As an old person, I'd like to point out that my hometown of New York City had a dynamic, world class restaurant scene, including a cornucopia of home delivery, long before the tech platform companies found a way to siphon ~40% of consumer spend out of the local restaurant economy in exchange for some friction reduction. We were doing great. But you had a drawer full of paper menus and had to call the restaurant.
DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC
131–140 of 320 posts
Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC
#132The platform fees and the insane menu price markups that restaurants apply for delivery app orders have made it impractical to use Uber Eats & DoorDash for a couple years now IMO. I only ever consider using them when offered at least 50% off. Mandated minimum earnings will benefit the drivers, but that won't help drivers that have to quit the platforms because people stop using them.
It was never a sustainable business model to begin with. It takes 10 minutes for a chef to make my meal, and 25 minutes for someone to come to the restaurant, pick it up, and drive it to my house. The only way it works is if someone else's time is an order of magnitude less valuable than yours.
Indeed, the only way it is working right now is because a significant piece of their revenue is from discounted gift cards so their revenue grows while taking a loss. In the future, they will have to replace the driver with something automated if they want to make money.
Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
They used tips (and may still use tips) to refund themselves for the minimum pay offered to dashers. The language was very deceptive, as giving a tip did not always increase the amount of money received by a dasher.
> They used tips (and may still use tips) to refund themselves for the minimum pay offered to dashers. Not trying to make a stance one way or another, just wanted to make sure I understand what you meant by this correctly. Is what you are describing essentially the same way it works in the restaurant industry for waiters/servers? TLDR: waiters/servers in the US typically have a base pay that’s below the minimum wage,…
> TLDR: waiters/servers typically have a base pay that’s below the minimum wage, but they get to keep all the tips. However, if a waiter/server at the end of their pay period makes less with their base pay+tips than what the minimum wage for the area would be, the employer is legally on the hook for making up the difference to the employee.
I believe that's the federal rule, but several states with higher than federal minimum wages have a uniform minimum wage for tipped and non-tipped workers. If I'm reading the chart correctly[1], those states/territories include Alaska, California, Guam, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.
[1] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped
Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC
#134Do other people in NYC use Doordash? Curious to understand people who do. Anecdotally, I never have even considered it – although it's true that I'm somebody who prefers choosing my own groceries. I feel like the value prop (i.e. value less [opportunity] costs) is de minimis to most in NYC, with abundant grocers and restaurants at every price point.
I did it (delivered) years ago.
Absolutely blows my mind the kind of money people will spend to avoid 10 minutes of driving.
Even now that I am making substantially more money, pretty much Doordash's prime demographic, I find it such a terrible deal that I simply cannot bring myself to use it.
Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're misunderstanding the change to tipping. DoorDash is effectively eliminating it (or at least making it truly optional). The city's study [1] advocates for this explicitly: > Beyond productivity, there also exist several other margins for adjustment to higher delivery worker pay. For instance, apps could choose to reduce consumers’ costs through changes to the user interface that discourage or eliminate…
> DoorDash is effectively eliminating it (or at least making it truly optional) it was truly optional before, no? you just had to decide if you were taking an option or implicitly being a jerk before ordering. now you decide after. perhaps companies need to stop implying such things altogether. such as could be done by not even mentioning a tip until food is in hand. as that is what a tip is. that the delivery person…
I think tip amount was known to the drivers before accepting an order, so if you select 0 up front you would be likely to wait longer.
Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Living wage > consumer excess. Walk to the restaurant if you can't afford it.
The sick and disabled greatly value the advent of delivery apps. Not all who use them can reasonably "just pick it up yourself".
I don't remember the sick and disabled being able to pay such high premiums on take out. My friend is a dwarf (his preferred term) and spent a summer working for a company out in California. He had to Uber to and from work, just to contribute to the economy.
Meanwhile, in sane countries that invest in their populace, he would have gotten on the bus or train, and he would have kept more of his income.
Maybe instead of gifting entire sectors of the economy to private entities through complete governmental apathy and purposeful neglect, we could work to invest in our own communities without the requirement that it pad someone's bank account who had connections early in life. Maybe we could build a better society if it wasn't a requirement that every service come with a minimum ten percent graft (profit) system attached, with nowadays the extra requirement that profit goes up year over year.
Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC
#137As an old person, I'd like to point out that my hometown of New York City had a dynamic, world class restaurant scene, including a cornucopia of home delivery, long before the tech platform companies found a way to siphon ~40% of consumer spend out of the local restaurant economy in exchange for some friction reduction. We were doing great. But you had a drawer full of paper menus and had to call the restaurant.
Did you experience the automats?
Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC
#138I read an interesting article about delivery drivers in NYC, specifically how much of the market was completely unregulated and illegal, and how people work within what functions as an underground economy: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/nyregion/migrant-delivery... The person doing the work often isn't the person registered with (e.g.) DoorDash. There's a whole economy of middlemen who resell straw buyers' creden…
This seems to be the case in bay area too. The person delivering the food is not the same person in the DoorDash app. It used to be rare before but not anymore. (sample size of 1, as recent as 2 days ago).
Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're misunderstanding the change to tipping. DoorDash is effectively eliminating it (or at least making it truly optional). The city's study [1] advocates for this explicitly: > Beyond productivity, there also exist several other margins for adjustment to higher delivery worker pay. For instance, apps could choose to reduce consumers’ costs through changes to the user interface that discourage or eliminate…
> DoorDash is effectively eliminating it (or at least making it truly optional) it was truly optional before, no? you just had to decide if you were taking an option or implicitly being a jerk before ordering. now you decide after. perhaps companies need to stop implying such things altogether. such as could be done by not even mentioning a tip until food is in hand. as that is what a tip is. that the delivery person…
The big difference is that before, the tip you picked before placing the order directly reflected the offers that the dashers would see. If you put no tip then very few dashers would be willing to take the order. This is what effectively made it mandatory.
Now dashers won't see tip variance in offers, it'll effectively be post-service from their perspective.
From the consumer perspective, yes, you can tip before you have the food in hand, but it's no different than if you had gone back after delivery and added a tip.
I don't really see what your remaining point of contention is here.
Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC
#140As an old person, I'd like to point out that my hometown of New York City had a dynamic, world class restaurant scene, including a cornucopia of home delivery, long before the tech platform companies found a way to siphon ~40% of consumer spend out of the local restaurant economy in exchange for some friction reduction. We were doing great. But you had a drawer full of paper menus and had to call the restaurant.
And if you called the restaurant enough, you typically got on a first name basis with them and had incredible customer service. Now you're just another customer #47523 that created order #37324.