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Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

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Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#61
post #48
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deliveroo also take 30% of the food sale so I always assumed the £2.50 went to the rider, which seems like decent amount.

Are they going to make people use their local restaurant 30% more? Otherwise it's just eating the restaurant's profits (pardon the pun).

30% to remove the tables & waiting staff (plus toilets, waiting area) for those customers? Seems like a decent deal.

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#62
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree this self-employed farce has to stop, the service itself is good. Previously takeaways were all the more greasy options, the deliveroo options are nicer food and it's aimed at a different market segment. It allows venues access to a market that was previously denied to them because they couldn't justify running their own delivery service full-time. They charge £2.50 per delivery. If they were paying cou…

Deliveroo also take 30% of the food sale so I always assumed the £2.50 went to the rider, which seems like decent amount.

Wow, 30%? So restaurants that use deliveroo I should be able to ask for at least a 20% discount for collecting food? Sounds like Groupon's modus, once the restaurants realise they're giving away such a large part of their profits surely they stop using them? Isn't it cheaper to have your own delivery people?

Edit: Thinking about it, if I order pizza for £20, the company adds £2.50 for delivery. So £8.50 is being spent on delivery (?) .. a normal taxi is about £5 for that trip; an Uber or similar must be cheaper still?

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#63

Currently there is a £2.50 fee for deliveries in London with Deliveroo. Even with extreme optimization a Deliveroo rider can't possibly make more than 3-4 "proper" deliveries in an hour (food gets cold fast! And when it gets returned deliveroo & the restaurant suffers) so maybe they can generate around £10/hour in revenue for Deliveroo. Then you need to take out costs for the driver, development, marketing, integrati…

Don’t they get a discount on the food? That’s how a lot of the other services make it...

Looks like from the comments below they can take out 30% of the cost of the food. Assuming average of £20/order, that's £6/order, which could work.

Still doesn't seem like a great deal for the consumer / restaurant. E.g. I'm paying £8.50 of a £22.50 order purely on delivery, and I don't even get table service...

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#64
All these new delivery startups remind me of Kozmo.com, which raised quite a bit of money from high-profile investors (including Fred Wilson and Amazon[1]) and even filed for an IPO in 2000. Kozmo.com described itself this way in its IPO filing:

"We enable consumers to order a variety of entertainment, food and convenience products over the Internet for free delivery in under one hour. Our promise of under one hour delivery is designed to satisfy a consumer's desire for immediate gratification. We focus on selling frequently purchased, high margin items with well-known brand names. Additionally, we recently initiated a business-to-business service to enable select retailers to provide their customers with an expedited delivery option on a fee-for-service basis through our distribution networks."[2]

If you've never heard of Kozmo.com, it's because the company went bust. The business grew very quickly... but only as long as there was freshly raised capital coming in. When the flow of fresh capital stopped, the company couldn't find a way to become profitable.

Here are some articles chronicling Kozmo.com's swift rise and even swifter fall:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040821125230/http://www.manufa...

https://www.forbes.com/2000/06/22/mu3.html

Deliveroo doesn't look that different from Kozmo.com... or does it?

--

[1] http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-new...

[2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1075749/000091205700...

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#67
post #64

All these new delivery startups remind me of Kozmo.com, which raised quite a bit of money from high-profile investors (including Fred Wilson and Amazon[1]) and even filed for an IPO in 2000. Kozmo.com described itself this way in its IPO filing: "We enable consumers to order a variety of entertainment, food and convenience products over the Internet for free delivery in under one hour. Our promise of under one hour d…

I work for a company worth billions. I've talked to entrepreneurs who "already tried the idea" for the sort of business I work at.

I guess how you execute matters, or something.

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#68
post #47
post #5

Another unicorn that can only exist because it uses fake self-employment to turn their workforce into a cheaper one. Just like Uber and so many others this only works because for some reason turning paid work into something that is not even self-sustaining suddenly is accepted. Does nobody have ethical issues with seeing value in devaluing people?

Delivering food is not a high value activity. Most people are only willing to pay a few dollars to have food delivered to them. If you raise the cost of employing low skill workers then many of these business models cease to exist. It's hard to survive on very low wages. That's one reason we have a social safety net. Many argue that it should be the company's responsibility to pay their workers higher wages and not s…

> If you raise the cost of employing low skill workers then many of these business models cease to exist.

At risk of getting into a discussion about UBI and tax doctrine, is that a bad thing?

The business doesn't have a right to exist. If it can't operate without paying its staff below-subsistence wages, why should it (or the VCs who provide it funding) expect the state (read: other taxpayers) to subsidise that?

Regarding your second point I'd argue the money would be better diverted to providing the education to raise the overall skill level of the economy rather than enabling people to work menial jobs that will (in the case of Deliveroo, Uber, et al) be automated away anyway.

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#69

I find it funny they're claiming some sort of AI system will help them make better margins. In my city, Nottingham. all the deliveroo people gather in Trinity Square waiting for jobs. There's obviously no special AI needed. I do think though that it raises the issue that they should be paying for their own business premises and stop using our public spaces as their company waiting spots.

To be fair Nottingham city centre is tiny, and Trinity Square is bang in the middle. It's obviously a market that would not benefit from some fancy AI system.

Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding

#70
why are they valued in billions? how profitable can an app that facilitates food delivery become? restaurant still has to charge for their food, customer still wants to pay minimum and the delivery person still needs to get paid. what innovation is this app bringing that will cut costs by so much that it will make billions in profit?
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