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Comment by COGlory | Hacker News Reader

I've never understood who their market is. Even with coupons, usually 40%-50% of the order cost is DoorDash + tip. I'm just not willing to pay that, I'll eat a can of beans or go back out into the cold instead. Am I just below income for their target market? Is everyone just OK spending this much money on delivery

What happens when the coupons and discounts dry up?

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It’s young single people with more disposable income than patience to learn how to cook or motivation to pick up their food themselves. It’s particularly big in cities, where you might be craving a restaurant that is only a mile or two away as the crow flies but can be a huge pain to get to, with or without owning a car.

I agree with you though, the fees are outrageous. When our first kid was born, somebody gave us a Door Dash gift card. I tried to use it one night for a slightly upscale gastropub near us - it was going to be $65+ after all the fees and tips for two burgers to get delivered. Even with a gift card, I couldn’t do it on principal.

My buddy's daughter just moved out of the house for the first time. She has no car or license and doesnt live in a walkable city. She will uber to and from her job, and doordash food ALL THE TIME. I watch young adults on tiktok doordashing just ice coffee. The amount of money these youth are burning up in order not to do things is absurb and unsustainable.

Well, they say that time is more valuable than money. The convenience of delivery is just unrivalled.

For me any time savings were negated by late orders messing up my time planning and the need for sometimes communicating with and following up on drivers to see what's going on with my order.

Yeah, I tried the curbside grocery thing a couple of times. It's somehow worse than just doing the shopping myself. Now, it could very much be the area I'm in, but I arrived at the prescribed time and still had to wait almost as much time as it would have taken me to do my shopping. And then I got incorrect items or "substituted" items when I said I didn't want the substitution.

I'm pretty wary of third-party delivery services. They give both the establishment and the delivery service outs on mistakes. They can point the finger at each other and not change anything. Places with delivery take on the reputational responsibility of delivering items correct in a timely manner.

That is exactly why I quit not only food delivery, but grocery delivery as well.

My final Doordash delivery was almost 6 months ago. Only half the order arrived. DD got around to refunding half, but only after playing ping-pong with CS. The quality of their drivers certainly has gone off a cliff in the last year, with a nearly 100% failure rate to deliver the food complete and/or in a timely manner. DD clearly needs to add the ability to rate delivery quality AND hide tip status. They need to take immediate action on low performing drivers by booting them off the service if standards are not met. Right now, they have NO standards.

I also quit grocery delivery. 100% failure rate to deliver an order as charged AND complete ambivalence from management to correct their issues.

The tip is not a tip it's a bounty and ratings do affect your future orders. I have a very high rate of perfect orders.

Where is the convenience? The few times I tried it ended up being more hassle than it was worth.

I have a car and a bike. I can just go pick up my own food. It doesn't really take any more time.

The only major use case I can see is for parents with young children. You can't leave small kids home alone, and getting them in and out of cars is a huge hassle. Maybe also for disabled people who have mobility issues.

Time is more valuable - but you gotta be paid a lot for your time at work to make things like DoorDash worth it.

> What happens when the coupons and discounts dry up?

Their growth stalls and they fire 1,250 employees as they rethink their business plan starting next week.

There was a period of time in my life where we at home simply did not have the time or energy to cook or drive to pick up food at all, so we were big users of GrubHub. We knew we were spending (i.e., wasting) a ton of money on it, but considering all of the alternatives, it was still the right thing to do. We knew the premium we were paying, and luckily for us as time passed we started having more time again to cook and were able to resume both cooking more at home and also simply driving to pick up food.

At least for me, Uber gives me 5 30-40% off coupons every week. I get a free Uber Pass through my credit card. With plenty of places (some heavily mark up and others do not), you would be better off ordering delivery in the parking lot with those coupons rather than getting it from the counter.

So while I spend a lot on delivery, I save it on the food.

Yeah, I only order on the site that's giving me a massive discount.

It's hard to see how these services would viably bring in customers without the discounting.

My company gives us credits to order lunch, as it's cheaper and easier than scheduling catering every day.

But yes, other than that I rarely use these services. Before my company offered this perk, for lunch we went to a nearby canteen, where we'd often pay less than half what we (well my company) pays now.

With dashpass you don't pay any of those fees for the majority of orders. I use them all the time

As a frequent DashPass user, the individual menu item prices for almost every restaurant is jacked up on DoorDash (as compared to their in-store price) and there is a service fee added on top that's separate from the comped delivery fee.

It all adds up.

Yeah thats super frustrating I see that all the time.

Some places on local DoorDash (Wolt) have really ramped up the prices. Nearly 20€ for single meal like burger or something.

Still, the model seems broken for me. I can get unlimited 5,9€ deliveries for 0.8€ and 10€/month... How does that make any business sense...

I hate this because I want to order take out, which DoorDash doesn't need to be involved in. A ton of restaurants around me no longer take phone orders and so my only options if I want take out is to walk up, order, and wait. Or just suck it up and pay. I mostly take the former (gives you a chance to go grab a six pack).

Maybe it has changed now, but when I was working with restaurants last year, DoorDash had a rule that take out prices had to match what you'd pay if you go into the store and order.

At least with Grubhub plus or whatever it's called, this isn't really true. They put "0 delivery fee" but then still include a "service fee" which is 15% of the order (this is not the tip). Can you confirm DoorDash does not do something similar?

Dashpass doesnt seem tod o that

Yes, Doordash with Dashpass still has a service fee. Dashpass reduces the service fee but does not remove it. My bill from yesterday:

Subtotal $24.45 (total cost of the items as listed on the store page)

Delivery Fee $0.00 (would've been non-zero without Dashpass)

Service Fee $1.22 (annotated as "This reduced service fee of 5.0% with DashPass helps us operate DoorDash." Would've been $3.18 without Dashpass.)

Estimated Tax $2.56

Dasher Tip $3.50

Total $31.73

That's not bad comparatively. I will have to check it out.

In my experience, most of their customers just tend to be people who are very non-frugal.

I can afford it, sure, but am I going to pay a 50% premium for it? No

How much do you value your time?

I consider 1 minute ~= $2. So if Doordash saves me 15 minutes, then that's worth $30.

If 1 minute is equivalent to 2 dollars, and you work an average 40 hour work week, that would imply you make $240 an hour. Not representative of nearly all Americans.

err, $120/hour. I think you meant $240K/year?

I actually did the math wrong. Assuming 8 hours of sleep, you have 350,400 waking minutes every year. So $2 a minute becomes "worth the time" if you make 700 grand a year.

Just as a gut check, getting paid $2/minute would be an annual salary of $240,000 (assuming a 40 hour work week and two weeks paid leave).

On principle, I wouldn't pay $30 for delivery under almost any circumstances. I'm generally not working during the time the delivery would take place, so it's not like I'd be forgoing salary to go pick up take out.

I can value my time at $500/hour, but unless someone is willing to pay me that rate while I wait for my food, then it's just a made-up number. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm on salary, so valuing my time by an hourly rate is a pretty poor measure to begin with.

I think their business model rests on:

1. Stomping out Grubhub and similar with massive spend.

Then...

2. Somehow profiting off of DashPass

You know Groupon is still alive. I think once these companies get listed they become vehicle for tax offsetting by booking losses. While early investors cashout massively and transfer forward risk to pension funds.

It's pretty convenient if you leave far from restaurants. Last night I ordered and yes it was about 15% more expensive. But I was pretty busy and didn't want to drive and wait in line to get my food.