.

But pizza places have been doing delivery for decades with employee cars. Why is it now "bad" when a tech company does it? The scale?

a) traditionally, the delivery driver keeps the entire tip in cash. there's no bullshit "delivery fees" added to an order which actually don't go to the driver.

b) it used to be a lot less costly to operate a basic car in the US/Canada on a dollar per mile or km basis

To point A, delivery fees have been around for a while and have never gone to the driver. Is there some app or scenario in which the driver doesn't keep the entire tip? Because I'm not aware of any.

To point B, how is this tech-specific? The question was about why someone driving their car to deliver for Domino's is OK but driving their car to deliver for DoorDash is exploitation.

point A, app based food delivery services with "delivery fee" charged to the customer and not passed on to the driver is a new thing.

15 or 20 years ago if you order a pizza from your local pizza place, the price you pay for the pizza is fixed and known, and you tip the driver in cash. there's no extra 3rd charge line item for "delivery" anywhere.

point B, the advent of app based food delivery in the past 8 years happens to coincide with greatly increased cost of operating the car. I was explaining why traditional method of delivery used to be much more economically viable. Two things happening simultaneously, increase in cost of fuel and operating cars and the increased popularity of app based food delivery does not mean correlation equals causation.

tips weren't that good back in the older days. most people only tipped a $1 if anything and thought the delivery fee went to the driver which in a way it did because they usually got paid hourly plus a small fee.

I'm guessing at least part of the reason is that old school delivery driving doesn't have to be profitable, only the whole business does. If you have a healthy margin per pizza, that margin can subsidise the loss made per delivery. You just have to make sure that the profit from the increased number of pizzas sold makes up for the cost of delivery and you're good.

Food delivery services, on the other hand, have to make the delivery itself not only profitable, but profitable enough to produce a somewhat livable wage for the driver once expenses like gas and car wear are accounted for, and the whole company has to live off of whatever it can siphon off from what the drivers get.

$300,000,000 in investor money to earn back, software people earning $300,000/year, managers for them, etc. Divided amongst a lot of premises, yes, but still expensive. Instead of just a couple guys answering a phone.

Pizza packs well, is ordered in large quantities, is easy to store on the seat, is fairly high margin, stacks, and the stores doing this delivery have dedicated drivers with good estimates for how much volume they'll be doing in a night and a fixed supply of drivers with guaranteed wages. They also didn't deliver as far.

App drivers are constantly playing this game of guessing where the next order will come from and where they'll end up.

Also Pizza companies doing their own delivery may be happy with the delivery fee being less than their cost of delivery if it gets them more orders than they would otherwise as long as the order is profitable. e.g. $10 pizza with $2 delivery and $8 cost of production and $3 cost of delivery in range. Each hand picked up pizza makes $2 profit, each pizza delivered makes $1, but if the amount of net new orders from doing delivery is >2x the amount of people that switch from pickup to delivery then the business profits.

In the app case, the business may still benefit (except now the apps have pressure to try extract discounts from the business), but that -$1 for delivery is either being subsidised by VC funding which won't last, or by paying the delivery staff less than their real costs.

Pickup customers subsidized the cost of delivery. drivers earned money folding boxes, delivering flyers other prep work. and drivers would take upto 4 orders at a time.

> Why is it now "bad" when a tech company does it? The scale?

I think it's because of how badly they're doing it. They're operating at a significant loss, with unhappy customers, unhappy drivers, unhappy restaurants, and poor service.

There weren't any significant problems with the legacy model. Pizza delivery staff didn't try to talk you into accepting a cheese pizza instead of pepperoni. They didn't lie about their credit card machine not working. They showed up just like the new services, and specifying the order in English usually also worked well. Which were all problems with taxis pre-Uber.

The cost per mile for the class of people making these comments is not the same as the cost per mile for the guy doing delivery work.

You probably drive a nice new Camry or some other vehicle that is far from the "floor value for A to B transportation in a given mechanical condition" and will fall in value precipitously as it hits various milestones. The delivery driver has some 15yo car with over 150k on it where value is purely dependent on mechanical condition.

You probably replace your tires when your mechanic tells you. These delivery driver runs them until they're bald.

You take your car to the premium mechanic. The delivery driver has "a guy" who does 99% of his basic maintenance for cheap and only ever has big stuff done at the mechanic.

These people (the ones who understand the economics of what they do, which is most of them) don't maintain their cars like techies do. They take a page out of the age old "pizza delivery" playbook. With the highly variable nature of distance driven and compensation these people are generally well aware of operational costs vs gross income. You kind of have to be.

when I say that a delivery driver has sunk some huge amount of money into a car, relative to their annual income, it's probably proportional to what I pay for a modern japanese car.

if you make $32k a year, a $4000 corolla is a lot of money.

it is not at all the same economics as the actual historical method of pizza delivery by cheap crappy car, because of the greatly increased cost of fuel (while delivery driver wages are nearly the same now as they were 20 years ago), and the fact that the traditional delivery driver is paid almost entirely in cash.

It's a car. Not a semi truck. The delivery driver isn't treating the car as a capital investment that is used to make money delivering stuff. The overwhelming of them are just taking advantage of a car they already have.

that's exactly what I'm saying, they're effectively using up the fractional lifespan of the car they already have sunk money into, and already possess, without doing the fully informed calculation on what it's actually costing them.

taking advantage of a car you already have still has a calculable financial cost in how much fuel and wear/tear you put on a car doing a theoretical 8 hour delivery shift.

app based delivery service things are relying upon the delivery people not calculating the fully loaded cost of their time and vehicle together to determine their own real net wage.

Put another way, the cost of operating a car that involves any significant amount of mileage over time--especially in areas that don't see a lot of corrosion due to salted road roads in winter--is mostly per-mile costs not time-based. If you drive your car a lot, there's very little free money that you're tapping into.

You just don't get it. Even after amortized maintenance you're making money doing delivery. Not much, but you are. Certainly on the order of min-wage on a bad day and much better on a busy day.

If you want more money you have the choice between picking up an inflexible 2nd or 3rd low hour job vs filling that time doing gig economy crap using stuff you already own (a car). Gig economy crap might not pay well after expenses, but is still very much net positive after expenses.

They know that cars cost money per mile to run. They might not know exactly how much but they have a pretty good idea on an annual basis. If picking up a crappy min-wage job that requires you to keep to their schedule is the alternative then gig economy crap is often the least worst option.

These people aren't idiots. Stop acting like they are. This is one of the things HN does that really pisses me off. As a rule poor people are much, much, much better at tracking cumulative expenses than the kind of people who shop at whole foods and only have a vague idea of what things cost because they can afford it either way and don't actually need to hone that skillset.

All of your comment reads like some excuse why VC funded food delivery app companies should continue to abuse low wage workers, because of course they're fully informed and know what they're getting into. These are the people who ultimately often end up with something like the WA state minimum wage after all expenses are subtracted.

I didn't say that they're idiots, my point was that they're being taken advantage of in the current economic situation that they exist in.

Maybe you should question why these people are apparently forced to pick between nothing other than an effectively-minimum-wage gig economy job with no benefits or job security, or a minimum wage job assembling food at taco bell or something and nothing better, effectively operating as a permanent underclass. From the way you describe it you seem to be totally okay with that situation in the economy. I'm not.

> If you want more money you have the choice between picking up an inflexible 2nd or 3rd low hour job

oh for fuck's sake, why don't you just tell people that they should lick the boots of their gig economy no-benefits "employer" some more? get a 2nd or 3rd job just to exist in this late stage capitalist hellscape with 4 roommates in any major city.

IDK what your dumb deal is here.

The gig economy crap isn't bad. It's just another set of options in the sea of crap jobs. If anything it puts pressure on jobs that pay a little better to be more flexible.

If these people really thought they were getting the shaft they'd have gone and got other equally crap jobs. We're leaving what was probably one of the lowest unemployment periods in US history. It's not like the bulk of these people couldn't have been mixing paint at Lowes, pushing a broom, manning a cash register at Walmart, schlepping boxes around a warehouse or stripping drain plugs at Jiffy Lube had they felt so inclined to. But instead they took these gig jobs? Why? Because all things considered it was less crappy than the next best also crappy option.

>oh for fuck's sake, why don't you just tell people that they should lick the boots of their gig economy no-benefits "employer" some more? get a 2nd or 3rd job just to exist in this late stage capitalist hellscape with 4 roommates in any major city.

Stop being dense. Nobody is falling for it. These gig jobs are not typically primary jobs. They make shit primary jobs because the income is variable week to week. They're typically people's 2nd or 3rd job that they can schedule around their primary one.

Your disdain and callous disregard for the rights of low wage earners living paycheck-to-paycheck or worse is clearly evident in your classist comments on "pushing brooms", "schlepping boxes" or "stripping drain plugs", I will not engage further.

I used to push brooms, schlepp boxes and strip drain plugs. And I'd go right back to that last one if it paid what tech does (actually I lied, I'd go work in a junkyard, can't strip the drain plug if you never put it back and better work atmosphere).

If you want to sugar coat the reality of these jobs you're doing it for yourself, not for them. These jobs are low skill, low pay and low status and the people doing them know it. They have bigger problems then whether specific language choices do or don't offend the sensibilities of the ivory tower crowd.

I'm in the same boat. I used to get food delivered often, but ever since the proliferation of "delivery fee is NOT a tip", I don't think delivery is worth it. Picking up my own food only takes a few minutes and is an excuse to go for a walk. Furthermore the timing is more reliable and I can count on my food actually being hot.

Delivery is only worth it if getting a DWI is on the table. Literally the only time I get DoorDash/GrubHub/etc is when I'm drunk and shouldn't drive. A DWI ticket and the expense that'll incur is well worth paying someone a delivery fee.

EDIT: I suppose I have to also mention that killing people by my drunk driving is also a good reason to use DoorDash. Just thought maybe that was obvious...

Of course, there's also the risk of causing an accident...

I just walk. Not an option for everybody I know, but the unwalkability of American cities is greatly exaggerated in my experience.

LA's walkability is terrible in a lot of places, but people also just refuse to walk distances that people regularly walk in NY or Chicago. There's just an attitude that everything starts by getting in the car.

The only time I have recently used delivery is if I am sick and unable to go pick up the takeout. Otherwise it's too expensive and a $15 plate turns into a $29 total cost. I'll still get pizza delivered though from some places.

Oh absolutely makes sense when you're sick! Every time I get a COVID shot/booster, the next day without fail I'm sick as a dog. My go to has been Panera Bread's broccoli cheddar soup and bread. And it's definitely worth the delivery fees, and tip to not have to get dressed and drive to the local restaurant.

I pretty much only use delivery for restaurants that have their own delivery service instead of through these apps. This does limit it to pizza places mostly but at least the owner/manager cares if you complain and actually does something to fix the issues.

Thankfully there is no tipping culture here so none of the drivers expect to get tips. Obviously the actual delivery fees are just higher instead but the drivers don’t have to rely on the altruism of the customers to make sensible money.

I stopped ordering from any delivery service that isn't directly the restaurant itself. Half my orders were wrong. I had one where the driver dropped off an order with a different name on it; clearly visible. I called out to him saying such, and he yelled back that it wasn't his problem, call the restaurant (clearly, it _was_ his fault, he grabbed the wrong bag).

Nowadays, I just order for pickup and go get it most of the time. None of the delivery services care about quality _at all_.

It's a thankless job, most of the value is extracted by the middle men (who realistically should be getting the least since they can scale to thousands of transactions like it per hour).

I'd happily pay a premium if it went to the people doing the actual ground work, but that doesn't exist.

https://delivery.coop/

https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2021/07/13/delivery-fee-...

https://www.marketplace.org/2021/08/18/why-are-some-restaura...

0 restaurants delivering to downtown Chicago, the second largest central business district in the world after midtown Manhattan.

I’d be happy to pay extra for delivery and try out places outside of walking distance if I knew the money was going to restaurants and drivers. But for all their complaints about DoorDash, the restaurants aren’t making themselves accessible elsewhere. The delivery companies put in work that restaurants weren't, and aren't able or willing to do, and that's part of the reason they have such high revenue (all concerns about quality and sustainability aside).

> But for all their complaints about DoorDash, the restaurants aren’t making themselves accessible elsewhere.

Isn't DoorDash's "growth hack" to fake cooperation with restaurants and have their drivers just pickup food and pay for it like an ordinary customer?

If I understand correctly, the delivery.coop site only seems to cover Lexington, Kentucky? It is a cool idea.

Unfortunately it seems that only the predatory delivery apps have spread nationwide.

Every time I've gotten food delivery, I regretted it. Late, cold and expensive. It's usually faster if I pick it up myself.

That's a hilarious anecdote. I kinda wish when he called you, he was staring right at your window where you were observing his bald faced lie through your binoculars.

I might watch a short series based on food delivery folks, customers, and the dystopian/ dehumanizing tech algorithms that set the stage for the context. Maybe it'd be wacky. Maybe it might just end up feeling like HBO's High Maintenance.

> I've essentially stopped getting delivery which is a bad sign since I'm basically the target audience

Same, rarely ordered delivery pre-pandemic but then was ordering two or three times a month but eventually got sick of food taking over an hour to arrive from places only a mile or two away so stopped entirely (until discovering a nearby restaurant that does their own delivery and it's great - arrives within 20 or 30 mins and the food is always piping hot).

Same here. I only get delivery if the restaurant has their own delivery operation. Never had a good experience with any of the delivery apps, to the extent that I've been wondering who the hell is using them and how are they still operating.

Oh my god it's the drama I can't handle. A notable anecdote for me was when one randomly shone a strobe light at me. I'm epileptic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com