Amazon to shut down its Amazon Restaurants business in the U.S. • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by rchaud » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

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…

Considering that Amazon's time-tracking system has workers peeing in bottles to avoid taking a bathroom break, I would not want them doing anything remotely close to working with food.

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

#102

Post by ravenstine » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

tnolet wrote: post #78

devit wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A price of an item is rarely if ever based on its raw material cost. With restaurant food even more. You pay for location, rent, heating, staffing etc etc etc

More importantly, the price of an item comes down to how much people are _willing to pay for it_. Price does have to cover overhead(unless you're WeWork and care more about revenue than profit), but a comparable competing product can have the same overhead and charge way more if its audience is willing to pay more or it.

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

#103

Post by zrobotics » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

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…

I haven't used the restaurant service, but I'm starting to be shocked at how quickly Amazon is going downhill in most of their consumer-facing businesses. I dropped prime last month after maybe 6 years, since the price keeps climbing and the value of the service keeps dropping. I used to make nearly all of my online purchases through them, but between the fakes and poor customer service I couldn't justify the cost of prime anymore.

Although I think this is a good thing, I'd rather not see one company control the entirety of e-commerce. And out of the big tech companies Amazon is the easiest to drop (excluding AWS, strictly consumer services). I'm still not Google-free, but switching email and search was much more difficult than leaving Amazon.

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

#104

Post by ravenstine » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

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.

Off topic, I just videos on cooking sous vide steak and I'm totally sold on the technique. Where has this been all my life???

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

#105

Post by will_brown » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

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…

>Surprising that Amazon didn't go that way.

Maybe customers can over look Amazon workers not getting bathroom breaks and being forced to urinate in plastic jugs so they can get their online orders next day...but customers might not overlook those working conditions when they find out the people handling their food are urinating in the kitchen because they don’t get bathroom breaks.

Not to mention the stories of 100 degree warehouses so amazon can save on electricity, I wouldn’t put it past them to not keep food as cold as it should be to save a few bucks.

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

#106

Post by zrobotics » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

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.

Raw materials aren't the reason restaurant food is expensive, the biggest cost of running a commercial kitchen is labor. And that is even after considering that kitchen staff are often low-wage positions. How, exactly, will this save money? Sure, you don't have to pay waitstaff the ludicrously low rate of ~1.25/hour, but the delivery drivers need paid and the app will take its middleman cut of the profits.

And have you ever eaten hospital food or other cafeteria e? That is the quality to expect from a industrial scale kitchen. Delivery is convenient, but nothing about this business is very revolutionary, and I certainly don't see the restaurant industry being 'disrupted' anytime soon.

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

#107

Post by zrobotics » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 3:11 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #94

Qwertystop wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ikea is a chain of furniture stores which (among other things) have food courts in them.

Yes I'm fully aware. I just don't see what the racket is.

I believe the racket is that the stores are so maze-like that food is required, since it seems to take half a day even for a short trip.

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

#108

Post by ghaff » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 4:11 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #91

ghaff wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cooking at home has many of the same costs beyond raw materials that a restaurant has, like kitchen infrastructure, inventory, and labour costs, driving the cost of cooking at home well beyond the raw material cost. The parent is suggesting that a business producing food at massive scale could bring the cost of preparing food much closer to the raw material cost. It is not exactly a wild idea. The model has already p…

Except you probably already have some semblance of a kitchen in your apartment. Preparing some simple meals--stir fries, steak, fish filet, etc.--has very little incremental infrastructure or skill associated with it.

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

#109

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #74

C1sc0cat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes where I live in the UK this has been a thing for years one of the oldest Indian's in my town has had a delivery only kitchen for over a decade.

Generally, when we in the tech industry turn our gaze to something we know nothing about, we assume that the first thought we have about it is revolutionary. Which is actually a good way to raise money, because most VCs don't know much about other industries either.

This first sentence is so on point and frustratingly correct, I don't know what to do other than upvote it :-(

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

#110

Post by freewilly1040 » Tue, Jun 11, 2019, 4:35 PM UTC

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…

There’s lots of competition and it’s a low margin business. Probably just didn’t see it as a market worth fighting for.