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

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

#211

Post by paysonderulo » Sat, May 16, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #208

xenocyon wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prevalence indicates the customers appreciate their presence Focusing solely on consumers ignores negative externalities. There are many situations in which cost benefits from such externalities (slavery, pollution, human rights abuses, animal mistreatment) can lead to a favorable marketplace position vs competitors who do not exploit such externalities. What is more, many of these exploits (slavery, pollution, hum…

You're right externalities exist but I doubt there are any significant ones in food delivery.

Half of the examples given can easily apply to food delivery, namely pollution and human rights abuses.

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

#212

Post by Jommi » Sat, May 16, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

ramraj07 wrote: post #119

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…

Apps are doing well because this is another one of those protective moat ideas where once they have established themselves they have no need to innovate further. Sites like grubhub have no physical reason to gouge 20-30% commission on top of charging both sides delivery fees (further on top of guilting customers into tipping more). In the end it's an app serving a few web pages and APIs (these filthy companies don't…

I don't think you really understand how software works. No software has a "physical reason" to ask for money once they are done. It's really a terrible argument that you seem to try and turn into a quip against delivery apps.

Your moat argument is the same that had people invest in uber 10 years ago, which we are seeing is failing in regions like EU where Uber is getting lambasted.

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

#213

Post by MattGaiser » Sat, May 16, 2020, 6:26 PM UTC

acka wrote: post #194

MattGaiser wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now when I walk past restaurants, I see banners imploring folks to order from their website. I guess, one silver lining from this pandemic. Lazy is not the wrong word. They couldn't be bothered to put up that website until now. They couldn't be bothered to innovate and wanted to keep people needing to call on their phones. They slashed their own wrists with their mediocrity. This is an area where teenagers routinel…

> This is an area where teenagers routinely make money by building these kinds of websites. ... only for those websites' backend services to be breached and the customer account data to be shared on the dark nets by other teenagers, ready to rip off and scam innocent customers. Sarcasm obviously, but designing an ecommerce site is a serious affair, not an afternoon pastime.

They don't do it from scratch but use a service like Shopify or WooCommerce.

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

#214

Post by JamesBarney » Sat, May 16, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #185

lotsofpulp wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, I think you achieve most of that with simply doubling prices, after that it’s generally more harm than good. How can one make such a vast claim without knowing things such as cost of input materials, machinery, labor, etc?

The profit in a competitive market is usually ~5%. Double prices while selling out and profit increases by 21x if not vastly more which is a huge incentive. To the point where doubling the profit again is unlikely result in meaningfully increased production. PS: And yea it’s more complex than that, you can generally skip out in advertising but may be paying significant overtime etc. But that’s rarely particularly imp…

To argue that every possible choice to both produce and conserve toilet paper is incentivized at $1.68 is an extraordinary claim. Almost all supply and demand curves don't have cliffs. And without extraordinary knowledge of toilet paper manufacturing and consumption how would you know this cliff exists at $1.68 per roll.

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

#215

Post by Jommi » Sat, May 16, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

haltingproblem wrote: post #169

john_minsk wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of agree, but on the other side - if 20-30% is too much there will be competitors which offer 2-3% and theoretically all restaurants will move there as well as customers to pay 20-30% less. And tbh this should happen. UBER had to spend billions on marketing and getting their model "right". But now it is clear that such platform is essential for modern city. At some point UBER will have to get this money back w…

Good point. But Yes and no ;) Grub-less et.al are as much about ordering and checkout as they are about discovery . I can rank and view all restaurants offering Sushi in my delivery radius. This is what makes them powerful. Uber et.al are a marketplace. You are absolutely right in that they have zero switching costs but they have a two sided pool of supply (drivers) and riders (demand). This is hard to replicate.

How exactly is that different?

There is an argument to be made, that if I just want a pizza, then my major decision-maker will be price.

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

#216

Post by Jommi » Sat, May 16, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

nerfhammer wrote: post #180

ramraj07 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apps are doing well because this is another one of those protective moat ideas where once they have established themselves they have no need to innovate further. Sites like grubhub have no physical reason to gouge 20-30% commission on top of charging both sides delivery fees (further on top of guilting customers into tipping more). In the end it's an app serving a few web pages and APIs (these filthy companies don't…

But aren't there like 2 dozen competing apps trying to do this? Shouldn't that drive prices down? Or is actually legitimately expensive to provide this service? We've been told that evil VCs subsidize service to run at below cost to drive competitors out of business. Uber is often accused of this. Why aren't we seeing that phenomenon here? And Uber is literally one of the competitors.

I would not be surprised if the US market had some level of collusion going on. It just doesn't make sense to me that they aren't currently competing on price.

There are some other possible reasons tho, like food actually not being as "commodity"-like as we think it is (like rides are)

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

#217

Post by paulcole » Sat, May 16, 2020, 6:34 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…

> Their prevalence indicates the customers appreciate their presence in the space

Appreciated their presence in the space or appreciated that some VC bozos were handing out huge discounts on taxi rides?

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

#218

Post by Natsu » Sat, May 16, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

paysonderulo wrote: post #211

JamesBarney wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right externalities exist but I doubt there are any significant ones in food delivery.

Half of the examples given can easily apply to food delivery, namely pollution and human rights abuses.

Which human right is being abused here? People download the driver apps and work for them of their own free choice.

As for pollution, if that's immoral, then so is going to the restaurant to eat itself as well as driving in general.

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

#219

Post by JamesBarney » Sat, May 16, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

paysonderulo wrote: post #211

JamesBarney wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right externalities exist but I doubt there are any significant ones in food delivery.

Half of the examples given can easily apply to food delivery, namely pollution and human rights abuses.

The argument recommends take out which also involves driving somewhere, and given that deliverers many times deliver to more than one household this is an argument for delivery over take out. Also it's not significant, even with a carbon tax to eliminate this externality that would be at most a dime or quarter of pollution.

And human rights abuse? I had a job delivering, and it was honestly one of my favorite jobs. The pay wasn't great but just cruising around listening to music all night was awesome.

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

#220

Post by Natsu » Sat, May 16, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

xenocyon wrote: post #204

kgantchev wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the poster used legality as the moral compass, rather, consumer choice was the moral compass. If consumers lack the moral conciousness on their day to day transactions, then how can we expect them to make the right moral choices when they vote?

I addressed consumer choice in my first paragraph. Let me expand on that: There have in fact been successful consumer-led movements, but the most successful of these concern cases where the consumers also happened to be the same people being exploited (colonial India's rejection of dumped British textiles, the Montgomery bus boycott, the Boston tea party, etc). Cases where consumers have acted en masse on behalf of a…

Which of those apply here, exactly?