Comment by _fat_santa
1 year ago
I don't know if food delivery apps will be here to stay long term, their economics just don't work. It seems that everyone involved looses, the tech companies are constantly running in the red, the restaurants get screwed and the drivers get screwed.
Long term, food delivery will still be a thing but likely run by restaurants and smaller local apps.
Food delivery run by restaurants has existed fine for decades for pizza and chinese food. I guess the delivery app puts too many fingers into the pie.
It reminds me of the early days of Uber - the value add over taxis wasn’t in the ride itself*, it was the app and the fact that a car would actually show up. I suspect DoorDash et al are similar - the value add is the restaurant selection and the app ordering, not the actual delivery.
(* yes, yes, I too have stories about taxis. I now have stories about Uber drivers, too.)
Yes. Though at least in my market, that used to have delivery fees or minimum orders that made it unlikely you would order a single sandwich for lunch and have it delivered. The food delivery app services really emphasize that model of consumption but I'm not sure it's viable.
Re: delivery fees and minimum orders - for all intents and purposes, a burrito delivered via door dash costs $30. I’m pretty sure if you’d offered the sandwich shop $20 more to deliver the sandwich, they’d at least have thought about it. It’s actually kind of wild how much DD & all have managed to change expectations on the cost of food delivery.
Here in the UK, food delivery companies are required to itemise their fees. The amount they take per order makes no sense to me. Their marginal cost should be tiny. Presumably they have investors and marketing fees to pay, but these aren’t costs that are fundamental to the business model, only to their growth model. Long term I think things will settle down as competition trims out this fat.
Swiggy and Zomato in India show inflated costs on items and lists a small fraction as delivery charges, which is waived for members. Does the UK law ban this trick?
I thought they had banned this kind of thing, but I can't find a reference to it so now I'm not sure.
When I think about what a reasonable hourly wage is, I don't see it working in my country at all. My understanding is that the main portion of drivers in Copenhagen is made up of exchange students, who have to work some hours per week to qualify for student aid, so it makes sense for them because the state basically tops up their wages.
That actually sounds like an ideal system for providing opportunities to low-wage workers without locking them into low wages indefinitely
I think it sounds like a misplaced subsidy. If we're going to use students as state-sponsored labour, surely we can think of a better job for them to do than prop up some foreign enterprise with an unworkable business model...
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