Was super confused for a while thinking this was about actual caviar...
DoorDash Buying Caviar from Square for $410M
11–20 of 172 posts
Re: DoorDash Buying Caviar from Square for $410M
#12Question from someone that's not familiar with law, or I guess specifically antitrust (anti-monopoly?) law. How are these acquisitions not in violation of these laws. Especially from the Big Tech Cos that slurp up literally any small competitor. From the article: "DoorDash's acquisition of Caviar creates a highly differentiated company with a unique brand and wide-ranging selection." How is this not a play at elimina…
Because there is still a lot of competition? Grubhub, ubereats, and many others.
Re: DoorDash Buying Caviar from Square for $410M
#13Question from someone that's not familiar with law, or I guess specifically antitrust (anti-monopoly?) law. How are these acquisitions not in violation of these laws. Especially from the Big Tech Cos that slurp up literally any small competitor. From the article: "DoorDash's acquisition of Caviar creates a highly differentiated company with a unique brand and wide-ranging selection." How is this not a play at elimina…
In US law, eliminating competition is generally fine. It's only a problem when there is a monopoly or close to a monopoly. DoorDash doesn't seem close to having a monopoly on food delivery.
Re: DoorDash Buying Caviar from Square for $410M
#14We're going to see more consolidation, but are any of these companies addressing the treatment of their delivery drivers, or issues that are starting to crop up, like delivery drivers eating food that they're delivering?
Re: DoorDash Buying Caviar from Square for $410M
#15Question from someone that's not familiar with law, or I guess specifically antitrust (anti-monopoly?) law. How are these acquisitions not in violation of these laws. Especially from the Big Tech Cos that slurp up literally any small competitor. From the article: "DoorDash's acquisition of Caviar creates a highly differentiated company with a unique brand and wide-ranging selection." How is this not a play at elimina…
It is not illegal to buy competitors (commenting only on US law). It can potentially violate antitrust laws if you eliminate all competition in a market by buying out competitors. But given the existence of Seamless/Grubhub, Uber Eats, and others, plus most of the restaurants still take phone & fax orders, it would be difficult to argue Doordash buying Caviar corners the delivery market.
Re: DoorDash Buying Caviar from Square for $410M
#16[deleted]
Re: DoorDash Buying Caviar from Square for $410M
#17For what it's worth, the general vibe I've gotten from couriers has been that Caviar is one of the best food delivery apps for them, and that DoorDash is among the worst.
This may have changed since I don't really use Caviar, but I'n not surprised since I think Caviar's delivery/service fees are the highest (which is why I don't really use it).
Re: DoorDash Buying Caviar from Square for $410M
#18For what it's worth, the general vibe I've gotten from couriers has been that Caviar is one of the best food delivery apps for them, and that DoorDash is among the worst.
It's funny, I know almost no two people with similar experiences (user or courier).
For example as a user I have literally never had a good experience with Caviar. It almost always wrong in different ways.
As a courier one time the guy called and said that the restaurant was taking so long that Caviar would no longer pay him to wait so we ended up paying him out of pocket to cover it (he said we could cancel and get our money back but that he'd also get nothing after waiting for a very long time).
Uber Eats, as a user, has usually worked pretty well. As a courier one of them told us they constantly have out of date restaurant menus, people order from them, the restaurant substitutes or ignores it completely and now they have to deal with an angry person.
It really feels like restaurants are not equipped to handle these types of services and all of the services don't train their people if at all, as well as treating them kinda like crap many times.
Re: DoorDash Buying Caviar from Square for $410M
#19Question from someone that's not familiar with law, or I guess specifically antitrust (anti-monopoly?) law. How are these acquisitions not in violation of these laws. Especially from the Big Tech Cos that slurp up literally any small competitor. From the article: "DoorDash's acquisition of Caviar creates a highly differentiated company with a unique brand and wide-ranging selection." How is this not a play at elimina…
It would be very strange if all acquisitions of competitors were considered a violation of antitrust law. It's something that I would expect to be very common in a well-functioning, fiercely competitive market.
Re: DoorDash Buying Caviar from Square for $410M
#20Question from someone that's not familiar with law, or I guess specifically antitrust (anti-monopoly?) law. How are these acquisitions not in violation of these laws. Especially from the Big Tech Cos that slurp up literally any small competitor. From the article: "DoorDash's acquisition of Caviar creates a highly differentiated company with a unique brand and wide-ranging selection." How is this not a play at elimina…
IANAL, but as far as I know generally the standard is "is this likely to cause meaningful harm re: pricing/quality to consumers?" See https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a... for a fair amount of context. Horizontal mergers happen every day in the private markets (like this transaction), and generally they're a good thing: you're likely to get a premium by selling to a strategic rather than a financial investor (e.g. private equity) since they can value synergy. And anyone who's taken an entrepreneurship course knows that having a larger variety of potential high-quality liquidity events incentivizes the creation of new businesses. The problem is when enough of a market is consolidated in a way that might allow the consolidator to adjust pricing in a consumer-hostile way, which isn't touched by this specific transaction.
To your more general question of "how is this not a play at eliminating competition" - consider it more "can we (DoorDash) make more money operating Caviar by finding synergies with our existing infrastructure, than we pay for Caviar based on a model that describes Caviar operating under Square without that benefit?" That's a question of efficiency, not competition, and it's generally a good thing.