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Meals on food delivery apps can be 90% more than if bought from the restaurant

nytimes.com

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Re: Meals on food delivery apps can be 90% more than if bought from the restaurant

#91

Post by buckminster »

lowercased wrote: post #54

what I want is a simplish way to text a restaurant my main basic wants, have them call me back via voice to confirm and make any adjustments, then I go pick it up. or... maybe delivery (I don't live in an area where delivery is huge but maybe that a gotta-have in some places). I don't like calling because I'm always put on hold - call me back within 2-3 minutes, when you're actually calling me, vs me interrupting you…

I don't understand why takeaways very rarely publish an email address. If they can receive orders from Uber (or whoever) they can receive an email.

Re: Meals on food delivery apps can be 90% more than if bought from the restaurant

#92

Post by jfengel »

matthewowen wrote: post #64
jfengel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can start such a company, but there's an overhead in getting on the minds of users and restaurant owners. Users don't want to have to keep multiple apps on their phone, or remember that the local Olive Garden uses OnlineFood but that the Greek place uses FoodNGo. We can have them order through the restaurant's web site and let them make the decision, but they're going to get frustrated if the drivers are fragment…

> they're going to get frustrated if the drivers are fragmented across the different services Why would consumers care about this? For decades (centuries even!) restaurants managed to make delivery work with their own delivery people. And admittedly pooling delivery people is effective for restaurants that don't do a lot of delivery volume, but there's still really a lot of room for fragmentation. > All people and re…

I was unclear: I meant that the restauranteurs would become frustrated if they had to search over multiple apps to find one with an available driver.

Re: Meals on food delivery apps can be 90% more than if bought from the restaurant

#93

Post by danShumway »

chrisseaton wrote: post #89
danShumway wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree with you in theory, but the restaurants we're talking about just take phone calls. Most local chains that are fighting with Grubhub (at least in my area) aren't pushing their own custom apps. They just either have A) an order form on a website, or B) a phone number I don't think it's unreasonable for them to say, "hey, we know you have a working phone. Instead of launching the Grubhub app, send us a tex…

> hey, we know you have a working phone Sounds like a rebuke. I'd be pretty offended if a business tried to call me out like this for using an app that (presumably) they're willingly taking orders from. If they don't want to be on there then don't, but don't have a go at me about it.

Part of the issue is that restaurants don't always sign up for Grubhub. When you place an order with a food delivery service, there may not be a special infrastructure or agreement set up -- the food delivery service may just call the restaurant and pretend to be a customer[0]. People assume that there's a strong relationship here, like selling a product in Walmart. Very often, there's not.

I'm not in the food service industry, maybe it's just expected that you monitor all of these things and manually request your restaurant to be removed every time a new one launches. But it's not crazy to me that someone could get fed up and say, "no, I don't need to pay attention to every VC backed startup that scrapes my website and starts advertising with my menu on top of my own business on Google. I just want to let customers know that a direct relationship with me is cheaper than a relationship with a middleperson."

Is offering a discount to someone having a go at them? If I was ordering through Grubhub, and I could save even just $5 by ordering directly, I'd want to know the option existed. I might not take advantage of it if it was a tiny amount of money. But I'd like to be informed; choices are nice.

[0]: https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2020/01/13/park-ridge-restauran...

Re: Meals on food delivery apps can be 90% more than if bought from the restaurant

#94

Post by chrisseaton »

danShumway wrote: post #93
chrisseaton wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hey, we know you have a working phone Sounds like a rebuke. I'd be pretty offended if a business tried to call me out like this for using an app that (presumably) they're willingly taking orders from. If they don't want to be on there then don't, but don't have a go at me about it.

Part of the issue is that restaurants don't always sign up for Grubhub. When you place an order with a food delivery service, there may not be a special infrastructure or agreement set up -- the food delivery service may just call the restaurant and pretend to be a customer[0]. People assume that there's a strong relationship here, like selling a product in Walmart. Very often, there's not. I'm not in the food servic…

> Is offering a discount to someone having a go at them?

No it's the 'hey' and slightly accusatory sounding 'we know you have a working phone.'

Re: Meals on food delivery apps can be 90% more than if bought from the restaurant

#95

Post by cdelb »

vector_spaces wrote: post #53
SN76477 wrote: post #33

Food delivery in its current form will be short-lived. It is a 4 party system where the company controlling the money is the only one that wins. Restaurants are asked to pay 30% of the ticket. The customer is asked to pay more than expected for their meal, a delivery fee, and a tip. For the customer, this can be nearly double for a simple $10 lunch. The driver that has to deliver it gets stuck with fuel, automatic, a…

I do consulting work in the grocery business and serve as a point of contact for software and tech purchasing for a handful of retailers and producers. Uber Eats has been calling me every year to sell their platform to some of the stores I work with. Grocery product margins are about 30 percent in the happy case (specialty foods), usually much lower. Uber Eats wants 30 percent of the basket on each sale they make. Th…

If you're up for a conversation - I would love to get your thoughts on a new product we've been working on. caleb@mealime.com

Re: Meals on food delivery apps can be 90% more than if bought from the restaurant

#96

Post by phonon »

kentosi wrote: post #82

"I focused my tests on DoorDash, Postmates, Grubhub and Uber Eats, the four largest delivery apps in the United States." I'm stumped. I live in NYC and all my friends use Seamless. I even have colleagues that will describe these companies mentioned as a "Seamless clone".

Grubhub owns Seamless

Re: Meals on food delivery apps can be 90% more than if bought from the restaurant

#97

Post by Jommi »

AlexandrB wrote: post #38
SN76477 wrote: post #33

Food delivery in its current form will be short-lived. It is a 4 party system where the company controlling the money is the only one that wins. Restaurants are asked to pay 30% of the ticket. The customer is asked to pay more than expected for their meal, a delivery fee, and a tip. For the customer, this can be nearly double for a simple $10 lunch. The driver that has to deliver it gets stuck with fuel, automatic, a…

> Restaurants are asked to pay 30% of the ticket. I was not aware of that. I can see the logic (“we’re providing a service for your business”, etc.) but it feels like double dipping. Especially since it seems as though that cost is passed straight onto the customer anyhow.

It is doubledipping. But the phrase. "your margin is my opportunity" should ring true here meaning that soon a competitor should show up that goes by list price. It already happens in Europe with the Finnish company Wolt AFAIK.

Re: Meals on food delivery apps can be 90% more than if bought from the restaurant

#98

Post by Jommi »

ipunchghosts wrote: post #66

Who cares? Some people wish to pay for convenience. Let the market figure out what that is worth.

Well this convenience could be shown as a single fee, the delivery fee. Adding to the price might seem non transparent and an example of clouding the consumers judgement.

Re: Meals on food delivery apps can be 90% more than if bought from the restaurant

#99

Post by Jommi »

buckminster wrote: post #91
lowercased wrote: post #54

what I want is a simplish way to text a restaurant my main basic wants, have them call me back via voice to confirm and make any adjustments, then I go pick it up. or... maybe delivery (I don't live in an area where delivery is huge but maybe that a gotta-have in some places). I don't like calling because I'm always put on hold - call me back within 2-3 minutes, when you're actually calling me, vs me interrupting you…

I don't understand why takeaways very rarely publish an email address. If they can receive orders from Uber (or whoever) they can receive an email.

What are you on about? It's a completely different experience. Do you want me to open it up how integrated uber eats is with the restaurant?
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