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Our restaurants are failing. Why should food delivery apps thrive?

latimes.com

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Re: Our restaurants are failing. Why should food delivery apps thrive?

#101

Post by basch »

blfr wrote: post #93
ericzawo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Restaurants are a lot of things. But lazy is not one of them. Have you ever worked at a restaurant?

OK, complacent then. It doesn't change the argument.

It's very common for businesses of all sorts to view anything not their core competency as a cost to be minimized or a distraction, instead of an investment with return.

a website and online menu is something that they felt they could get away with the bare minimum, no regard for surfer experience. it, along with maybe throwing some money in an seo pit, with a checkbox in a playbook.

Re: Our restaurants are failing. Why should food delivery apps thrive?

#102

Post by mhh__ »

vdnkh wrote: post #90
swiley wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I feel like the “people shouldn’t profit from catastrophe” thing is a big part of why it’s still hard to get PPE (no one can justify extra manufacturing etc.)

> (no one can justify extra manufacturing etc. In cases where the free market isn't incentivized to make the supplies we need, it's the job of the government to take over and make them. "Profiting from catastrophe" as you put it will result in price gouging.

I think they were arguing that measures intended to stop price gouging can disincentivize an increase in supply, e.g. it's a lot harder to undercut someone selling a pack of toilet paper for £10 than £1.

Definitely possible but I'm not sure it's happening specifically at the moment.

Re: Our restaurants are failing. Why should food delivery apps thrive?

#103

Post by backtoyoujim »

swiley wrote: post #68
mhh__ wrote: post #54

> why should I'm not a huge fan of moralistic takes on business. If you're selling something dangerous then that's wrong, but it's very easy to be blinkered from a high position. If people want to buy food in a certain way I can't really blame them - arguably the same with Uber and taxis, Uber has disrupted an industry which was fairly uncompetitive and politically charged (Their prevalence indicates the customers ap…

Yeah I feel like the “people shouldn’t profit from catastrophe” thing is a big part of why it’s still hard to get PPE (no one can justify extra manufacturing etc.)

Seems like that means of productions being shuttered to protect humans might have a bigger play on that.

Re: Our restaurants are failing. Why should food delivery apps thrive?

#104

Post by casefields »

kevindong wrote: post #20

> While neither Uber nor Grubhub turns a profit delivering food, they are nonetheless venture-backed and raking in mountains of cash The author acknowledges that the delivery services are losing money. And yet, the author is essentially saying that the apps should lose even more money because someone else is willing to fund the apps.

It's a very weird position. Even if I were taking in a trillion in cash, if my expenses are a trillion+1, no would call me a success for long.

Re: Our restaurants are failing. Why should food delivery apps thrive?

#106

Post by selectodude »

aloukissas wrote: post #28

Many restaurants are asking for a flat-fee alternative, similar to the Shopify model for e-commerce. Whoever brings this to market will win the restaurant owners. And then does the consumer loyalty lie with the app or the restaurant? I.e., would I rather order from restaurants on my favorite app or from my favorite restaurant, regardless of the app? Probably the latter, but who knows!

I use ChowNow, which apparently is a fixed fee. I’m not sure if they’re lying or not but there’s a pretty large number of restaurants in my area that send you to their app for online ordering.

Re: Our restaurants are failing. Why should food delivery apps thrive?

#107

Post by dvtrn »

blondin wrote: post #57
ericzawo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Restaurants are a lot of things. But lazy is not one of them. Have you ever worked at a restaurant?

what OP describes makes sense to me. but you are right, it is perhaps not laziness. it's a case of not knowing how to do it. i mean why isn't dominos, pizzahut, etc. teaching them how to do delivery? with everything going on, with these apps not helping restaurants, i decided to stop using these apps and go get my food myself. i only use apps when i get lazy like OP says.

To your point, Dominos is. Their pizza order tracker is open source [1]. The code is now two years old but I thought it was really cool of them to even do this in the first place.

[1] https://github.com/nikolas/dominos-pizza-tracker

(I’m still hunting the original article where this was announced, the first version they released I’m pretty sure was linked here on HN in the mid 10’s?)

Re: Our restaurants are failing. Why should food delivery apps thrive?

#109

Post by mhh__ »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #88
swiley wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I feel like the “people shouldn’t profit from catastrophe” thing is a big part of why it’s still hard to get PPE (no one can justify extra manufacturing etc.)

You misunderstand the difference between profiting and profiteering. Nobody is claiming companies should sell toilet paper at cost, but they are saying toilet paper shouldn't get 5x more expensive.

That's true but there are quite a few people out there who don't understand/believe in that.

Talking about buying your own health insurance is taboo amongst some in the UK, even though it reduces pressure on the (I should "our") NHS, because to them it's immoral to have capitalism in healthcare or something like that

Re: Our restaurants are failing. Why should food delivery apps thrive?

#110

Post by MattGaiser »

JCharante wrote: post #41

The industry in the US is ridiculous. In a different country my friends run a newish (7 months?) cafe where they aren't on any apps. Instead you can send them a facebook message or call, and they will dispatch a shipper to you. They will then send one of their baristas who aren't busy, or if necessary they've built up a list of delivery drivers who like to hangout near their restaurant, they "sell" the food to the sh…

> shipper is in charge for collecting payment to compensate themselves.

That's a deal-breaker for me as I want to pay with a credit card.

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