DoorDash raises $535M, now valued at $1.4B • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by Game_Ender » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 10:27 PM UTC

kels wrote: post #57

I really want to like all of these services. I've used Grubhub, Uber Eats and DoorDash. My problem with them is that it costs way more than eating at the restaurant. It's usually 30% - 40% of the cost of the food for delivery, service fees and tip. I've always wondered why it wasn't cheaper to do take out than eat at a restaurant. I'm not taking up a parking space, table, using facilities, or taking up as much of the…

Many of these services take a cut of the order price [0], so it's not surprising if restaurants chose to up their price to try and make up the difference.

[0] - https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-business-model-of-Uber-eat...

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

#112

Post by martin_bech » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 10:34 PM UTC

ac29 wrote: post #37

martin_bech wrote: post #11

If you are "Per order profitable", why do you need 535M USD? I dont get valley valuations/Metrics..

This could be early investors/founders/employees taking the opportunity to sell equity. Its possible that DoorDash itself is getting little or nothing from this deal.

That would be a hardsell for an investor. I put in 535M USD, and nothing goes towards making the company grow, everything goes towards payouts?

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

#113

Post by Falling3 » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 10:54 PM UTC

mmanfrin wrote: post #60

kels wrote: post #57

I really want to like all of these services. I've used Grubhub, Uber Eats and DoorDash. My problem with them is that it costs way more than eating at the restaurant. It's usually 30% - 40% of the cost of the food for delivery, service fees and tip. I've always wondered why it wasn't cheaper to do take out than eat at a restaurant. I'm not taking up a parking space, table, using facilities, or taking up as much of the…

I've always wondered why it wasn't cheaper to do take out than eat at a restaurant. I'm not taking up a parking space, table, using facilities, or taking up as much of the employees time but I still incur that overhead. You're also not buying high-margin drinks or being swayed to buy the specials (which are often used to balance inventory).

The impact of drinks really can't be overstated. As a booze-loving city, Portland restaurant's economy is especially interesting. At least half of the meals I eat out are at bars and you can get a quality meal for $8-12. But this all hinges on drinks subsidizing the rest of the meal.

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

#114

Post by anonytrary » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 11:06 PM UTC

DoorDash seems to cater to the 1%. Even when we had free lunches at work ($10^7 funding), we avoided using DoorDash. For two people, we would end up paying the equivalent cost of three people.

I enjoyed DoorDash's interface and checkout experience, but +50% is a high premium for delivery, especially if you're close to food. If I live in the middle of a city and I'm only getting food for a few people, I usually just walk. I wonder if DoorDash would be more useful for very large parties (N > 10).

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

#115

Post by _rpd » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 12:21 AM UTC

kels wrote: post #57

I really want to like all of these services. I've used Grubhub, Uber Eats and DoorDash. My problem with them is that it costs way more than eating at the restaurant. It's usually 30% - 40% of the cost of the food for delivery, service fees and tip. I've always wondered why it wasn't cheaper to do take out than eat at a restaurant. I'm not taking up a parking space, table, using facilities, or taking up as much of the…

How can DoorDash compete with Uber Eats?

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

#116

Post by gfosco » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 12:22 AM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #54

thisisit wrote: post #30

I haven't used DoorDash but my experience with food delivery services has been average. As a bachelor I loved them until I found out these companies use multiple ways to add up charges. Most of the time restaurant cost in-shop vs cost app varies a lot. Then they charge some kind of "packing charges". Including delivery fee some times the delivery price is 25% more than restaurant prices. When I talked to some of the…

Same here. On top of that, the delivery itself can be pretty sub par. I had one delivery person not understand the concept of entering in a code on a keypad to get into an apartment building. Not having difficulties entering the code, mind you, but not knowing what the keypad was even for.

Postmates delivery folks never ever read the delivery instructions, I have to send them all the callbox code via the app when they are close, and 25% of them still call and have no idea what to do. DoorDash folks at least read the instructions..

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

#117

Post by jackmodern » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 12:26 AM UTC

thisisit wrote: post #30

I haven't used DoorDash but my experience with food delivery services has been average. As a bachelor I loved them until I found out these companies use multiple ways to add up charges. Most of the time restaurant cost in-shop vs cost app varies a lot. Then they charge some kind of "packing charges". Including delivery fee some times the delivery price is 25% more than restaurant prices. When I talked to some of the…

every time I order from food dash I overpay and the food is cold. won't order from them ever again.

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

#118

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 12:32 AM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #78

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…

>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. They did, it was called SpoonRocket. I loved it, you could get a decent meal delivered in under 5 minutes. But they failed horribly because the economics just don…

[deleted]

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

#119

Post by prepend » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 12:34 AM UTC

I had bad experiences with doordash. I ordered a pizza. It showed up 40 minutes after the estimate. It was cold. It was all messed up. Driver apologized and said she dropped it and took off.

Being an Uber eats user I wasn’t worried as I went into the app and said what happened. App did nothing immediately. In a few minutes got a template email saying “sorry, we’ll give you your $5.99 delivery fee back” Didn’t happen. Emailed support saying what happened, no response.

Uber Eats is on top of food orders. Any errors result in new deliveries to replace or refunds on food.

I assume that a company with bad customer service agorithms has other problems. I tried again and it was ok. But don’t use them as alternatives are way better.

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

#120

Post by fapjacks » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:12 AM UTC

DoorDash in particular is exorbitantly expensive. Absolutely terrible markup and horrible experiences ordering through them. They're on my list of personal trade embargoed companies along with Dell and Domino's. Hmm. All three are "D" companies (and also their names start with the letter "D").