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Amazon to shut down its Amazon Restaurants business in the U.S.

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Re: Amazon to shut down its Amazon Restaurants business in the U.S.

#81

Post by Nasrudith »

This seems to be a trend with big tech companies - they try to get into a new domain under their name and then when it succeeds half-heartedly kill it off.

It looks very dysfunctional and inefficient even from a venture capital "recycle it and risk it for another moonshot again" perspective and makes it look like they have lost their ability to innovate entirely once they start posting positive income to justify their stock cost. I am not sure if it is as dysfunctional as it looks or I am missing something.

Re: Amazon to shut down its Amazon Restaurants business in the U.S.

#82

Post by astura »

sokoloff wrote: post #52
dagw wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Sweden agents that help with house hunting basically don't exist outside the very very top end of the market. Everybody finds their own houses via ads, book their own viewings with the sellers agent and handles the bidding process themselves. When it comes to paper work the buyer and seller "shares" the same agent who has a fiduciary duty to both parties (even though they're paid by the sellers). With the internet…

Not everyone is internet savvy. Not everyone knows what they want. Not everyone knows what they can afford. Not everyone comes from a history of property ownership. Some people need assistance on things that others can self-serve.

Real estate agents, even the so-called "buyer's agent," are the house equivalent of "used car salesman."

Just like you shouldn't trust a used car salesman to tell you what car would fit your needs and you can afford, you shouldn't trust a real estate agent to tell you what house would fit your needs and you can afford.

Re: Amazon to shut down its Amazon Restaurants business in the U.S.

#83

Post by lotsofpulp »

krapht wrote: post #73
lotsofpulp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That misses a major purpose people go to sit down restaurants is for the atmosphere. Whether it be for casual dining, or celebration, or a date, or business meeting. The point is not the food, it’s to facilitate a social interaction under the common setting of needing to eat. You’ve always been able to get good food without a front of house.

Have you? Until fast-casual restaurants became popular in the 2000s there wasn't much for "good food without a front of house". I remember when most grocery stores were mostly groceries and not very much pre-made meals.

I meant restaurants without waiters and whatnot.

Re: Amazon to shut down its Amazon Restaurants business in the U.S.

#85

Post by bena »

emiliobumachar wrote: post #68
prostoalex wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's expensive to have boots on the ground in every zip code. RedFin hires their own agents full time. OpenListings and Zillow refer online buyers to their affiliated agents who cut them a deal on commission in exchange for leads. You can always list a place with photos and all on Zillow or CraigsList and mention that seller will not pay an agent's commission. End of the day there's a "For Sale by Owner" sign for tho…

Has an agent ever told a potential buyer that a neighborhood is in decline?

When they feel they can nudge the buyer into a more expensive neighborhood.

Re: Amazon to shut down its Amazon Restaurants business in the U.S.

#86

Post by bluedino »

hbosch wrote: post #27
llamataboot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the collusion work? Just curious since it seems like such an inefficient market (our realtor was a good friend of ours, he /did/ have good local market knowledge and things to say, but no way did he have to do more than 4 or 5 hours of work total for us...)

I thought about this a lot during our home buying process. Our agent, too, wasn't asked to do much... because we found the house we wanted online, and had our financing, so the agent didn't have to show us any houses or help us along in any way. She just submitted our offer and that was that. I have heard that realtors, like for instance car dealers, simply have a vested interest in middleman-ing the inventory by way…

Let's not forget the associated scams like 'title search/insurance', 'appraisal', and 'home inspection'.

Re: Amazon to shut down its Amazon Restaurants business in the U.S.

#87

Post by october_sky »

bluedino wrote: post #86
hbosch wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought about this a lot during our home buying process. Our agent, too, wasn't asked to do much... because we found the house we wanted online, and had our financing, so the agent didn't have to show us any houses or help us along in any way. She just submitted our offer and that was that. I have heard that realtors, like for instance car dealers, simply have a vested interest in middleman-ing the inventory by way…

Let's not forget the associated scams like 'title search/insurance', 'appraisal', and 'home inspection'.

I'm hesitant to concur with you on the home inspection. The home inspector I've used several times has discovered termites, and other massive problems that would have cost me upwards of $40,000 on one specific house I was interested in buying. I paid a few hundred bucks to save myself from that headache.... The realtor on the other hand did almost zero

Re: Amazon to shut down its Amazon Restaurants business in the U.S.

#89

Post by ghaff »

devit wrote: post #75
Animats wrote: post #16

Amazon had a restaurant business? The funny thing is, Amazon probably could do a good delivery restaurant business. There are already many "delivery only restaurants"[1] Uber Eats encourages others to start them. But Amazon, unlike Uber, is capable of building physical infrastructure. The future of this is "food fulfillment centers", large warehouse spaces which house various specialty kitchens. Common functions, suc…

That sounds overdue. Restaurant food is massively overpriced compared to raw materials (despite basic dishes like pasta and sous vide steak taking basically no time and effort to prepare), and mass producing it along with mass delivery using vans might fix that.

If it takes no time or effort why not just do it at home? The results will be better.

It most certainly takes time and effort to have kitchen infrastructure, inventory, cook to order, and delivery.

Re: Amazon to shut down its Amazon Restaurants business in the U.S.

#90

Post by whoevercares »

pxtail wrote: post #76

I'm amazed and amused reading some replies - it looks like some people would love to live in a world where single corporation fulfills all their basic needs: * restaurants from amazon * home real estate market[0] * shopping from amazon * entertainment from amazon * alexa from amazon, listening all the time * education (already some basic form of it exists - alexa is used to answer kids questions) Although many import…

> healthcare

Forget about Haven already?

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