61–70 of 371 posts
Why does startup after startup think they can make delivery a viable business? The numbers never work out.
My favorite delivery + service start up is this.
You should see which VC are backing this ridiculous idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson_(businessman)#Enjo...
I have no idea how they would every make any money. With every order, they bleed cash.
They have tens of thousands of customers, yet are worth multiple billions of dollars (valued at $2bn in 2015.) That's just incredible. Let's say they have 100k customers who each use the service every week. That's 5.2m orders per year. Let's say $100 per order, to be generous. At a 10% service fee, that's $50m for a two-year-old 40x revenue multiple. Before paying their contracted workforce. This does not make sense.…
Say the average wage is $10/hour. If it takes one hour to go and do that shopping, I break even by paying someone else that $10, if I value my leisure time as equivalent to my wage. More likely, most Instacart customers earn much more than $10/hour. For someone with a busy work schedule, there might be 2 hours of leisure time available per day during the week. This means that by using Instacart I increase my after-wo…
Specifically what products do you end up buying? I have always wanted some insight as to who buys these items near the register and why, as I rarely see anyone pick them up.
I don't understand the outrage, I like Amazon Fresh even more, next to the tipping box it specifically says in big letters tipping is neither required nor expected and defaults to zero. If the current laws regarding minimum wage are inadequate why not try to pass new laws instead of trying to read between the lines on why Instacart moved an input box and put it somewhere else? Why keep things murky? If it is against…
This is 100% nefarious. There is no reason to have both an optional service fee and a separate optional tip. It's one or the other; combining both options makes absolutely no sense.
They have tens of thousands of customers, yet are worth multiple billions of dollars (valued at $2bn in 2015.) That's just incredible. Let's say they have 100k customers who each use the service every week. That's 5.2m orders per year. Let's say $100 per order, to be generous. At a 10% service fee, that's $50m for a two-year-old 40x revenue multiple. Before paying their contracted workforce. This does not make sense.…
Say the average wage is $10/hour. If it takes one hour to go and do that shopping, I break even by paying someone else that $10, if I value my leisure time as equivalent to my wage. More likely, most Instacart customers earn much more than $10/hour. For someone with a busy work schedule, there might be 2 hours of leisure time available per day during the week. This means that by using Instacart I increase my after-wo…
I value my leisure time at the arbitrary amount of $1000/hr. Have I broken even if I pay $1000 to someone so they'll do my grocery shopping?
They have tens of thousands of customers, yet are worth multiple billions of dollars (valued at $2bn in 2015.) That's just incredible. Let's say they have 100k customers who each use the service every week. That's 5.2m orders per year. Let's say $100 per order, to be generous. At a 10% service fee, that's $50m for a two-year-old 40x revenue multiple. Before paying their contracted workforce. This does not make sense.…
What's a reasonable ratio for customers to contractors/shoppers? Perhaps we could estimate the number of customers from the number of contractors/shoppers. (Of course, "tens of thousands" may be a lifetime value, not currently active ones.)
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/197626/annual-supermarke...
I'm livid. It's on instacart to pay fair wages with the delivery fees if they think it's a problem. Their misleading double fee system is unfair to both me and (more importantly) the people who are directly providing me with service. I'm sick of the uber-ish "on-demand" service culture abusing their non-employees under my dime.
edit: funny thing is, I just watched the infamous episode of Kitchen Nightmares about Amy's Baking Company. In the episode, Gordon Ramsay becomes furious when he finds out that the customers' tips aren't going to the servers. He goes into the restaurant and asks the patrons if they would have tipped if they knew this and everyone agrees no. The owner meekly explains in a follow-up episode that he does this so he can pay the waiters a "fair fee". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy's_Baking_Company. This episode utterly destroyed Amy and her husband's company. Instacart, I love your service. It's changed the way I grocery shop and I planned on being a regular, high-value customer. Please don't make me question my decision on this.
Not a US citizen but I find the whole tipping experience rather stressful and an additional item to worry about. I like it that Uber has it built into the service and there's only one thing to pay. I'd rather pay a flat increase on the menu and expect higher staff salaries than to have the delivery boy/waiter be at my mercy of tipping.
Note there have been several articles about how some Uber drivers give lower ratings to riders who don't tip in cash.
Wow, that seems gratuitously dishonest -- especially misleading customers about what's a "tip" vs. a surcharge. Having an $x delivery fee (paid to the company) and then a tip as a separate item ($ or %) would be fine. Making the "delivery fee" into a "service charge" is itself dishonest; making it adjustable when it doesn't go to the user is pretty bad, too. I can't tell if this loses them more goodwill with customer…
How is it dishonest? It's a fee for the service that one receives. You pay one amount for groceries and another for the service of those groceries being delivered. That's exactly what a service fee should be. Consumers should understand that services have a cost. Companies should charge consumers an amount that is commensurate with the cost that it takes to deliver that service (unless they operate in a non-competiti…
I don't understand the outrage, I like Amazon Fresh even more, next to the tipping box it specifically says in big letters tipping is neither required nor expected and defaults to zero. If the current laws regarding minimum wage are inadequate why not try to pass new laws instead of trying to read between the lines on why Instacart moved an input box and put it somewhere else? Why keep things murky? If it is against…