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Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

themargins.substack.com

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Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#461

Post by fortran77 »

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?

What makes it unethical is the "quid-pro-quo". If he didn't expect to get free food for life it would be OK.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#462

Post by wdb »

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…

My Uber experience in London is never seamless you always end up calling them as they can't find you or wait on the wrong side of the road. Suddenly cancel when they are nearly where you are waiting. Black cabs is seamless with the right app

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#463

Post by astura »

bvm wrote: post #303
kabacha wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web-scraping is hard man, especially with mom-and-pop restaurant websites that are often exported straight from microsoft word or some ancient "platform" that got reconfigured 20 times over. As article pointed out it picked up full-toppings pizza as plain cheese.

Surely it's cheaper to just pay someone to do data entry at that point.

But that would that get VC funding? It's not their own money they are spending.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#465

Post by jrockway »

AlexandrB wrote: post #362
jrockway wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am guessing that DoorDash will succeed in the very long term. Eventually they will not need independent restaurants, they can just start their own (and cut ingredient costs to whatever they need to make a profit). And eventually deliveries will be done by robots, so no workers to pay. I'm not saying this will happen tomorrow, but think 20 years out -- there is a lot of money to be made. I am not sure that making so…

You’re describing a restaurant chain. Why isn’t Swiss Chalet valued at billions of dollars? They fit your description exactly.

McDonalds is valued at billions of dollars. And this one doesn't rely on being located somewhere convenient; they bring the food to you.

I think DoorDash will ultimately be profitable for its investors. I don't think it's good for society (gig economy, growth by getting people to eat more calories, etc.), but that doesn't mean they can't make a lot of money.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#466

Post by wdb »

esotericn wrote: post #340
jon-wood wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK tipping delivery drivers is basically unheard of, except maybe if they're delivering on Christmas Day or something. Despite that people I know who've worked as drivers for Dominos say its one of the best unskilled jobs available, the pay is good, it comes with some benefits if you're working enough hours, and they generally take care of their employees.

> In the UK tipping delivery drivers is basically unheard of For you it might be. I tip delivery drivers and I received tips when I worked. Tips made up >20% of my pay. Rich people generally would not tip, poor people would.

Did you pay income tax over those tips?

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#467

Post by braddiy »

wil421 wrote: post #357
asjw wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you pay for pasta? 5,000$ of pasta would last me and my family until the end of my days. At ~1-1.2 euros for half a kilo it's around 90 years worth of pasta (based on an average of 28 kilos per person per year in Italy)

I doubt he ordered dry pasta. Most likely he ordered 10 or so of every pasta dish on the menu. What restaurants let you order dry pasta beside the ones in food halls?

Home Room in Oakland is delivering TP and dry pasta with delivery orders right now.

I predict we'll see a lot more of that kind of thing with reduced occupancy at restaurants. Come in for a meal, leave with a week's groceries.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#468

Post by trixie_ »

almost_usual wrote: post #194
trixie_ wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works great. All those management middle men of thousands of delivery and taxi companies have been replaced with software. Razor thin margins are enough to keep the servers running and a small team of developers managing it - for the entire planet. It's difficult for any company to abuse their position as they're easily repalcable. So the margins will get lower, and more of the money paid by the customer will go d…

Uber is laying off 800 engineers tomorrow, they have thousands. All of them making salaries probably in the range of 250K-500k. Not really a small team of developers.

Numbers are relative? Compared to the management overhead of all the taxi companies in the world it is orders of magnitude smaller. And after today it is 800 people smaller on top of that. So yes, very small, very efficient.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#470

Post by shp0ngle »

ornornor wrote: post #243
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.

That’s fine, I wasn’t trying to expose you, I just wanted to understand. It looks like everyone is happy, the restaurant gets cash, the shelter gets food, and you get... a lot of pizza for the rest of your life! I don’t think I’ve eaten 5,000$ worth of pizza in my life so far haha

DoorDash loses money, but it’s not like they care anyway
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