Uber is starting to put ads on my screen as I wait for my ride to show up.
After seeing that the content of this article doesn’t surprise me one bit.
Is the Ride over for Uber?
51–60 of 304 posts
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Food delivery also isn’t very practical in developed country markets without a huge increase in productivity vs labor costs. It’s just too expensive compared to a country like China where it is cheap enough to be ubiquitous. Automation could be disruptive here…someday in the form of food delivery land and/or air drones. It really is the same with ride share: it just isn’t economical considering how much human labor i…
Food delivery is practical, mainstream and has been for 40+ years in the West. It works great "inhouse". They tend to know all their regular customers and area and know exactly how to get there, where to park, which bell to press etc. They will also know if there is bad traffic or an accident closing a major road and adjust wait times and order frequency accordingly. The person that runs the delivery joint can also w…
Only a few high volume high margin restaurants are able to do in house delivery economically. Typically pizza joints where delivery is already baked in to the price as that is their primary sales funnel.
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#53Uber would have been fine if they operated like a medium sized SAAS company as they're forced to for example in Spain, where they due to regulations sell their software to local companies. Smaller team, focus just on the ride hailing software, take a cut of the revenue and that would actually be a decent business that doesn't try to make money by either monopolizing markets or atomizing the taxi business and destroyi…
Modesty is an underappreciated aspect of running a successful company. The endless pursuit of growth is usually a byproduct of ego or at the behest of some intangible idea of "creating shareholder value." Just fucking create a killer product and work on refining that product to the best of your abilities. If you get bored, start a new company. You don't have to grow every company into the next Apple.
> The endless pursuit of growth is usually a byproduct of ego or at the behest of some intangible idea of "creating shareholder value."
Previous discussions here have repeatedly told me that it's a condition for or result of getting vc funding.
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Food delivery also isn’t very practical in developed country markets without a huge increase in productivity vs labor costs. It’s just too expensive compared to a country like China where it is cheap enough to be ubiquitous. Automation could be disruptive here…someday in the form of food delivery land and/or air drones. It really is the same with ride share: it just isn’t economical considering how much human labor i…
Food delivery is practical, mainstream and has been for 40+ years in the West. It works great "inhouse". They tend to know all their regular customers and area and know exactly how to get there, where to park, which bell to press etc. They will also know if there is bad traffic or an accident closing a major road and adjust wait times and order frequency accordingly. The person that runs the delivery joint can also w…
Uber eats has to drive to the restaurant each time. The pizza guy can gab 5 at once.
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#55The problem with Uber Eats is exactly the same as the problem with Uber's rideshare: there's no difficult-to-copy element of it. It's been clear for at least seven years that it's easy to spin up a food delivery service, just the same way it's easy to spin up a rideshare service. The basic technology is something a small team can conjure up out of nowhere in a few months, the two sided marketplace is heavily incented…
Let’s say there was just 1 delivery service. Could they charge enough delivery fees to actually build a sustainable business? How much fees would you need to charge? $4/delivery means having to make a delivery in 15 mins to be able to pay the delivery person minimum wage. Plus Uber’s profit, plus the cost of the car and maintenance expenses + tickets, accidents, etc, It’s hard to see how a monopoly can also make mone…
I doubt it, I make a decent amount of money and haven't used their service prices crept up.. $43 usd for $22 usd in fast food burgers is insane
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Food delivery is practical, mainstream and has been for 40+ years in the West. It works great "inhouse". They tend to know all their regular customers and area and know exactly how to get there, where to park, which bell to press etc. They will also know if there is bad traffic or an accident closing a major road and adjust wait times and order frequency accordingly. The person that runs the delivery joint can also w…
> Food delivery... works great "inhouse". but > Plus they also want to take 30-50% commission for the privilege. If food delivery works great in house then why do restaurants pay Uber so much? I'd wager employing drivers is impractical for a lot of restaurants.
Well, McDonalds was a crazy amount of UberEats business. I heard as much as 50% of it. McDonalds is now in the UK offering their own inhouse delivery service. Clearly they've let Uber do all the hard work proving it works and now want that commission back.
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#57Food delivery is, in my opinion, an expensive, almost always disappointing and ultimately unhealthy habit.
I can see why it might seem to be an attractive business, food addiction is legal, socially accepted and the harmful side is slow enough that most people don’t notice.
But this is not a “service”, it does not add value for the customer, same category as cigarettes.
I don’t think that businesses riding on addictive behaviours should be regulated, but the public should be made more aware of the bad deals they get…
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#58Uber started out well as your "personal chauffeur" with premium cars and polite, professional drivers. Then they started chasing numbers and valuation, and it was all downhill from there.
You can still get the premium cars if you pay extra for it. But most people (including me) just opt for the cheapest option.
I very occasionally used the premium options but other than a nicer vehicle there really wasn't a premium service, mostly regular ubers were clear and drivers decent (on average much better than my taxi experience pre-uber). If it was a busy area its still hard to find the car/driver. Never really felt like I was getting my money worth and I just go with the basic service, it still gets me from A to B.
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Food delivery also isn’t very practical in developed country markets without a huge increase in productivity vs labor costs. It’s just too expensive compared to a country like China where it is cheap enough to be ubiquitous. Automation could be disruptive here…someday in the form of food delivery land and/or air drones. It really is the same with ride share: it just isn’t economical considering how much human labor i…
>Food delivery also isn’t very practical in developed country markets without a huge increase in productivity vs labor costs. But pizza and chinese delivery was a thing in the US long before delivery apps were a thing. Clearly it was practical at some small scale in the US. I don't see any reason why it can't be expanded to other restaurants (eg. by sharing delivery drivers so a restaurant doesn't have to have an ent…
It wasn't bad before the gig-economy middlemen stepped in, in highschool i delievered pizzas and pocketed something like $2 + tips for each delivery (this was 20 something years ago )
it scaled pretty well, I would just take 3-4 orders per-ride depending on distance ended up with a decent chunk of change just from the weekends, and there was a decent amount of downtime and socializing waiting for pizzas to be cooked
with the gig stuff drivers are shuttleing between multiple resturants non-stop in ill-defined areas to random customers and probably walking away with less cash it's a stupid system
Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let’s say there was just 1 delivery service. Could they charge enough delivery fees to actually build a sustainable business? How much fees would you need to charge? $4/delivery means having to make a delivery in 15 mins to be able to pay the delivery person minimum wage. Plus Uber’s profit, plus the cost of the car and maintenance expenses + tickets, accidents, etc, It’s hard to see how a monopoly can also make mone…
I doubt it, I make a decent amount of money and haven't used their service prices crept up.. $43 usd for $22 usd in fast food burgers is insane
And it only takes a few times going through checkout to ask, wait, I got a $10 burger and $4 fries, how is my order $30? Nah, I ain't _that_ hungry for a luke-warm burger and soggy fries.
Amazon won online retail, and changed online retail behavior, by getting rid of shipping fees. The price you see on the product is the price you pay (sans sales tax, but at least in the USA no one is used to seeing tax included).