Our restaurants are failing. Why should food delivery apps thrive? • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by haltingproblem » Sat, May 16, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

BubRoss wrote: post #125

haltingproblem wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your take itself is a judgement. Does a company indulging in non-coerced commerce (i.e. voluntary) make it virtuous? Why is questioning the efficacy, for society, of the economic models of any company considered immoral? Capitalist enterprises are neither immoral (left) nor moral (right). They just happen to be the most efficient - read easy to cobble together. It does not mean they are the best outcome for society.

> Does a company indulging in non-coerced commerce (i.e. voluntary) make it virtuous? No, the reward is money/resources and the person wasn't implying the polar opposite of the article. You are creating a false dichotomy here by trying to split things into good or bad. There is a neutral position that you don't have to be invested in. > Why is questioning the efficacy, for society, of the economic models of any compa…

The parent opens with saying - I am not a fan of moralistic takes on business. I did not create the dichotomy, the parent did!

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

#142

Post by bergstromm466 » Sat, May 16, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #135

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…

I love food delivery apps. It’s incredibly convenient to have a single consistent app that provides me with so many options in one place. I’m also not blind to the fact that this convenience comes at a huge and invisible cost: it’s being used as a cudgel to literally beat the snot out of my local restaurants, quite possibly resulting in many of the best ones going out of business. The power of this small and apparent…

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

#143

Post by excalibur » Sat, May 16, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

I don't feel like their fees should be capped necessarily, but I DO feel like they should be required to charge them all to customers directly rather than bleeding small businesses dry. Let informed consumers decide how much app overhead they're willing to put up with.

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

#144

Post by aloukissas » Sat, May 16, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

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…

But is there really competition? All platforms seem to charge the same outrageous fees to the businesses, we're not seeing competition driving fees down. It's more like a coordinated oligopoly with price-fixing.

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

#145

Post by dathinab » Sat, May 16, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #38

perlpimp wrote: post #2

I thought delivery apps aren't making a profit either.

Foodora was extremely popular here in Toronto, you’d see the bike delivery people all over the place and they signed up tons of restaurants but they just shut down citing the margins simply not making sense for the business. It didn’t help that a month before shutting down a group of workers unionized in Ontario, and further threw a wrench in a terribly low margin business and now none of them have a job and the enti…

> It didn’t help that a month before shutting down a group of workers unionized in Ontario, and further threw a wrench in a terribly low margin business and now none of them have a job and the entire city is stuck using Uber

I don't think unionizing is ever a problem. I you do moralistic acceptable business practices. If your business is only profitable by paying below acceptable salary, push side costs onto employees or cutting corner wrt. employee safety then it IHMO it is better for your business to close. Additionally if a whole industry is affected by this then IMHO it needs a major reform in how it works or it should just cease to exist.

Sure food delivery can not cease to exist, it's needed but if their is no way to operate it profitable without taking advantage of delivery personal and/or restaurants then it needs a major change. Either people need to accept that delivered food is more costly or the state needs to subvention it (during epidemics and similar where it's an somewhat essential service for some people, like when your stove just broke yesterday).

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

#146

Post by dehrmann » Sat, May 16, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

softwaredoug wrote: post #3

Our city has some local restaurant driven “drop points” for getting lots of restaurant prepared meals at a margin better for restaurants. Please see if your city has something similar as an alternative to grubhub, etc

I had an idea, and I think Travis Kalanick started building something like it, where restaurants rent kitchen space alongside other virtual restaurants. The site would have good road access and be centralized, so pickups are faster, and the space would be used more efficiently that high-rent retail space. I got the idea seeing a local restaurant with most of it's orders being picked by a food delivery service, yet they were paying for a good, downtown location where parking is hard.

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

#147

Post by lefrancaiz » Sat, May 16, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

orev wrote: post #37

Apps are doing well because they are solving a real problem — translating restaurants’ abysmal web sites, PDF menus, and awful online ordering experiences to apps that “just work”. If restaurants put any effort at all into fixing those things, there would not be such a strong demand for apps. Obviously this is different for different restaurants, and the skill set needed to run a restaurant is vastly different from r…

Yes and no. There are services out there that make it easy for restaurants to have a great online presence, including online ordering (here is an example www.getbento.com). And generally I think restaurant websites have been getting better and better. Restaurant owners are much more aware of the importance of online presence.

That's only half the battle though, food delivery marketplaces like Grubhub are very entrenched and changing consumer behavior back to using the restaurant's website takes time and effort. Marketplaces also spend a ton on marketing to make sure consumers go through them and not directly via the restaurant's website. It's an uphill battle for the restaurants.

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

#148

Post by mylons » Sat, May 16, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

aloukissas wrote: post #144

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…

But is there really competition? All platforms seem to charge the same outrageous fees to the businesses, we're not seeing competition driving fees down. It's more like a coordinated oligopoly with price-fixing.

this and there doesn't appear to be an abundance of choice in teh apps? and they're consolidating right now

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

#149

Post by haltingproblem » Sat, May 16, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

mhh__ wrote: post #95

haltingproblem wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your take itself is a judgement. Does a company indulging in non-coerced commerce (i.e. voluntary) make it virtuous? Why is questioning the efficacy, for society, of the economic models of any company considered immoral? Capitalist enterprises are neither immoral (left) nor moral (right). They just happen to be the most efficient - read easy to cobble together. It does not mean they are the best outcome for society.

Best outcome for whom? I trust people to spend their own money in the way that they want rather than some top down dictated manner. I don't like the societal purpose questioning because people forget that not everyone has a lot of money to spend - the trade-off will almost definitely be between "ethics" and the cost to the person on the street. I don't buy my books from Amazon because I love Amazon, I do it because i…

I never ever said anything about top-down choice depriving solutions. That is a straw-man you have dragged into this conversation.

This is not a debate about the merits of capitalism vs. socialism (or communism).

This is simply saying that some free-market solutions lead to worse outcomes for society. My hoped-for solution was a co-op model app which is completely in the free market realm.

You went ahead and made this about the inherent virtue of capitalism and choice.

I really dont know what you are saying about Amazon since you seem to be equivocating. Not letting Amazon be a monopoly is depriving their customers of choice!

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

#150

Post by maxpert » Sat, May 16, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

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…

I personally believe these businesses have lagged seriously in upgrading themselves to what was coming for them. They would have paid a certain percentage to cooks, and staff from the prices they were charging, definitely lower than they deserved (hence tipping). Nobody ever complained about them not paying enough and not buying insurance for them. Now once these delivery companies have forced their hands into paying commissions (BTW same items are expensive 10-30% on Uber/DoorDash and people still order) they have suddenly came to a rude awakening. Not that I don’t sympathize with small business owners going through trouble, but this sound hypocritical when Amazon in retail space has done exact thing and nobody cares, but over here everyone sees opportunity for political point scoring.