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DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

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Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems insane that people living in inner cities need to get food delivered. Unless there is a good reason you are handicapped etc. or maybe just had a baby. But for most people routine delivery when you can walk 5 minutes and phone ahead that order is fine.

Not really insane when you consider that money can buy you more time. It's very convenient to get food delivered on these apps. Whether it's financially responsible or not depends on the individual.

Also health. The idea thing to do is cook the food: cooking the food esp. chopping etc. I feel is good for mental health and prepare the body to digest. And you have moved somewhat. At least if you go pick up the takeaway, you have done some walking. If you are too busy to do physical things in day to day life, so you can crank out another page of code, or do a deal, I think that is poor and leads to bad health in the long term.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#152
post #147

DoorDash is being misleading when they imply that NYC required a minimum wage of $29.93/hr for delivery workers. DoorDash could comply with the bylaw by paying its contractors $17.96/hr for the full time they work (including time waiting for orders). But DoorDash instead chose to use the "Alternate Method" which has a 67% higher minimum wage, but only for the time the contractor is actively delivering food (not stand…

The other part of this is that Doordash workers need to pay for their own delivery vehicles (gas, upkeep etc.) which factors into the actual wages they get. They are not making significantly more than minimum wage workers.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#153
post #30

> With the changes required by NYC and the impact it will have on our system, we are pausing our Priority Access program, which gives Dashers who have high ratings priority on higher-paying offers. Since Dashers will earn a guaranteed minimum rate, the benefits offered by this program will not apply in NYC. The Top Dasher program is still available for qualified NYC Dashers. So they're guaranteeing higher pay for all…

On the flip side it might encourage the bulk of drivers to stay with the platform if they were previously denied access to the best jobs.

Outside rush hour there's already not enough work in the sense that there will be long periods of waiting for orders in even very large cities. It seems like if anything they could afford to raise standards for the consumer by offering less to lower performing drivers to make contracting unappealing.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The only way it works is if someone else's time is an order of magnitude less valuable than yours. Ish. There's clearly a logistics problem here. 1-meal being delivered promptly on time scales poorly. But 15 meals delivered to 15 different people within 45 minutes is in fact, a net gain. Alas, Doordash and Uber have gone about it in all the wrong ways. Its the drivers who double-book this process (ie: picking up mo…

I spent a number of years working at a pizza place in high school/college and on busy nights they had a dedicated "router", a human who was sometimes also a driver, who grouped orders together so they got where they needed to go in a timely fashion and the food was always warm.

When I order DoorDash my driver either only has my order or they have a secondary delivery that is insanely out of the way. This is a very inefficient use of driver time.

The pizza place is practically all delivery and it's easy to bunch up the orders heading in the same direction. Comparing that to UE/DD, a single restaurant might have 2-3 delivery orders at any given time, but what are the odds they are all headed in the same direction? I wonder if extreme density cities have less of a problem with this.

For reference, I live in a "2nd tier" city. Not NY/LA, but a city everyone has heard of.

On an unrelated note, I've always thought the big problem is their market is too narrow. These companies should deliver literally anything that can fit in a passenger car. One example I know of is that auto shops do not keep parts for every car in the shop all the time. They contract out to parts warehouses. Those warehouses have employees which deliver your new carburetor to the auto shop that's installing it. There's no reason your Uber driver can't pick up pasta and a carburetor.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#155
post #131

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.

This was not very doable pretty much everywhere outside NYC. The lower density of restaurants made it harder for delivery to be a thing except all the pizza places that offered it.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#156
post #131

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.

Has the local restaurant scene recovered from the lockdowns? I live in a smaller city and we have recovered some but it's nothing like it was. I heard it was particularly rough in NYC.

In my experience, the more "corporate" restaurant groups are growing but the less well capitalized small businesses are in a world of hurt trying to balance the books with the leftovers after the rise in physical rent and advertising/platform company costs.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#157
post #18

The 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.

> The only way it works is if someone else's time is an order of magnitude less valuable than yours.

Food delivery also seems to work with vertically integrated geo-segmented services like pizza and Chinese takeout. My best guess is that the profit margin and delivery packing are high enough to make it worthwhile.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#158
post #131

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.

This was not very doable pretty much everywhere outside NYC. The lower density of restaurants made it harder for delivery to be a thing except all the pizza places that offered it.

[deleted]

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only way it works is if someone else's time is an order of magnitude less valuable than yours. Ish. There's clearly a logistics problem here. 1-meal being delivered promptly on time scales poorly. But 15 meals delivered to 15 different people within 45 minutes is in fact, a net gain. Alas, Doordash and Uber have gone about it in all the wrong ways. Its the drivers who double-book this process (ie: picking up mo…

You are describing a completely different service though. Prep-meal delivery also works, but it's addressing a different usage pattern. In the same way you could propose to replace Uber with... buses? 15 people get on the same bus at a specific time and get dropped off within 5 miles, thus optimizing the process.

UberEats is a "bus" that pretends otherwise.

I've seen the Uber drivers come in. They always grab like 4 or 5 orders, and possibly drive to a 2nd or 3rd restaraunt before they start delivering.

Its not like those UberEats drivers have a big penalty if they arrive late or if the food is cold.

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What I'm saying is, consolidated food delivery services is *already* what we have with DoorDash/UberEats/whatever, they just lie to you about the details.

The reason why Foodsby works (albeit on a smaller scale) is because they're honest about it. There's nothing wrong with consolidating orders to minimize driving time, the problem occurs because those other services _PRETEND_ they're a 1-to-1 order service with dedicated drivers. IE: Its the lies where things have gone wrong, not necessarily the practice.

If all the drivers are double-booking / consolidating orders anyway, then work it into the model. Embrace it, rather than pretend otherwise.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#160
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't really viable business models to begin with. Only VC funding can keep these online platform up.

The basic concept of food delivery existed long before tech and VC and was viable. The only reason these companies can't turn a profit is because all those microservices, ads and "engagement" don't come for free.

These companies have spent a ton of money to convince lawmakers and consumers that they are not in the food delivery (or taxi) business. The whole plan was to not have to deal with these pesky regulations.
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