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DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

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Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#141

Post by lotsoweiners »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #81
lathiat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in Australia. No hot bags for any orders including Pizza. It drives me nuts, I never order really now. It’s not cold enough for the food to be stone cold, but it’s like warm at best. Not enjoyable at all. Using a standard supermarket freezer bag makes a HUGE difference. I don’t understand how it’s not a hard enforced requirement by doordash, Uber eats, etc. It’s nuts. I have seen it more common in other countries…

How does that pass local food safety laws? There's normally requirements food be kept at XYZ temps.

If that were true then I shouldn’t be allowed to drive to a restaurant, order to go food, drive home to eat.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#142

Post by lotsoweiners »

nobody9999 wrote: post #136

Door Dash/Seamless/Uber Eats, etc. have driven many low-priced restaurants out of business here in New York City many of which had long traditions of providing delivery services for their food by inserting themselves as middlemen and taking all those restaurants' profits and more . I realize that in many places, they provide services that never existed before, but here in NYC they've driven hundreds of wonderful mom…

I don’t understand what you are saying here. Are you saying that these “wonderful” restaurants were doing their own delivery until Uber eats etc came along? If so, why couldn’t they just continue with what they had been doing?

> Those entrepreneurs who ran successful businesses for decades were forced out of business

If you can’t adapt to a changing market then you may not be much of an entrepreneur. Regardless, I’m not sure how much delivery services affected these businesses vs “the rent is too high”.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#143

Post by lotsoweiners »

electrondood wrote: post #61

DoorDash is wonderful if you want to pay 30% more for the same item, and then add tax and tip on top of that. Restaurants pass on the platform fee to you. It's idiotic. Just phone it in directly and go pick it up.

That involves me phoning something in and going somewhere. Conveniences cost extra.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#144

Post by thfuran »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #106
digging wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ultimately it's driven by customer behavior. If people went to restaurants instead of expecting to be served hot food in their living room, this whole destructive business model wouldn't even exist or would be small enough as to not be negatively impactful. No, you've got that backward. Customer behavior is driven by the tides of capital. Advertising is a pretty clear example but it's not the limit. I mean, how man…

There is no doubt that advertising has a huge impact on customer behavior. But that doesn't mean that consumers are incapable of making choices that go against the grain of the market. It does take a conscious effort, and it's true that most consumers just don't care or can't be bothered with it, or are crushed by too many other things in our modern society to have the bandwidth to even consider their choices.

>making choices that go against the grain of the market. It does take a conscious effort, and it's true that most consumers just don't care or can't be bothered with it

No, it's not that most people are interior and follow the market, it's that the market literally is what most people do. If everyone "went against the market", they'd just have moved the market.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#145

Post by poincaredisk »

lotsoweiners wrote: post #141
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that pass local food safety laws? There's normally requirements food be kept at XYZ temps.

If that were true then I shouldn’t be allowed to drive to a restaurant, order to go food, drive home to eat.

Food safety laws don't impact the end customer. You can legally take ham out of your fridge, leave it in the hot place for 24 hours and eat it. You just shouldn't.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#146

Post by winternett »

bko wrote: post #63
forinti wrote: post #42

> You have insanely large pools of capital creating an incredibly inefficient money-losing business model. It's used to subsidize an untenable customer expectation. You leverage a broken workforce to minimize your genuine labor expenses. The companies unload their capital cannons on customer acquisition, while this week’s Uber-Grubhub news reminds us, the only viable endgame is a promise of monopoly concentration and…

Isn't this a problem that fixes itself? People have lots of money and throw it at stupid businesses and lose it.

We've had scam industries like this for ages... If you're old enough there's Time shares, Amway, numerous companies that have sold fake health supplements etc... It hasn't resolves anything beyond money and work being extracted from people with no reward. Valid business, like taxi cabs, are destroyed by Uber and door dash, and the people that work for these services get ripped off. Many of these businesses are purely exploitative.

Even Dominos is using 3rd party delivery services now, instead of hiring drivers, it has made their prices skyrocket on top of already ridiculous inflation. It even prices people out of being able to afford pretty much D-class pizza. Even if the model melts down, the original (more valuable) business model may be so decimated that it won't be able to be brought back.

Our world is suffering from trust funders with bad and amateur business ideas, all trying to become market-cornering monopolies, it's long overdue to encourage them to find better and less destructive idea builders and better ideas by others to fund instead of launching poorly though out and highly exploitative profit schemes.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#147

Post by nsxwolf »

lotsoweiners wrote: post #139
nsxwolf wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's completely ruined pizza delivery, which used to actually be a pleasant and affordable experience.

How do you figure? I still order pizza, pay a small delivery fee and tip, and receive my order in around 30-45 minutes. I haven’t noticed a change other than I no longer call a store to order and I can get pizza delivery from places that didn’t deliver before.

I've never seen a DoorDasher show up with a proper insulated bag. The pizzas are cold. They've been on who knows what route delivering orders from who knows how many restaurants. They slide around, aren't kept level.

I had an order where only 1 out of 5 pizzas showed up. The driver didn't speak English, but it wouldn't matter if he'd been able to. Because the driver isn't empowered to help in any way. They don't represent the restaurant, and everything has to go through DoorDash customer service.

Getting my refund took 4 phone calls, multiple online chats, and 30 days.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#148

Post by AmpsterMan »

bko wrote: post #63
forinti wrote: post #42

> You have insanely large pools of capital creating an incredibly inefficient money-losing business model. It's used to subsidize an untenable customer expectation. You leverage a broken workforce to minimize your genuine labor expenses. The companies unload their capital cannons on customer acquisition, while this week’s Uber-Grubhub news reminds us, the only viable endgame is a promise of monopoly concentration and…

Isn't this a problem that fixes itself? People have lots of money and throw it at stupid businesses and lose it.

The market can stay silly longer than I can stay solvent

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#149

Post by ThunderSizzle »

ianferrel wrote: post #113
dralley wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's equivalent to "broken window" spending. Yes, breaking a window allows you to generate economic activity by paying the manufacturer to create a new one and paying an installer to install it, but it's not socially useful economic activity. You could have spent the same money building excess renewable energy resources, or on basic science research, or a million other things that might be equally "inefficient" from…

I disagree with that. In the case of food delivery, there's socially and economically useful work of getting food from where it can be efficiently created (restaurants) to where it can be efficiently consumed (hungry people's location). In the absence of that work, the hungry people would be making their own food (less efficient, generally, than restaurant cooking which can do larger batches) or going to get their ow…

Here's the part that breaks down:

If restaurants were more efficient, then why are restaurants (1) more expensive, (2) using worse ingredients, (3) taking longer, and (4) have questionable quality.

Granted, I'd understand if in the good-fast-cheap triangle, you lose one, but with restaurants, most are questionable quality, take longer, and have gotten expensive.

I can make better food faster with better ingredients for a cheaper price at my own house for my own family, as long as we did some thi king ahead and planning. On top of that, when I make a new recipe, I learn how to make something new with new ingredients that helps me do more exotic dishes in the future.

It's not entirely clear to me restaurants are the theoretical economic efficient location that is claimed. Even if you use fast food, their prices have gotten higher and quality even more questionable on the already garbage quality they had.

It seems to me there is more efficiency in people learning to make their own food, and cooking better at home - both in the results and the discipline on the person. Sometimes decentralization is more efficient than centralization, and I think this is an example.

I will say optimizing grocery delivery makes alot more sense ro me than restaurant delivery.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#150

Post by ianferrel »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #149
ianferrel wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with that. In the case of food delivery, there's socially and economically useful work of getting food from where it can be efficiently created (restaurants) to where it can be efficiently consumed (hungry people's location). In the absence of that work, the hungry people would be making their own food (less efficient, generally, than restaurant cooking which can do larger batches) or going to get their ow…

Here's the part that breaks down: If restaurants were more efficient, then why are restaurants (1) more expensive, (2) using worse ingredients, (3) taking longer, and (4) have questionable quality. Granted, I'd understand if in the good-fast-cheap triangle, you lose one, but with restaurants, most are questionable quality, take longer, and have gotten expensive. I can make better food faster with better ingredients f…

>I can make better food faster with better ingredients for a cheaper price at my own house for my own family, as long as we did some thi king ahead and planning. On top of that, when I make a new recipe, I learn how to make something new with new ingredients that helps me do more exotic dishes in the future.

Can you? Are you accounting for your labor cost?

I do a lot of cooking for my family too, but when I account for the time it takes to shop for groceries, prep, cook, and clean up, I doubt I'm making even half of what I make in my job. It would be more economically efficient for me to cook only very simple things, work more hours, and have more food delivered.

There are a lot of reasons I don't do that! I agree with all your points about self-sufficiency, and health, and personal development. But I disagree that those are "efficient". Efficient is labor specialization: I spend more time writing code and hire someone to do the cooking and cleaning and transporting.

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