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Comment by quickthrower2 | Hacker News Reader

Well done on the hard work.

I am trying to get my head around why set up one of these businesses when Uber, Doordash exist, and it is a network effects game, where you need the most drivers to be trusted, the drivers need to see you as worthwhile as do the customers and the restaurants. So it is not just chicken/egg but maybe hen/rooster/egg problem.

Unless your plan is selling to the well funded startups who reckon they can muscle in?

What might make a bit more sense is if this is used by the restaurant who employ their own riders, but that is a dying breed I reckon.

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Don't need all that. Think smaller communities. Eg: my neighborhood can use this to schedule grocery with a smaller group. The trust is there and there is no need to attract drivers. So this big shared menu means only one person goes to Market Basket and buys lots of stuff. Then we all just walk over to Steve's to get our groceries.

Seems people are using the platform to setup delivery of other things than just food. From the case studies:

- Order hair and nail care services - https://enatega.com/stylizenow/

- Campus food delivery - https://enatega.com/easy-eats/ (this one is kind of just tiny bit different from normal food delivery though...)

- Wine delivery - https://enatega.com/vinifynd/

With that, I guess it kind of makes sense.

Realistically I don't think anyone is truly paying for this code base though.

People are desperately trying to move away from such platforms. Nearly all products i ordered had a flier in the box with a seller’s website and some kind of incentive. For food for instance, i received an offer of two pizzas for one if i order using the shop’s app. Naturally, i started using it.

Maybe as a POS system but are many people really moving away from it in terms of delivery? Seems like the pivot has been the delivery services offer white label experience. For example the same day walmart deliveries are done with one of the major delivery apps but you as the customer never see that. I don't think most local business want to get into or back into delivering themselves.

While it may be convenient for walmart and large chains to leverage delivery companies’ infrastructure, for consumers and small businesses it is not. Nor is it for the economy at large. Whenever i discuss the topic with a small business owner their eyes lit up. I am fortunate to live in an area where community is still a thing and you can sense the strong desire to move away from the status quo.

You must not have spoken to enough business owners then. It makes no sense from an economic perspective for a restaurant to run their own delivery service. It can definitely work in some markets but especially post pandemic the economics would really cut margins thin. I generally don't even like the gig economy because I think so far it has supressed wages from the gig worker but I still think it has merit. I suspect most delivery drivers would financially do better through the larger delivery players than working for a single restaurant too.

Uber and Doordash exist yes, but they are not available everywhere around the world. The solution is particularly targeting countries and regions where such solutions have not been employed or to improve upon ones that exist in those regions.

As another commenter pointed out, this solution can also be used for other use cases apart from just food delivery, like wine delivery and at-home hairdressing appointments.

Lastly, we have a one time fee for the backend and we give out the source code as well. Almost every other solution is operating as saas, so this gives companies the choice to have their own food delivery management system like Ubereats without making monthly payments and with full access to the back-end so that they can customize it as much as they like.

Beyond that, it’s not even clear that it’s possible to make money doing this. The major players all lose money, and they have years of traction built up.

This might be interesting from a technical perspective, but it’s unlikely that there’s a viable business model here.

Uber and Doordash don't exist everywhere though

Sure, but not because of technical reasons though. This won't solve that.

It kind of does though. The bigger food delivery companies like Uber don't seem to be interested in smaller markets with strong worker and consumer protections, but local companies could still be interested to do something similar as they usually already follow local regulations and customs.

In my experience, the places that don't have delivery services are rural and just don't have the population for it to make sense.

There are other equivalents

Foodora, Just Eat, Delivery Hero, Lieferando, Deliveroo, SkipTheDishes, iFood, Zomato and so on

None of them exist in my country but we do have Wolt. I'm sure there are plenty of places around the world that don't have any service like this.

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