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Comment by lock-the-spock | Hacker News Reader

All depends on the setup. Pizza delivery run by the individual small shop has worked for 50+ years; they pay two cooks and two drivers and a waiter and feed hundreds of people a night while earning just fine. A single place to order all food from all restaurants at any point? Well something needs to give...

Alternatively it's simply time for people to learn to cook simple foods again, a pasta with alfredo sauce, fried potatoes with eggs and a salad, or a spinach quiche (with a 1€ supermarket crust) are all quicker to make myself than I get through any app's ordering process (ignoring here the waiting time for both processes to finish).

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It only "worked" because pizza delivery drivers had to bring their own vehicles, made below minimum wage and were working for tips (AKA exactly what we don't tolerate today).

When I delivered pizzas for a large US chain in the 90s, I got paid $5.25/hr when the minimum wage was $5.15/hr, plus I got tips and I also got "wear & tear" of $1.50 per run. Most of the time I made more in tips than I did in pay. When I started I did not have a vehicle and had to use my boss' vehicle but I was able to save up enough to buy a new vehicle after the 1st year of doing it.

It worked well as a part-time job for me at the time because I had no rent to pay and very few other regular expenses.

I don't think the same would be true today.

Just over 50 years ago, I delivered chicken and pizza for place in the Denver suburbs. I made minimum wage, and I used the restaurant's vehicle.

It is possible that this was feasible for the owners only because it hadn't occurred to pizza shops en masse that it was possible to get the drivers to provide their own cars. But this was before I ever saw thermal sleeves for pizza boxes. The food was kept warm by a sheet metal contraption in the back seat, with sterno as the heat source, something it would have been awkward to be putting into and pulling out of civilian cars.

Does that mean there are no more pizzerias that offer delivery in Seattle? I don't live in the region and I genuinely don't know.

I lived in north Seattle and my favorite pizza place to order from still used this model (had their own delivery drivers). Doing a quick check and it seems like they still do. It wasn’t overly expensive and they’ve been in business for a long time. So I feel like this is still a thing?

This only happened a few weeks ago so no one really knows how it will shake out.

That being said— nothing seems to have changed with regard to pizza places offering direct delivery. The changes on “the apps” are very noticeable but direct ordering seems normal.

I should note this is based on almost completing the order flow, I’m not so dedicated to data gathering that I ordered a bunch of food to test this.

There are, but at e.g. Dominos the delivery fee can be half the original price of the pizza.

That says more about Domino's food quality than the delivery fee.

Full disclosure: I worked at Domino's many decades ago and I ordered pizza in Seattle for over 20 years.

Not sure about Seattle but in my area they have all moved over to using Doordash & co for delivery.

And the point behind all those "apps" is that the actual workers get paid peanuts, wear and tear on their vehicle, likely defrauding insurance by doing commercial driving on residential insurance, and getting paid LESS than the total cost to do the job.

And Im sure this ordinance is "hurting gig workers". Well, so is working the fucking gig jobs, but that hurt comes 'down the road' with much more wear and tear on the vehicle, higher incidence of wrecks, no workers compensation, pay double tax for "self employed".

But those billionaire gig companies are doing the rake JUST FINE.

>But those billionaire gig companies are doing the rake JUST FINE.

Are you kidding? All the investors in this space are taking an absolute bath. You can look this up if you want, but I don't think GrubHub, PostMates, DoorDash or Uber Eats have ever made any money.

At this point in time, the only people getting any value out of these services are the drivers, the consumers and the employees (who are, by and large, doing middle class sales, marketing and software jobs).

Yeah but the VCs got their exit so DoorDash is a success! Growth!

> Are you kidding? All the investors in this space are taking an absolute bath. You can look this up if you want, but I don't think GrubHub, PostMates, DoorDash or Uber Eats have ever made any money.

They never made any money, the same way Titanic, Avengers, Lord of the Rings never made a cent. Those poor studio execs.....

Its a mixture of Hollywood accounting, and an intentional plan to dump all profits back into growing the business all the while undercharging to gain monopoly status. Then, of course once the "gig" is up, they're the only players and can charge high rates and pay pennies cause they're the only mega-delivery place around.

And it doesnt hurt when all the locals fired their drivers and rely on said gig companies.

>They never made any money, the same way Titanic, Avengers, Lord of the Rings never made a cent.

No, they never made any money in the old-fashioned sense that their revenues were less than their costs. This is not hard to look up. GrubHub was doing so well last year that it canned 15% of its workforce.

>getting paid LESS than the total cost to do the job

Why do you assume that those workers are so stupid, as to not be able to calculate whether the job in question is worth their while? Perhaps they, with better insight into their own financials, have decided that you may be incorrect?

Sometimes, it is stupid.

Other times, its cause the costs are well hidden UNTIL its time to pay them. And the "gig" seems to pay quite well, until it doesn't. The company side has actuaries to assess risk and understand accurate costs, all the way down to the make/model/year/mileage of your car. You, well, dont. Its all about information asymmetry.

Many times, its simple desperation. When there isn't anything else, you do what you can, even though you're being taken advantage of.

Prepare to learn something new - sometimes people don’t make the wisest financial decisions for themselves. Poor people seem even more affected by this sort of irrational behavior.

Or perhaps they know it's bad long-term, but they're delaying tomorrow to feed themselves today. Sure, they know it'll put more wear on their vehicle, but as long as the breakdown happens in another month or two, well, maybe something else will come along before then.

Some might call this just getting by, some might say this is what climbing the ladder looks like, and some might call this a poverty trap -- the longer you just scrape by, the harder it is to escape.

The debate is about do you call these opportunities or exploitations. It's realistically both, and so you gotta ask yourself how much exploitation are you willing to tolerate before the pizza starts to taste a bit icky? And when it does, how much are you willing to pay to make that pizza conflict-free?

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