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Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

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Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#391

Post by blaser-waffle »

VHRanger wrote: post #367
jeroenhd wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nog a bug, it's a feature. Doordash uses investment money to evaporate competitors, take over the market and then raise prices for restaurant owners once they gain control. It's a tried and proven concept. Paying part of the meal is part of that strategy. They know full well that large orders and large amounts of transactions cost them more money and they're betting on nobody actually doing this. They're selling…

Just a note: it's not a tried and proven concept. Predatory pricing hardly works in economic theory and is working disastrously for a lot of the companies trying it (eg. Ubers financials)

Predatory Pricing absolutely works... when you have a working business model and capital to back it up.

Walmart and McDonalds are masters of this approach.

Uber is a long-term play at disrupting cabs/transportation cartels and incorporated self-driving cars into a non-literal roadmap. They're in it for the long play, and even if they hemorrhage money for a while longer it may, in fact, play out in their favor.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#393

Post by jeroenhd »

bko wrote: post #379
jeroenhd wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nog a bug, it's a feature. Doordash uses investment money to evaporate competitors, take over the market and then raise prices for restaurant owners once they gain control. It's a tried and proven concept. Paying part of the meal is part of that strategy. They know full well that large orders and large amounts of transactions cost them more money and they're betting on nobody actually doing this. They're selling…

My original comment said its not okay to steal from a company even if you don't like that company. Your post is a lot of words about why you don't like that company. You don't directly address my claim that its unethical to steal from a company even if you don't like the company. And then you make a weird point that software can be unethical (e.g. phising software) and this somehow applies to Doordash. Just to get th…

My comment also stated that it's not stealing if you order from a business that decided to operate in a way that causes them to lose money if you order with them.

Investors know that the company they're investing in will lose a lot of money and the know about the business practices that basically give away money in order to gain popularity. It's not their money anymore after they gave it to the company. It's true that if the company goes bankrupt they lose out, but they can prevent losing that money by not investing on companies handing out free cash.

The software itself is not unethical, the business practices Doordash/Uber/Yelp/etc. follow to make their software popular are. The problem is that these companies seemingly can't make a profit without using huge investments to crush the local competition. If they were to act ethically, I would have no problems with these companies.

Also, taking away future profit is not stealing, it's part of the risk of doing business. Don't stuff your money into risky business ventures if you don't want risk.

It's quite sad that pension funds are investing in these predatory businesses but protecting their investments because they're too big to fail undermine the entire concept of competition in capitalism.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#394

Post by blaser-waffle »

huffmsa wrote: post #298
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, after all these years I still don't get it. Are the Saudis that gullible? How much more they need to lose to understand they're being duped?

They've only really known oil for 3 generations, so yes. And they're also desperate. The future where the world doesn't need their oil (or they've run out) isn't a distant future anymore. It's coming, and coming faster and faster. They need to diversify anyway they can if they want to avoid going back to just being a desert. And so they're jumping at pretty much any deal they see

It's not coming and coming -- it's here. Prices are negative, and they need at least something like ~$60/barrel to keep their government running and closer to $80/barrel to keep their whole country running.

But yeah, I agree with your main point: they're jumping at deals and chasing big wins, a la Dubai. Cuz they don't really have any other choice.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#396

Post by gvb »

overthemoon wrote: post #368

>> Uber Eats is Uber's "most profitable division” . Uber Eats lost $461 million in Q4 2019 off of revenue of $734 million. Sometimes I need to write this out to remind myself. Uber Eats spent $1.2 billion to make $734 million. In one quarter. These might be stupid questions, but... can this go on forever? No, right? Is there precedent for this? How long of a horizon do companies like this expect to be a money toilet?…

The foundation is immense "VC" funds that are throwing money at (often "unicorn") businesses that are using the money to grow their currently unprofitable businesses. The premise is that, once they are big enough to drive all the competing businesses out of business, they will be able to transition to being profitable.

The poster child of these "VC" funds is Softbank.

The foundation is crumbling. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/18/tech/softbank-earnings-intl-h...

When these companies collapse, the investment funding them will have to write down the losses the "unicorns" have built up, and there will be a lot of investors that will be sharing in that hurt.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#397

Post by fokinsean »

neap24 wrote: post #388

I've noticed the opposite phenomenon at a popular restaurant in Austin. The menu through DoorDash is priced higher than the normal price. Curiously, the restaurant's own, in-house delivery system is the same price as dining in. This is when I stopped using DoorDash...when I discovered that using the restaurant's own delivery system is just as easy and maybe cheaper.

Which restaurant? (I live in Austin)

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#398

Post by [deleted] »

bko wrote: post #338
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The owner made a massive profit and the shelter gets free food and it didn’t cost you anything? We’re in the midst of a pandemic. The restaurant stays afloat, nothing more. The shelter got a donation, and I got promises of comped deliveries and catering. It cost me $5,000; it cost DoorDash over twenty thousand.

This seems very unethical. The fact that you don't like Softbank or DoorDash or the gig-economy or that you're sending pizza to homeless people is irrelevant. The fact is you're exploiting a bug to personally benefit at the expense of investors. Why wouldn't you apply the same principals of ethical hacking, where you would notify the party of the exploit?

[deleted]

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#399

Post by Majromax »

bko wrote: post #379
jeroenhd wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nog a bug, it's a feature. Doordash uses investment money to evaporate competitors, take over the market and then raise prices for restaurant owners once they gain control. It's a tried and proven concept. Paying part of the meal is part of that strategy. They know full well that large orders and large amounts of transactions cost them more money and they're betting on nobody actually doing this. They're selling…

My original comment said its not okay to steal from a company even if you don't like that company. Your post is a lot of words about why you don't like that company. You don't directly address my claim that its unethical to steal from a company even if you don't like the company. And then you make a weird point that software can be unethical (e.g. phising software) and this somehow applies to Doordash. Just to get th…

> My original comment said its not okay to steal from a company even if you don't like that company.

Your original comment said it was wrong to exploit a bug, to which the parent poster retorted that this was a feature and not a bug.

Here, you've gone further to claim that this behaviour is stealing, and I'd like to explore that for a minute: what possible moral or legal right does Doordash have to an operating profit when it deliberately operates at a loss?

By all accounts, this below-cost pricing is predatory behaviour on Doordash's part, not the customer's: they seem to break into a market by offering delivery at a subsidized rate, then they take data based on those rates and try to strike fee arrangements with restaurants. At first glance, it seems like they sell themselves based on inflated numbers from the discount period, without disclosing that they were in fact offering customers a discount.

I see no ethical fault in beating a (sophisticated!) predator at their own game, but where do you reach the alternative conclusion?

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#400

Post by VBprogrammer »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #391
VHRanger wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a note: it's not a tried and proven concept. Predatory pricing hardly works in economic theory and is working disastrously for a lot of the companies trying it (eg. Ubers financials)

Predatory Pricing absolutely works... when you have a working business model and capital to back it up. Walmart and McDonalds are masters of this approach. Uber is a long-term play at disrupting cabs/transportation cartels and incorporated self-driving cars into a non-literal roadmap. They're in it for the long play, and even if they hemorrhage money for a while longer it may, in fact, play out in their favor.

Of all the ways I can imagine self driving cars becoming a reality, Uber creating a fleet of honest to goodness self-driving taxis seems to be about the most far fetched.

On balance of probability, I think that is just a bullet point to keep the juicy AI flavoured investment funds flowing.

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