CS also seems to be _heavily_ automated - you can tell that you're rarely talking to a human being. It used to be the best delivery app, now it's streets behind Uber Eats.
The service wasn't being subsidized. The company was.
The history of the concept goes line this:
1) Some restaurants begin offering delivery for a fee as a service to busy customers.
2) Restaurants figure out free delivery is a great loss leader and make it up on volume.
3) Seamless figures out they can centralize the menus of these companies using the Web. Restaurants still handle the delivery themselves and pay Seamless a small referral fee.
4) DoorDash innovates on this by vertically integrating the delivery aspect themselves allowing scale and access to restaurants that did not previously offer delivery.
5) DoorDash begins the process of “delivery arbitrage” betting people will pay more for individual items if delivered.
6) Ghost Kitchen are invented to vertically integrate the restaurant into the service. This bets that people are price sensitive to delivery fees/arbitrage.
Going up to #3 was profitable.
They have like $8 delievery fees and $10 tips... You can skip the delivery fee with the $10 per month dashpass.. fine..
But then each individual item is marked up 20%.
End's up being like $20 for takeout from a place 1 mile away...
May as well get the fresh air!
How much of that is Doordash specific though. Sounds like restaurant issues. I could see the underestimate (I believe, at least, with some systems the wait time is manually controlled by the restaurant) as a means to get people to pick Doordash thinking it leads to a quicker meal.