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DoorDash raises $535M, now valued at $1.4B

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Re: DoorDash raises $535M, now valued at $1.4B

#81

Post by coltonv »

ben174 wrote: post #70

One of the big players should launch a giant warehouse - serving as a giant kitchen. Capable of cooking all kinds of different varieties of cuisine and tons of automation. And a huge staff of well-trained chefs cooking, and delivering to a ~50 mile radius. I'd imagine they'd open this in - say Fremont - and deliver to the entire bay area. It would be great, because I could order Mexican food for me, Indian food for t…

ClusterTruck (https://clustertruck.com/) does this in Indianapolis and I'm a huge fan of it. There strategy is to license recipes from local food trucks then cook them in a kitchen downtown. I A bit pricy but I think the business model is brilliant and the food is always good and delivery is fast and consistent.

I'm surprised they haven't grown or expanded more. I think it's such a great model, but then again who knows what the logistics is like especially in a larger city.

Re: DoorDash raises $535M, now valued at $1.4B

#82

Post by ghaff »

fnovd wrote: post #73
ghaff wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I even understand what the network effects are here. I guess there are some potential efficiencies with having a single delivery company that handles deliveries rather than individual restaurants but it seems like a stretch. People I know who live in cities tend to just have a stack of take-out pizza/Chinese food/etc. menus for places that deliver (or not). Maybe I'm missing something but it doesn't real…

Using DoorDash or UberEats as your delivery service instead of building your delivery staff in-house is like using AWS or DO instead of building your own in-house ops team. Since most delivery workflows are pretty much identical (go to restaurant, pick up food, deliver food), it seems like any restaurant other than a "typical delivery" place would benefit from using someone else's infrastructure.

Except that "building your delivery staff in-house" more or less consists of hiring some teenagers to work for tips. It's not exactly architecting a datacenter. Furthermore, delivery is going to inherently be a local business even if you're a nationwide company.

I actually do think that there's something to be said for having a standardized service that a restaurant already offering take out can just sign up for. Maybe delivery is something they just never got around to offering. It just seems like a service that's hard to do well at a price people are willing to pay.

Re: DoorDash raises $535M, now valued at $1.4B

#83

Post by stctgion »

ben174 wrote: post #70

One of the big players should launch a giant warehouse - serving as a giant kitchen. Capable of cooking all kinds of different varieties of cuisine and tons of automation. And a huge staff of well-trained chefs cooking, and delivering to a ~50 mile radius. I'd imagine they'd open this in - say Fremont - and deliver to the entire bay area. It would be great, because I could order Mexican food for me, Indian food for t…

Deliveroo, the biggest player in the UK does this https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/28/deliveroo-d...

Re: DoorDash raises $535M, now valued at $1.4B

#84

Post by not_kurt_godel »

ghaff wrote: post #75
ben174 wrote: post #70

One of the big players should launch a giant warehouse - serving as a giant kitchen. Capable of cooking all kinds of different varieties of cuisine and tons of automation. And a huge staff of well-trained chefs cooking, and delivering to a ~50 mile radius. I'd imagine they'd open this in - say Fremont - and deliver to the entire bay area. It would be great, because I could order Mexican food for me, Indian food for t…

Honestly? Sounds awful. Industrialized, lowest common denominator fast food. Plus pretty much any time I've eaten at a big restaurant offering options from a bunch of different cuisines, the experience has been somewhere between mediocre and awful. ADDED: As others have pointed out, you can put together something that's effectively managed like a high-end food court. But it seems as if the economics are tough.

Yep, sounds like one step above Soylent.

Re: DoorDash raises $535M, now valued at $1.4B

#85

Post by lazerpants »

dahdum wrote: post #53
pavanred wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree taxes are not hidden charges, but it does sound a little deceitful to me that doordash bundles taxes with their service fee as one line item on their checkout page. And, I don't share the same sympathy for the doordash drivers. I was already charged a delivery fee and a service fee separately, why is it still my responsibility to make sure the drivers get paid enough and not doordash's. Besides, the idea of t…

The crazy thing is with all those fees, service charges, and markups they are still just barely contribution margin profitable. Amazon Prime Now / Restaurants guarantees a delivery driver a certain wage (say $XX/hr, depends on market). However what that really means is while your tip is technically going to the driver, until they exceed $XX/hr, you're just saving Amazon from having to pay them instead. I still tip, b…

I think NY state forced them to hand over tips to drivers (at least they did for GrubHub/Seamless), but I don't know if that has changed in other markets.

Re: DoorDash raises $535M, now valued at $1.4B

#86

Post by dmode »

tyingq wrote: post #27

Doordash is a tire fire. 10x worse than Uber Eats for basic service. My experience is less than 50% success at delivering what I ordered. Missing items, wrong items, wrong totals, completely failed deliveries, and non-equitable compensation. Then, shit follow up when they fail. I’ll savor in more than a little Shadenfreud when they fold.

I have ordered with Doordash 10-15 times. It failed me only once when the "dasher" delivered my food to a random neighbor (who actually ate all of it)

Re: DoorDash raises $535M, now valued at $1.4B

#87

Post by thoughtpalette »

tyingq wrote: post #27

Doordash is a tire fire. 10x worse than Uber Eats for basic service. My experience is less than 50% success at delivering what I ordered. Missing items, wrong items, wrong totals, completely failed deliveries, and non-equitable compensation. Then, shit follow up when they fail. I’ll savor in more than a little Shadenfreud when they fold.

Anecdotal but I've only had one issue (not delivered) on 50+ orders here in Chicago.

Their customer service was quick and made sure the delivery was expedited, only received it 40 minutes late.

They are also one of the only on-demand providers to serve a lot of common fast food in my area, which is handy when I'm feeling non-healthy food.

Re: DoorDash raises $535M, now valued at $1.4B

#89

Post by manifest23 »

ben174 wrote: post #70

One of the big players should launch a giant warehouse - serving as a giant kitchen. Capable of cooking all kinds of different varieties of cuisine and tons of automation. And a huge staff of well-trained chefs cooking, and delivering to a ~50 mile radius. I'd imagine they'd open this in - say Fremont - and deliver to the entire bay area. It would be great, because I could order Mexican food for me, Indian food for t…

We actually just did something like this, but on a much smaller scale than "a giant warehouse".

We've (https://myaccio.com/) been running as a premium delivery service in Victoria, BC for a few years. Instead of taking a 25-30% discount from restaurants we were marking items up by 20%. We deliver mostly from the "good" restaurants who can't afford to take a 25-30% hit just to provide delivery. While this was turning into a good lifestyle business, delivering food when you don't control all the variables is extremely hard (and not exactly profitable at a small scale).

What we ended up making was "The Kitchen by Accio". It's high end delivery food made by extremely talented chefs. There are four concepts to choose from each with its own head chef. We launched just over 3 weeks ago and things are going pretty well so far. We still deliver from other restaurants but we've noticed that a growing population of our "regulars" are starting to just order from The Kitchen.

Re: DoorDash raises $535M, now valued at $1.4B

#90

Post by tyingq »

thoughtpalette wrote: post #87
tyingq wrote: post #27

Doordash is a tire fire. 10x worse than Uber Eats for basic service. My experience is less than 50% success at delivering what I ordered. Missing items, wrong items, wrong totals, completely failed deliveries, and non-equitable compensation. Then, shit follow up when they fail. I’ll savor in more than a little Shadenfreud when they fold.

Anecdotal but I've only had one issue (not delivered) on 50+ orders here in Chicago. Their customer service was quick and made sure the delivery was expedited, only received it 40 minutes late. They are also one of the only on-demand providers to serve a lot of common fast food in my area, which is handy when I'm feeling non-healthy food.

Interesting, upvoted. So maybe I'm seeing a regional problem. It's honestly terrible. DFW area Dasher, if you're listening.
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