Our restaurants are failing. Why should food delivery apps thrive?

Post by pjc50 » Sat, May 16, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #97

tasty_freeze wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand the difference between profiting and profiteering. Nobody is claiming companies should sell toilet paper at cost, but they are saying toilet paper shouldn't get 5x more expensive.

But that constricts the supply because if you want to make a short term investment (the length of the pandemic) to increase the supply of home toilet paper, you can't as that investment can't generate a return. Most production is based on demand being there for 5+ years the current prices. If home toilet paper demand will only be high for 2 years you can't make money. You also want prices to increase to discourage ho…

Post by ramraj07 » Sat, May 16, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

hobofan wrote: post #40

haltingproblem wrote: post #6

They thrive because people are lazy - both restaurant and their customers. Restaurants can make a concerted effort to ask regular clients to order from their own websites/apps but rarely do even when they can make an extra 10-15% after giving the customers 10% off. Customers are lazy because inspite of all the talk of supporting local, they are too hooked on click-click-click and ordered. The delivery apps have hundr…

For food delivery there is CoopCycle[0] in 10+ cities worldwide. I've been seeing their stickers at quite a few restaurants lately in Berlin, where the local chapter formed after Lieferando consolidated IIRC. [0]: https://coopcycle.org/en/

Post by matthewdgreen » Sat, May 16, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

mhh__ wrote: post #54

> why should I'm not a huge fan of moralistic takes on business. If you're selling something dangerous then that's wrong, but it's very easy to be blinkered from a high position. If people want to buy food in a certain way I can't really blame them - arguably the same with Uber and taxis, Uber has disrupted an industry which was fairly uncompetitive and politically charged (Their prevalence indicates the customers ap…

Post by threatofrain » Sat, May 16, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

tasty_freeze wrote: post #112

MattGaiser wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that constricts the supply because if you want to make a short term investment (the length of the pandemic) to increase the supply of home toilet paper, you can't as that investment can't generate a return. Most production is based on demand being there for 5+ years the current prices. If home toilet paper demand will only be high for 2 years you can't make money. You also want prices to increase to discourage ho…

That is addressing a different point. The comment I was responding to claimed people were upset that companies are making a profit. I countered that profit is OK, profiteering is what has people irate. What is the ideal pricing to achieve long term goals wasn't something I was addressing.

Post by ramraj07 » Sat, May 16, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

dathinab wrote: post #116

kevindong wrote: post #20

> While neither Uber nor Grubhub turns a profit delivering food, they are nonetheless venture-backed and raking in mountains of cash The author acknowledges that the delivery services are losing money. And yet, the author is essentially saying that the apps should lose even more money because someone else is willing to fund the apps.

It's not that simple. First we need to know why they don't turn in a profit. Potential reasons include: - Because they pay to the people delivering (I don't think so). - Because keeping the app running is to expensive, i.e. server costs (I don't think so to). - Because they payed a lot upfront to create the app and are still paying it of (Maybe, still unlikely, this would have been their own mistake and go away after…