Hacker News Reader

It's true that delivery services add a middle-man, but you don't seem to be considering that they add a lot of value in some important ways:

1. The single website/app is not just useful for discovery, but also to provide a consistent ordering experience. An individual restaurant might take orders over the phone, via their website, or via their own app. Those options will vary from one restaurant to the next. Not great for customers.

2. In the old model, restaurants would have to decide how many drivers to have on hand at any given time. During quiet periods they would have to decide between not offering delivery at all, or having a driver sitting around doing nothing. A delivery service that aggregates demand & supply is very useful for restaurants & drivers. Pooling of resources & layering on surge pricing creates a lot of elasticity.

I would argue that what they should have done is tried to at this value at minimal cost to customers, drivers & restaurants. If they were leaner businesses the overall proposition could be a lot better.

You bring up an interesting point. Just thinking out loud for a moment here. Is the current VC business model potentially the problem area and not the actual businesses? The need for rapid growth/software company like profit margins when these companies need more time and potentially are like non-software companies in terms of profits?

Yeah, demanding software level margins for physical world businesses basically hasn't worked anywhere in the past ten years.

Like the only success I can see is AirBnB and that's because houses are expensive and in short supply.

I mean, AirBnB has contributed directly to the housing shortage in many areas, so I'm not sure it "worked".

From a financial perspective I think it's worked. From a societal perspective I'd agree with you.

I'm curious as to how food delivery worked in your country before Uber et al.

In the UK, outside of corporate chains, it was largely a cash in hand operation for both the restaurants and drivers.

Drivers would typically be paid a small sum for showing up on the night and then keep the delivery charge and any tips. The cost to the restaurant was pretty much negligible.

The middle-men, in addition to their own cut, have likely lead to a larger tax burden on many of the drivers and restaurants.

> Drivers would typically be paid a small sum for showing up on the night and then keep the delivery charge and any tips.

Under that model, wouldn't drivers only want to work for the busiest restaurants?

With delivery apps, a restaurant can have just a few orders per night and still be open for delivery.

I would bet that there's an order of magnitude more deliveries happening (and drivers working) these days vs pre-Uber.

> Under that model, wouldn't drivers only want to work for the busiest restaurants?

It doesn't take many orders to keep an individual driver busy. Typically the restaurants would manage how many, and which, drivers worked each night. If the night was unexpectedly quiet then a driver might finish early.

> With delivery apps, a restaurant can have just a few orders per night and still be open for delivery.

Yeah, the main benefit of delivery apps is enabling restaurants who primarily serve sit-in diners to deliver also. The overall benefit to delivery focused restaurants is much more tenuous.

> I would bet that there's an order of magnitude more deliveries happening (and drivers working) these days vs pre-Uber.

Perhaps, but if a driver was already busy all night under the previous model, then they're potentially harmed by the current model.

Honestly I think there's a great role something like Uber could fill, simply as a nationalized, not-for-profit tax funded arrangement that businesses could opt into, maybe even a branch of the post office. Ensure delivery people get good benefits and pay for doing a needed job, and the service brings those people, restaurants and stores, and consumers together. We could make things more convenient for people, provide businesses with more opportunities to sell their products, while providing a lot of jobs to people who need them, and also cutting down on the number of vehicles going around at any given moment.

The main drawbacks to these services are the outrageous fees they charge to make money, and that there's more than one so drivers and businesses have to manage an array of phones or tablets. This would address both of those things.

> 1. The single website/app is not just useful for discovery, but also to provide a consistent ordering experience. An individual restaurant might take orders over the phone, via their website, or via their own app. Those options will vary from one restaurant to the next. Not great for customers.

Aye. Arguably this is why old-school streaming Netflix won so well -- all of your options in one place. Likewise, there is one app for all food choices nearby.

Also agree on the second point, though presumably larger chains in built up areas could play the same game; e.g. Domino's in a borough of NYC has an "all-drivers-in-Queens" pool.

> also to provide a consistent ordering experience

Vendored web POS is widely available, and was emerging before UberEats and DD ever did. See: Toast

> A delivery service that aggregates demand & supply is very useful for restaurants & drivers.

This is only true in theory. You aren't giving enough credit to the logistical skills of small business owners, they are really good at allocating and dispatching drivers. If you're small enough to have no deliveries for several hours, then don't schedule any drivers during that time. If a delivery comes in, tell your cashier the address and have them run the delivery. Besides being quite efficient, there's an added bonus that you're cross-training your staff. That's how we always did it, at least.

It's anecdotal evidence, sure, but every delivery driver I have asked (half a dozen from several different cities and states) has said that their job is harder and pays worse today than 10 years ago.

"Well, just be more lean!" What a concept, I'm sure they haven't thought of that. It's much easier said than done. Logistics software is extremely complicated at scale- there's a reason governments subsidize delivery logistics through services like USPS, Royal Mail, etc. However, at the one-business microcosm, it's a simple enough problem that a seasoned owner/manager can organize an optimal dispatch in their head, on the fly.

Thankfully the local pizza place here still has their own drivers and it’s only a two dollar delivery fee. Totally fine with that. And everything always arrives fresh and fast and I know where and who to complain to and I know the drivers are at least somewhat vetted.

I'm with you. After trying a few of those delivery services and finding them poor at best, I've gone back to only ordering delivery from places that do it themselves.

Did you ever try getting groceries/food (other than pizza) delivered before the apps? Uber didn’t replace a better option, they made it literally possible to get these services in many places where it wasn’t an option at all. And in areas like Manhattan, where city cabs and delivery options abound - the the fact that many (most?) people still use UberEats/DD is instructive.

The value of convenience is significant. I happily pay to avoid the mental overhead of shitty restaurant websites or repeating a paragraph-long group order back and forth across a poor kitchen speakerphone call.

Yes the current system has many flaws but let’s not pretend it was utopia before.

> they made it literally possible to get these services

These companies also made it possible for restaurants to be taken hostage and be registered for delivery services or marked as closed/unavailable on those platforms against their wishes, or pay even 60+% commission on an order for the service. Once only a couple of these companies are left standing and have all restaurants in a chokehold I'm convinced the situation will be even "better".

> the the fact that many (most?) people still use UberEats/DD is instructive

Yes, it says that too many people do what's best for them and them alone. It's not as instructive as you think. Many people had slaves because it was good for the owner. What did you learn from that case of "many people do it"?

> I happily pay

You don't and don't even realize that. You get an overall cheaper service but someone pays. Usually the restaurant owner, employees, and delivery people. Maybe some VCs too, for now, while they don't completely own the market. Just like Amazon's same day delivery means some driver has to pee in a bottle for close to minimum wage but otherwise it's absolutely a huge win for everyone who is you, needing the delivery now.

UberEats and DoorDash are still money-losing operations that subsidize the actual cost of the service, despite rising prices, barely paying their workers, and abusing their relationship with restaurants.

> before the apps

You're right, it sucked. Here's the thing: we can have the shiny, sleek ordering system without the stupid parts of the Uber/GrubHub/whatever business model. You've probably used Toast before.

> in areas like Manhattan, where city cabs and delivery options abound - the the fact that many (most?) people still use UberEats/DD is instructive

I would have leaned towards "destructive" but I get your point.

The value of convenience may be significant but is it really great enough to find the cost of providing that convenience without external subsidy over the long run.

To me it is ridiculous that anybody thought local personal services like food delivery, dog walking, and taxi driving could ever be converted into durable, efficient, profitable national or global monopolies. In the absence of monopoly power such low barrier to entry commodity services invariably see their profit margins squeezed to cost from competition. All this is freshman or highschool level economics.

>What Amazon is doing is different because they're actually doing something that adds value

is scanning your groceries manually really so cumbersome to say the "just walk out" model is adding value?

It's nice, but like you said. it's not really that better than existing solutions, and knowing the underworkings makes it much worse. Maybe the tech will catch up in a decade, but it was definitely unviable with the current system.

The scanning isn't the problem. It's the pedestal the size of a postage stamp upon which I'm expected to balance $250 worth of groceries. And if I fail to do so, the machine freaks out. And even if I do succeed in stacking all my groceries up as demanded, the machine still freaks out. Want a beer? Fuck you, wait god-knows-how-long for an attendant to come appease the machine.

I always go to a human cashier whenever the option presents itself, simply so I don't have to deal with the miscarriage of engineering that is the self-checkout machine. Unfortunately, my local grocery stores don't staff their registers very often anymore.

> they are worse than the solution that already existed.

In my country taxis were (and price wise still are) the worst; Uber is a vast improvement; better cars, nicer drivers, convenient booking (until very recently you had to call 1 day in advance to book a taxi) and a bizarrely lower price. The same trip with a normal taxi costing 130 euros is 30 with Uber. So yeah, no. Oh but the taxi companies made their own app! Which is of course a horrible failure.

Ah yeah, my comment was specifically related to the food delivery services provided by Uber.

Granted, the taxi service hardly any better in many countries. In the US, it's rapidly building a new underclass of indentured cheauffeurs, chained down by vehicle maintenance costs and massive fees from service providers.

> What Amazon is doing is different because they're actually doing something that adds value, and they're solving a problem that actually exists.

This shook a bit of illusion from my eyes, thank you. I never thought of Amazon's efforts in this as solving a real problem or adding real value! This is because for me, it doesn't, and I never thought it through beyond that.

Once again, the human tendency to think that our own situation represents the norm fooled me.

A rare example of discernible sarcasm over the internet. Nice.

I made my case here, if you care: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39976007