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People think they're calling restaurants directly but Grubhub is getting a fee

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Re: People think they're calling restaurants directly but Grubhub is getting a fee

#201

Post by bluedino »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #137
noelsusman wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a pretty great experience calling restaurants to place orders. I talk to a human, tell them my order, they repeat it back to me, and tell me it will be X dollars and ready at Y o'clock. I show up at the specified time and the order is ready to go. A couple times I had to wait 5 minutes because they were inundated and couldn't keep up. No stupid app to download. No account to create. No bullshit fees. No mark…

> No stupid app to download. No account to create. No bullshit fees. No marketing emails. I just tell them what I want and then go get it. It's refreshing. That's how it always was, I really don't get this disconnect between people wanting to always hide behind a keyboard or smart phone when it comes to food. It's always been the most social thing I do in my entire day, as it has been done since for thousands of year…

If I call a pizza place and get put on hold for more than 30 seconds, I'll call another pizza place. That doesn't happen with online ordering.

I also don't have to worry about my order getting entered right.

Re: People think they're calling restaurants directly but Grubhub is getting a fee

#202

Post by danpalmer »

VMisTheWay wrote: post #199
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #2

Every article I read about restaurants just seems to reinforce that they are powered by their owners hopes and dreams rather than any financial or business literacy. It makes then ripe targets for exploitation.

I'm totally with you on this. People pay other money to prepare food? It's not trivial either, restaurant food is 7 to 20x more expensive than home cooked (source- Efficiency Is Everything) The only other business model for a restaurant is to sell drugs(aka alcohol and caffeine). Then your business model exploits customer addictions. I think we've spent far too much money/resources/manpower on lazy food habits.

> restaurant food is 7 to 20x more expensive than home cooked

I suspect Efficiency is Everything is measuring a very different thing. They seem to focus on calories per dollar, which is not how restaurants or home cooks typically think.

The rule of thumb used in the restaurant industry is 30/30/30/10. 30% for food, labour, rent, and 10% margin. Anecdotally, for dinner I spend about £3 a meal to cook at home, and could probably buy that meal out for £8-12.

As Efficiency is Everything says, you can live on $1.50 a day, but it requires using only a very limited subset of ingredients and allows little room for preference. For some people this makes no difference, for most it's a huge handicap, which is why it's limited to the min-maxing fringes.

Re: People think they're calling restaurants directly but Grubhub is getting a fee

#203

Post by bambax »

noelsusman wrote: post #106
MattGaiser wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The due diligence is because the restaurants offer a terrible experience. Most still do not have an independent online ordering function. They want me to call. Most still haven't set up meaningful profiles on Yelp and other review sites. So I would need to root around to find contact information. That is in addition to needing to give my credit card over the phone, not knowing how long the order will take, and needin…

I've had a pretty great experience calling restaurants to place orders. I talk to a human, tell them my order, they repeat it back to me, and tell me it will be X dollars and ready at Y o'clock. I show up at the specified time and the order is ready to go. A couple times I had to wait 5 minutes because they were inundated and couldn't keep up. No stupid app to download. No account to create. No bullshit fees. No mark…

Exactly! How hard is this?

Re: People think they're calling restaurants directly but Grubhub is getting a fee

#204

Post by heavenlyblue »

MattGaiser wrote: post #19
MaintenanceMode wrote: post #4

It's disheartening that there's so much due diligence required just to conduct the most basic transactions right now. I have a narrow list of vetted restaurants, where I understand the costs and to the business, the delivery model, the safety (food handling and Covid precautions), and I only take out from these particular places. I tried a new place recently, only to find out I had been duped by Grub-hub, even though…

The due diligence is because the restaurants offer a terrible experience. Most still do not have an independent online ordering function. They want me to call. Most still haven't set up meaningful profiles on Yelp and other review sites. So I would need to root around to find contact information. That is in addition to needing to give my credit card over the phone, not knowing how long the order will take, and needin…

I mean I don't blame restaurants for only accepting orders over the phone, given that the alternative is a money-grabbing monopolist trying to take away all of their customers.

Yelp is another matter full of fake reviews and spam - I can also see why restaurants don't want to have a "social media manager" doing that for them.

I mean, you're using smart vocabulary "due dilligence", "Yelp" - but how much of that is literally spammy articles that have nothing to do with the real quality of the food in the restaurant?

Re: People think they're calling restaurants directly but Grubhub is getting a fee

#207

Post by Super_Jambo »

cortesoft wrote: post #113
milesskorpen wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the challenge here is that all the competitors are exceptionally well funded venture backed companies that are fighting to be the winner who takes it all. We don't know what this market would look like without the flood of exceptionally venture money to finance the engineers and discounts and all. Sustainable delivery would probably more bifurcated. I could imagine a range of food types that are delivery-cent…

It might be healthier for the restaurants, but it doesn't seem better for consumers. I want a solution that still lets me only have a single portal I have to interact with to order my food.

This was kind of the dream of the Semantic web. It's a fantasy though because it promotes competition and good customer outcomes and our system's main concern is moats and profit.

Re: People think they're calling restaurants directly but Grubhub is getting a fee

#208

Post by izzydata »

chongli wrote: post #74
julianeon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why this isn't treated like domain name hijacking, though. Suppose you want to go to McDonald's. I buy the McDonald's domain name. I put a credit card form on my site, and I "deliver" McDonald's to you. I charge a $40 surcharge for the privilege. There is no way in hell that McDonald's would have to go begging at realmcdonald's.com because of my shenanigans. They'd have no patience for this bullshi…

They'd get McDonald's.com fast enough to make your head spin, and I'd be pushed out of that business. If McDonald's were a mom & pop restaurant and you were a multi-billion dollar, VC-backed startup, then you can be sure McDonald's would not be able to do this so easily. That's the difference.

That is specifically what he is alluding to.

Re: People think they're calling restaurants directly but Grubhub is getting a fee

#209

Post by tzs »

MattGaiser wrote: post #19
MaintenanceMode wrote: post #4

It's disheartening that there's so much due diligence required just to conduct the most basic transactions right now. I have a narrow list of vetted restaurants, where I understand the costs and to the business, the delivery model, the safety (food handling and Covid precautions), and I only take out from these particular places. I tried a new place recently, only to find out I had been duped by Grub-hub, even though…

The due diligence is because the restaurants offer a terrible experience. Most still do not have an independent online ordering function. They want me to call. Most still haven't set up meaningful profiles on Yelp and other review sites. So I would need to root around to find contact information. That is in addition to needing to give my credit card over the phone, not knowing how long the order will take, and needin…

I too don’t like to call to order things...which I don’t understand because if I went in person I’d have no problem voice ordering.

I wonder if ordering by video call would make it feel more like in person ordering?

Re: People think they're calling restaurants directly but Grubhub is getting a fee

#210

Post by mennis16 »

VMisTheWay wrote: post #199
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #2

Every article I read about restaurants just seems to reinforce that they are powered by their owners hopes and dreams rather than any financial or business literacy. It makes then ripe targets for exploitation.

I'm totally with you on this. People pay other money to prepare food? It's not trivial either, restaurant food is 7 to 20x more expensive than home cooked (source- Efficiency Is Everything) The only other business model for a restaurant is to sell drugs(aka alcohol and caffeine). Then your business model exploits customer addictions. I think we've spent far too much money/resources/manpower on lazy food habits.

I'm not sure laziness is the main factor here though. I suppose it depends where you are ordering from, but I enjoy picking up from restaurants still largely because I enjoy the food and would not be able to recreate it. In some cases it introduces me to new flavor combos that I wouldn't have tried otherwise and maybe will eventually make its way into my cooking. Hell, I even just occasionally crave McDonalds. If I were feeling lazy I would have Soylent or throw together a sandwich with whatever is in the house, it feels like more effort to place the McD order than do that.

Food is a large source of enjoyment for a lot of people, even removing the social benefits of in-person restaurants, I don't think it is a waste. Although certainly many restaurant owners would benefit from some business training.

I also think you'll find you could say the same thing about a lot of life chores- people pay other people to sew? People pay other people to mow their lawn? People pay other people to trim their hair? And so on. A lot of these things could be done sufficiently yourself, but 1) they will generally be done better by the professional and 2) as these things pile up the total time spent will become a legitimate burden.

I found it interesting to read about the daily schedules of housewives back in the 50s or so, some of their tasks could be automated now or would be considered unnecessary, but even adjusting to be a bit more modern it sounded like a difficult full time job. And there are increasingly less people "employed" in this sector. So I don't know why I see so many objections to outsourcing something like cooking (not even all the time).

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