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Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

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Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#401

Post by joshvm »

hrktb wrote: post #286
Kiro wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works great in any supermarket I've been to with a self-scanning systems and that's been the standard in my country for many years now.

Speaking for France, a lot of supermarket who introduced self-checkouts have further invested in developing scanning apps operated by the client on their phone as a parallel solution. Basically a low-tech amazon-go solution, where the client is its own casher. Those bring their own set of issues, can be difficult to understand and use from the customer, yet they still felt way easier to deal with than the SCO experie…

We've had this for years with Waitrose, who just give you a scanner that you can take round the store. I think more recently they let you do it on the phone. Then you just pay at a special checkout and leave. They also have no-scale checkouts where you scan and leave (these are still attended). Usually if you buy something very expensive it'll flag up for a "random" check which always happens to be the expensive item.

The handheld scanners are easy to use. All it has is a trigger for scanning (which everyone knows how to do), scroll buttons, and a delete button if you make a mistake.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#402

Post by gallamine »

wmab wrote: post #105
alteria wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got it, this makes a ton of sense, and explains why Grubhub was able to do the impossible, make money.

Yeah, Grubhub were touting themselves to restaurants as more of a marketing channel partner - find customers, advertise etc. Still, I'm not sure why that business service warranted a 20% commission fee in the first place to be profitable from.

20% fee isn't the whole story - about 5% is the cost-of-fulfillment - website, phone support, CC processing, fraud protection, etc. The rest of the "fee" is variable marketing and promotions costs - higher search placement, "buy one get one" offerings to customers, etc. The calculus for the restaurants is whether they spend any marketing budget, and if they do, is it going to be junk-mail flyers or targeted advertising that they have some hope of tracking success with.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#403

Post by jeegsy »

wrboyce wrote: post #262
Consultant32452 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be right, and if so then I agree that it doesn't make sense to order PJ's, Domino's, or Pizza Hut through a generic app. My (perhaps incorrect) interpretation was based on the fact that I've never seen one of the big chains available in the generic delivery apps.

In the UK the three big pizza chains (Dominos, Papa Johns, Pizza Hut) are on the two big delivery apps (Uber Eats, Deliveroo). I’ve never ordered any of them via it for reasons outlined upthread, with the additional reason that not only is delivery more expensive the chain-specific voucher codes are not available.

> In the UK the three big pizza chains (Dominos, Papa Johns, Pizza Hut)

I don't know why but I am saddened by this. I mean, even in the UK they are the biggest?

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#404

Post by ip26 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #22

After reading more about how these delivery companies function, we stopped using Door Dash a few days ago. We found it very convenient during the pandemic, but we like our local restaurants and we thought we were helping them out by ordering delivery pretty often. So now we just order it as take-out and then we go pick it up ourselves. Screw Door Dash.

Make sure you're calling the right number

https://www.eater.com/2019/8/6/20756799/yelp-grubhub-phone-n...

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#405

Post by bko »

Majromax wrote: post #399
bko wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 profi…

I think it is a bug. I think they relied too heavily on automation and scraping to get a list of all the restaurants, menus and prices. From the original article:

> My first thought: I wondered if Doordash is artificially lowering prices for customer acquisition purposes.

> My second thought: I knew Doordash scraped restaurant websites. After we discussed it more, it was clear that the way his menu was set up on his website, Doordash had mistakenly taken the price for a plain cheese pizza and applied it to a 'specialty' pizza with a bunch of toppings.

So I don't think its a feature.

> what possible moral or legal right does Doordash have to an operating profit when it deliberately operates at a loss?

It doesn't have an operating profit whether you exploit the bug or not. Doesn't mean its okay to steal from them. Even if they do deliberately lose money (e.g. first Uber ride free up to $10), exploiting it is unethical (e.g. tricking Uber into thinking you're on a new phone).

The rest of your argument is again, why you don't like Doordash or why Doordash is unethical. I won't address this point because I think its unethical to steal from an unethical company so their ethics is irrelevant.

If I think Walmart is unethical, is it okay shoplift from their stores?

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#406

Post by Naracion »

petee wrote: post #350
doublesCs wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea, I'm not a lawyer. But in the original post he mentioned that he "cut a deal" with the restaurant, which to me suggests that he got the $5k back, possibly in cash, from the restaurant. If he then pockets to tax he saved, that smells like tax evasion. He then tweaked his story to say that this cost him $5k. Why did he say he was cutting a deal then?

You make a great point. They also mention they are an options trader on wall street, so $5000 easily could be throwaway money for a double-good cause

The person who posted the comment about $5000 pasta is not the same as the person who wrote the article (who mentioned trading).

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#407

Post by VBprogrammer »

Kiro wrote: post #370
mnd999 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Unexpected item in bagging a area” gets me every time.

It used to be like that the first couple of years but the newer systems never give me that and feel very accurate.

I used to pickup lunch from Tesco most days. Occasionally you'd find one item that must have been weighed wrongly at the input stage. It would cause an issue every time you checked out. Usually got fixed within a couple of days.

I wonder if they built in correlation of items which on a mis-weighed basket.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#408

Post by rootusrootus »

giarc wrote: post #359
slfnflctd wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We came to the same conclusion a couple weeks ago. As a bonus, you're eliminating a person/environment from the loop (the delivery driver & their car), thereby reducing your Covid-19 attack surface. Edit: I have also both read about & seen firsthand food delivery drivers with someone else in the car. It's almost certainly someone from the same household, but still, that's potentially yet another unknown, potentially…

I've had amazon deliveries where it appears the whole family was in the car. Kind of heart breaking to think that a family of 4 has to drive around so I can get my AA batteries same day. We need drone deliveries.

Can I choose option C? :). I don't want drones buzzing around my neighborhood. I am 100% willing to pay for professional delivery drivers.

To be fair, I guess, the days of random people driving junky old compact sedans filled to the roof with Amazon packages seems to be gone in my area. All the Amazon deliveries are now done by a guy driving a large Sprinter van painted glossy gray with Prime written on the side.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#409

Post by drewg123 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #168
cletus wrote: post #166

Wow, that was great. And honestly good on them for profit-taking on this arbitrage. The author likes to pin this on zero-interest rates ("ZIRP") and that certainly explains why the system is awash with cash but I'd say he's missing a key point here. When I moved to NYC (~10 years ago) I didn't order delivery at all. Honestly it's a huge pain. To call someone up and try and communicate an order to someone who probably…

I honestly don't know if I'm living in a different world than everyone else but I've been ordering food and taking cabs all my life and I've never had to deal with any friction. Like, you call the pizzeria, tell them what you want and then some college student delivers your stuff, and if you order for more than 20 bucks it doesn't cost you anything. Not even being facetious, but what problem do these apps solve? I al…

Not even being able to talk to somebody is a negative feature if you have dietary restrictions. A friend is vegan, and she often skips over items which could be vegan with a slight substitution which is not offered via the app, but which would be easy to ask for if she could just talk to a human.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#410

Post by wdb »

t0mas88 wrote: post #325
Kiro wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works great in any supermarket I've been to with a self-scanning systems and that's been the standard in my country for many years now.

I hated the weight check at Tesco when I lived in the UK. It unnecessarily locked up my self service checkout a few times per week and in general made things slower. Compared the AH in the Netherlands where you just scan the barcode on all your things and they really don't care about the weight or where you put them after scanning. I'm sure there will be a tiny percentage extra fraud that Tesco may catch with this, b…

Yes, it's really annoying. It's that bad that I normally just queue for some personal touch with the cashier :)
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