Comment by runeks | Hacker News Reader

Comment by runeks | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> I wish they introduced the ability to have structured bids / sell orders for things like food delivery, and even transportation service.

Yes! That would be very interesting to see. If we could, sort of, commoditize a certain service (eg. transportation), and build a bid/ask order book for it (potential customers are bidders, and transportation services provide the asks).

The problem, as I see it, is defining the base unit. In order to have a unified order book, we need a base unit for this order book. What are we selling? Is "1 mile of transportation", or is it necessary to build different order books for different locations? I suspect most transportation service have a base fee plus a $/mile rate. So now you have two variables, and the price of "1 mile of transportation" will depend on the quantity of miles, which makes it a non-commodity (1 ton of iron ore in the spot market will cost roughly the same as 100 tonnes).

Agreed, food / grocery delivery and transportation services would certainly be interesting, but defining the rates based on some sort of a base-cost-unit like mileage and speed of delivery would be extremely challenging to do smoothly for the end user. I think it would end up being non-satisfying for the customer and the sellers.

Besides, amazon.com has amazon fresh for the grocery delivery service needs. Why cut into their own business?

Not all consumers of food transit and delivery services are end-consumers getting groceries. Restaurants need the same services.

Sure, but restaurants have special needs relating to getting groceries. When they want "avocados" they don't just want any case of avocados. They may want a case of "locally sourced Haas 40's with 4-5 day ripening time with a USDA Grade of #2 Combination, or #2, but not #1". Not just avocados. Instead of wanting "bread" they might need an artisan bread with a gluten free recipe that's standardized to 16oz weight for their lunch sandwiches. So it's not as simple as it seems, which is why there's dozens of huge billion-dollar companies who do this such as Costco, Sysco, US Foods, Shamrocks, etc. You just shop around and stay on top of food costs. And if you're a medium-large chain you lock down trade agreements much farther up the supply chain (producer level) to very low fixed prices for 6 months at a time. So if amazon wants to try to tackle dozens of intricacies for thousands of types of perishable goods that will have variable quality in a market that is heavily regulated by the USDA, more power to them. Source: I own a restaurant on the side.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com