Amazon Restaurants • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#101

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 10:06 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #61

godzillabrennus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it such a bad thing for society if a business fails when transparency is added to how they conduct their business? Yelp reviews are also intregal to the success of a restaurant and similar complaints are lobbed at them for destroying revenue at small companies. Have you ever gone to a restaurant that is poorly ranked on yelp? I have. They tend to deserve the poor ratings. This is a valuable service to the consumer…

Is it such a bad thing for society if a business fails when transparency is added to how they conduct their business? That's a false premise, which assumes any and all complaints are made in good faith. Some people are assholes and will leave a bad review because they disliked the person who delivered a meal or any number of other spurious reasons. You really sound like the sort of person who has never worked in any…

My SO has lots of experience working in businesses selling stuff on-line and while negative comments "out of spite" happened rarely to her, what she often told about is how dishonest employers made workers bribe people so that they cancel/remove their negative reviews. Hearing the stories that I did from her, I no longer treat lack of negative ratings / reviews as a strong quality signal.

EDIT: Oh, and speaking of Amazon, Google and their automated bans, my SO's company's work account got temporarily blocked by Google recently, apparently for the sin of sending several files in quick succession to her boss' account. Apparently "atypical usage" is grounds for a ban now. Fortunately, the account was unlocked few hours later, and I didn't have to make fuss about it here on HN...

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#102

Post by kbenson » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 10:07 PM UTC

gthtjtkt wrote: post #19

This is kind of terrifying after hearing so many life-ruining stories about the rash decisions Amazon makes when dealing with 3rd party sellers ([1] from last week, for example). Everyone always says "Don't stake your livelihood on platforms you don't control" (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but what happens when one of those platforms suddenly forces its way into your business? How can a restaurant owner tur…

Every time I get a little worried about a big player like Amazon having too much control in a market, I think the solution is actually another big player - Google. Not that I want google to compete, but if the knowledge graph gave info about the restaurant including delivery services that it supported, that would make it easier for everyone. The restaurant could list a few services, and you could choose the one you have an account with, or trust to serve you well. This takes the control that exposure a big player like Amazon has and really reduces how effective it is at corralling suppliers.

Now, I don't really care that it's google, but they are the biggest and most likely to be seen. Preferably Bing and Yahoo and DDG would have an equivalent.

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#103

Post by enraged_camel » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 10:09 PM UTC

ChadMoran wrote: post #89

wineisfine wrote: post #88

As a consumer I couldn't be more then delighted by the Amazon (customer) service. However, when I read how they threat their employees: it sounds horrible. Let's hope they never get to the tipping point that they can threat Restaurants, like their employees. That said: I like it that they try out new things and don't care about failing.

As a Software Engineer with Amazon I have only great things to say. EDIT: I've been at Amazon over 5 years.

I don't think we can use that as a benchmark, since software engineers are treated much better on average across the industry.

IMO, the best indication of a company's general sense of ethics is the way they treat their lowest-paid employees. Amazon doesn't instill confidence in that regard.

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#104

Post by usaphp » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 10:09 PM UTC

bg0 wrote: post #97

So this link is just sending me to the amazon restaurants page which has been around for about a year where I live. Can someone explain the point of this post?

Probably a lot of people did not know about this service, hence they upvoted it.

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#105

Post by cesarbs » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 10:10 PM UTC

hkmurakami wrote: post #31

gthtjtkt wrote: post #19

This is kind of terrifying after hearing so many life-ruining stories about the rash decisions Amazon makes when dealing with 3rd party sellers ([1] from last week, for example). Everyone always says "Don't stake your livelihood on platforms you don't control" (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but what happens when one of those platforms suddenly forces its way into your business? How can a restaurant owner tur…

This reminds me of the predicament that young'ish hardware component supplier companies get into. They win a huge contract with a prominent customer, but then that one customer represents 60%+ of their revenues (ex: winning a Cisco, Nintendo, or Apple contract). I've worked at a few such companies, and they all work extra hard trying to diversify their revenue sources, for both customers and industry. If it's a start…

I used to work for a company that did software development work for the local subsidiary of a multinational corporation. The corporation was their sole customer.

At some point the corporation decided it wouldn't outsource software development work anymore. They hired some of the key people at my former employer (by then I had already moved somewhere else), and almost overnight they had to close shop because they didn't have a source of revenue anymore.

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#106

Post by mundo » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 10:10 PM UTC

So, how does this make money? Other than the Prime membership, I don't see any reference to fees on either the customer or restaurant side. Is this a freebie land grab?

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#107

Post by markdown » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 10:10 PM UTC

dimino wrote: post #55

gthtjtkt wrote: post #19

This is kind of terrifying after hearing so many life-ruining stories about the rash decisions Amazon makes when dealing with 3rd party sellers ([1] from last week, for example). Everyone always says "Don't stake your livelihood on platforms you don't control" (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but what happens when one of those platforms suddenly forces its way into your business? How can a restaurant owner tur…

> How can a restaurant owner turn them down when all the short-sighted owners nearby are happily signing up? Sign up for all of the services: OpenTable, Doordash, Amazon Restaurants, GrubHub, Postmates, everything. That way, when one service does something terrible, you aren't crippled by the single point of failure, and as long as it wasn't terrible enough to sever the relationship, you can take your time rectifying…

This works until one company monopolizes the market. See TripAdvisor.

I've worked with seven different resorts/hotels doing web-dev and every single one of them absolutely hated TripAdvisor and wished it didn't exist and they didn't have to be on it to survive.

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#108

Post by shostack » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 10:11 PM UTC

gthtjtkt wrote: post #19

This is kind of terrifying after hearing so many life-ruining stories about the rash decisions Amazon makes when dealing with 3rd party sellers ([1] from last week, for example). Everyone always says "Don't stake your livelihood on platforms you don't control" (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but what happens when one of those platforms suddenly forces its way into your business? How can a restaurant owner tur…

I think the only answer is to diversify as best you can, build a reputation of customers who love you to get word of mouth, and save as much as you can.

For an interesting view of where this has happened before, look no further than FB subsuming publishers via Instant Articles and Google recently doing the same with Amp. They stole all the control of the audience data from publishers, and give out whatever cut they feel is appropriate from ad revenue. Publishers refused to adapt or couldn't adapt fast enough and are royally screwed as a result.

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#109

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 10:15 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #108

gthtjtkt wrote: post #19

This is kind of terrifying after hearing so many life-ruining stories about the rash decisions Amazon makes when dealing with 3rd party sellers ([1] from last week, for example). Everyone always says "Don't stake your livelihood on platforms you don't control" (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but what happens when one of those platforms suddenly forces its way into your business? How can a restaurant owner tur…

I think the only answer is to diversify as best you can, build a reputation of customers who love you to get word of mouth, and save as much as you can. For an interesting view of where this has happened before, look no further than FB subsuming publishers via Instant Articles and Google recently doing the same with Amp. They stole all the control of the audience data from publishers, and give out whatever cut they f…

We're forgetting the biggest offender, Twitter.

Speaking of them, I think we're overdue for the next cycle of them killing off API access...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10427530

Re: Amazon Restaurants

#110

Post by khazhou » Thu, Dec 15, 2016, 10:15 PM UTC

ryaneager wrote: post #12

I received a free $20 to Amazon Restaurants for buying something on cyber Wednesday, didn't know that was a thing until I received the email. I used it to order pizza from a local joint, because who doesn't like free pizza. Ordering was interesting, they didn't have the pizza I wanted listed under the pre-made options, so I had to make my own, but there was no option to do half and half and adding additional topping…

None of my friends' brother-in-laws are cofounders at Doordash, so I'm less attached :-)

But this is a great example of the lack of customer lock-in. Even the slightest improvement over Doordash, and I'd easily switch to Amazon or just bounce between the two. There's a thai restaurant just a bit out of Doordash range -- that would do it. Pictures on the menus -- that would do it. A "re-order" button -- that would do it.

I like DD, but all I think of it is: "I order food and it gets here."