Cool, but soon enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1BQPV-iCkU
Amazon Restaurants
121–130 of 218 posts
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#122This 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…
This kind of thing happens in Advertising all the time. Agencies will get that ">50% of the business" account that they are utterly dependent on. LOTS of layoffs if they lose the business.
Wise agencies try to diversify - but any new business brought in will have to deal with The Big Client being the squeakiest of wheels (... that get the grease).
I can't say I've see an agency that has made the "grow other business" transition successfully.
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
That story is just...insane. I'm glad I have a separate account for my maybe-one-day-business and one for personal use but still they need to let them talk to a real PERSON before locking out an account like so. I can only imagine what would have happened if he didn't post to a website where it gained traction. If it wasn't upvoted out of reddit's new, would he just be completely screwed? Damn...
It's very disturbing how often we're seeing stories of someone's whole life being ruined due to some trivial error followed by poor / nonexistent customer service at Amazon or Google, and only getting their life back after they 1) plead for assistance from the general public on social media and then 2) happen to luck into getting upvoted rather than buried.
I agree many companies could do a better job of being accessible. Providing good customer service is challenging, especially at large scale. I am reminded of when Postmates first launched, and they provided a customer service phone number for assistance with orders. Eventually that number was replaced with a message saying "phone support is temporarily unavailable while we migrate to a new system" and asked you to send an email instead. Temporary must have become permanent, because it's impossible to reach someone if you have a problem now. (Part of me wonders whether their claim about it being temporary was even true at the time, or was a deliberate falsehood intended to placate customers until they'd had a chance to try the new email-only solution.)
Anyway, one thing I'd like to add, that I think is important to keep in mind, is that there are two (or more!) sides to every story. This is especially true for stories we hear from an aggrieved party on the news or social media.
We often don't hear the other side of a story, because many companies have privacy policies or laws that limit their ability to talk about their customers or employees. For example, it's extraordinarily rare to get the kind of insight into a situation that we got when Yishan Wong posted on Reddit to correct the lies of an employee who falsely claimed to have been fired with no reason and without cause:
https://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2iea97/i_am_a_former_r...
A similar situation happened to GitHub founder Zach Holman when he got ousted from the company -- his accuser had a soapbox in the form of her blog and Twitter; the general public only learned more sides of the story when employees decided to post some of their behind-the-scenes perspectives anonymously online.
Be careful drawing conclusions about any particular situation without hearing all sides of the story.
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#124Assume that on average, * delivery time = 30 minutes * minimum wage + minor benefits = $10/hr * cost of vehicle, gas and other logistics = $5/hr ...then they must charge $10 per delivery. If you squeeze and wiggle may be you can bring this down to $7 or so likely not considering downtimes in between peak hours. I thought this was the reason why most door-to-door delivery services eventually failed or switched to cate…
The places I order from (in urban Europe) have been around for years. Delivery is usually free.
30 minutes delivery time per order seems way too high, I'd expect 10 minutes or less per order. They don't deliver just one order at a time. That said I'm sure margins are razor thin and the drivers get paid like shit.
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#125"Amazon is eating the world" gets a new meaning today
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#126Amazon is moving forward with a GREAT momentum to dominate consumer market and extends its monopoly. It is not Amazon vs small businesses anymore. Amazon is in a ferocious battle right now with big players in various domains (Google, Walmart, Apple etc). So far it is turning out to be beneficial for an average middle-class consumer who conveniently gets to purchase cheap products and services. The way Amazon has extended its tentacles deep into TV content (Netflix vs Prime Video), produce (FreshDirect vs Amazon Fresh), Amazon Basics and Amazon elements, Alexa in home automation, e-readers, Spotify vs Amazon Prime Music, Rackspace vs AWS cloud, (failed) cellphones venture, and now Seamless vs Amazon Restaurants. Is it becoming more possible for Amazon to either acquire FedEx/UPS or create its own shipping company? I mean why not? This seems like a missing piece of puzzle.
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#127This 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…
It's just part of the natural growth process of B2B companies.
All you can do is hope that you can nail down the next large customer before your existing golden egg figures out they can push you around.
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#128So far, Amazon is just delivering for others. But perhaps they'll get into preparing food as well. Unlike Google, Facebook, GrubHub, Postmates, and Doordash, Amazon is willing to build physical infrastructure and hire people. Amazon could set up a large scale centralized catering operation like LSG Sky Chefs, which makes airline meals. For high-density metro areas, this could work quite well.
Amazon could probably beat out the low-end guys simply by using vehicles and containers capable of keeping the hot stuff hot and the cold stuff cold.
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
While that is an unfortunate situation, I would actually imagine Amazon's entry to this market (which they actually entered over a year ago), would be good for the restaurants. Many thought they had some diversity in the early days with Grubhub and Seamless until they merged. Now there are dozens of services overlaying to deliver for restaurants, companies like Uber Eats, Foodler, Doordash, Postmates, and many more.…
I think you're overlooking a key feature of Amazon's offering: FREE.
UberEats is free too, at least if you order a minimum. (Used to be $20 where I am, now it's $30.) Even when you pay a fee, it's only $4, which beats out BiteSquad's typical $10+ fee. In a contest for who can live the longest on tiny margins, I'm betting on Amazon -- hopefully they start signing up restaurants just a little bit east from Seattle so I can use them... When UberEats hiked their minimum I was a bit miffed.
Re: Amazon Restaurants
#130Interesting that I'm seeing this for the first time on the same day that local food delivery company SkipTheDishes was sold to Just Eat for $110M ( http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/skip-the-dishes-sold... ). Skip is very popular here in Winnipeg since this is where they're headquartered, but always seemed like the underdog in the overall market. Wondering what will become of Skip, and how Just Eat and the othe…
Skip was so much better than Just Eat, too. Skip has Uber-style live GPS tracking, Just Eat seemed to be stuck in the dark ages.
Do you mean GPS tracking of your takeaway delivery?
I've never understood why someone would want to be glued to their phone/tablet watching every move their pizza makes. Seriously, just why would you possibly care what street it's currently on?