Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

themargins.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 534 posts

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#481

Post by [deleted] »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #366
fancyfredbot wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This depends on whether you think the pizza restaurant's customer is doordash. You could make a good argument that this was the case. The restaurant sells to doordash, who paid for a pizza with toppings.

Doordash is buying it, but I think it makes more sense as "a pizza for Bob" than just "a pizza". I think it would be strange to ignore everything Bob says if he calls in asking for the pepperoni to be on one side. Though none of this matters if there's a 'special instructions' box. Have a code word for bread pizza.

[deleted]

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#482

Post by ryandrake »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #394
huffmsa wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sheikh Rashid's quote [1] kind of sums up the desperation of several countries in the Middle East to somehow diversify out of oil: "My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel"

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_bin_Saeed_Al_Maktoum

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#483

Post by inquiryaccount »

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.

I've seen plenty of couriers with their families inside riding around with them delivering food. Sometimes just a guy and the younger son? who hops out, picks up the food, and the dad drives off to deliver the item. It makes me sad.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#484

Post by hannasanarion »

ethbro wrote: post #478
hannasanarion wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter if the owner is reimbursing their non-owning customers? Restaurants do that all the time.

(IANAL) My gut says coordination would be be evidence of both (a) premeditated intent & (b) knowledge that actions constituted fraud. One could place a personal order (or 100) innocently. One looks substantially less innocent when coordinating with a third party to place orders and transfer money around. While that speaks to the severity of the crime (if one were proven), as you noted, it doesn't in any way impact wh…

But who's defrauding who? If the doordash website says I can buy a dough pizza for $19, then doordash has to get me a dough pizza for $19 when I buy one. No fraud is happening, doordash is fulfilling the requirements of the contract they make with all their customers.

If anything, the one who's committing fraud is doordash, because they're putting in "takeout" orders with the restaurant and presenting them as "delivery" orders to the customer.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#485

Post by taurath »

Spivak wrote: post #449
taurath wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope it goes mainstream and they all go under because nobody wants to pay their crazy prices while not actually supporting a restaurant

I mean if anything their prices are crazy low. I can buy about 30 minutes of a real human's time to deliver me food for about $3. With pizza joints and Chinese takeout it's averaged into the prices but not with these delivery apps. I've seen a few inflated prices but almost every restaurant around here is just charging the same as they always have. A delivery service that supported the restaurant would be way way mor…

I can’t where I live. My $20 takeout order is $40 from any app. Entrees are several dollars higher, then there’s a delivery fee then a service fee then the tip for the driver.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#486

Post by downerending »

MattGaiser wrote: post #208
Barrin92 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I also don't know how "not having to talk to someone" is a perk. For us introverts it is.

If the vendor can just get it right with minimal interaction on my part, I usually prefer not to interact.

In my experience, though, this is rarely true of restaurants, especially the less expensive ones. I usually won't even do drive-through, under the experience-informed observation that they're less likely to mess it up if they know I'll be standing at the counter checking their work.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#487

Post by lowbloodsugar »

golergka wrote: post #385
mikeryan wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Doordash delivery guy actually has to pick up the food though right? This also does probably provide some legal cover as well.

He can pick up empty boxes and then immediately hand them back as the delivery address is the restoraunt address, no?

Nobody saw the episode of Bagpuss [1] where the mice just role out a cookie, and then take round the back of the "factory" and deliver it again? Apparently we've been waiting 46 years for this particular innovation to have a real world opportunity!

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771367/

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#488

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #220

I cut this deal with my neighborhood Italian restaurant! I texted the owner about being miffed they hadn’t told me they were on DoorDash. He replied. They aren’t. We compared pricing, and found the prices advertised are way off from what the restaurant charges. So I placed a $5,000 order to the neighbourhood homeless shelter. DoorDash paid him over $20,000, and I get free pasta for the rest of the year. (My neighbour…

[deleted]

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#489

Post by tptacek »

kingkawn wrote: post #227
tptacek wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets dicier when the restaurant starts shipping out plain pizza dough.

Not if the customer ordered plain pizza dough

That's not how this works. The glitch is that there's a particular menu-item mispriced by Doordash. You can't just order arbitrary things at arbitrary prices, and when the restaurant takes an order for X and delivers Y, it's taking a step towards making a material false statement to obtain something of value.

Re: Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

#490

Post by MattSayar »

jyrkesh wrote: post #459
jeroenhd wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live, one company has taken over all meal delivery nationally. After destroying the competition, this company had started raising prices each year. They ask for a percentage (13%, rising each year) in an industry where the margins are already very thin. They money grab got a lot worse after they pushed out all the alternatives and just like with Google, everybody has to play by their rules or they'll be mostl…

This is the biggest problem with the reality of predatory pricing compared to the theory of it: after years of undercutting your competitors, you're finally ready to jack up prices and take a profit....just as a new competitor comes in with a new infusion of cash and undercuts your artificially inflated price. (Remember, you can't just turn any old profit, you need a large enough profit to offset the years of purpose…

Surely at some point the competition (assuming a lack of innovation to drive down prices) will realize THEY don't want to be the ones who lose money for years only to get unseated when they're ready to jack up prices? How many times can this cycle repeat?
Post reply on HN