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Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

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Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#51

Post by adamqureshi »

jiveturkey wrote: post #39
covercash wrote: post #34

I hate Slice. They basically came in and registered similar domains to existing pizza shops but because they are better at SEO than the mom & pop places, their results out rank the real sites. They even went in and updated unclaimed listings on yelp, google, Foursquare, etc. and put their site. That would be fine if the pizza shops were on board with this. But none of the shops I order from had any clue their orders…

The download.cnet.com of the pizza world.

I spoke to the my local pizza shop in NYC. He said between grubhub, uberRush, yelp and now slice, they are eating his pizza profit margins. He said he has to deal with 3-4 software / hardware POS products for EACH service. They are sucking him dry. He can't make money BUT needs them to bring the business. Slice takes a 20% "slice" per order / of his business. Flour costs going up, he makes his own mozzerella. UberRush takes 33%. I don't know about grubhub / yelp % but its not good for him. His pizza is authentic neopolitina with homemade ingredients. You Actually taste the marinara sauce and fresh mozzerella. Dominos goal is to "squeeze" out and maximize profits using the cheapest possible ingredients they find! Then tell you its good!

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#52

Post by scottie_m »

ardit33 wrote: post #49
scottie_m wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to preface by saying that I have no issues with Albanians, this is just based on what I know of how some Greeks fell about Albanians. Given that plenty of Greeks are, to put it mildly, less than fond of Albanians, is there a lot of tension in the Greek Diner/Pizzaria run by Greeks, and those run by Albanians? I hope not, but I’d guess that there is.

No, not that I know off... Sure, there will be some greeks that don't like Albanians, for x or y reason, but it is not universal. Also, there substantial number of greeks with Albanian origins: ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvanites ) and Albanian and greek food is very similar as there has been a lot of cross cultural pollination. Both Albania and Greece were part of the "same empires" for millennia. First the Ro…

That’s good to hear, I always found the antipathy between culturally similar groups tragic and weird. Good link too, thanks.

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#53

Post by matrix »

dgritsko wrote: post #28

> "the opportunity to build a business that could compete with Big Pizza by uniting tens of thousands of mom-and-pop shops" This summary of Slice's business feels like it ought to be generalizable to other industries. Anyone have other examples of companies trying to do something similar in different verticals? (s/Big Pizza/Big Floral, or something?)

Why would a small business want to be part of some marketplace that just reduces their margins, commoditizes their business and and forces them into a race to the bottom?

Marketplaces are often a terrible deal for small businesses and small business owners know it, so there has to be some incredibly compelling benefit to being part of it for them to want to do it.

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#54

Post by floatrock »

covercash wrote: post #34

I hate Slice. They basically came in and registered similar domains to existing pizza shops but because they are better at SEO than the mom & pop places, their results out rank the real sites. They even went in and updated unclaimed listings on yelp, google, Foursquare, etc. and put their site. That would be fine if the pizza shops were on board with this. But none of the shops I order from had any clue their orders…

> They even went in and updated unclaimed listings on yelp, google, Foursquare, etc. and put their site.

"growth hacking"

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#55

Post by paulcole »

Fifer82 wrote: post #38
ahallock wrote: post #10

Dominos put more money into their ordering system bells and whistles than the actual food, if you can call it food. I couldn't even finish a slice it was so bad.

Absolutely the same here and I am Scottish. I will eat pretty much anything, but even with a beer in Me, I can't handle Dominos. Fake cheese, Fake chicken, Fake mushrooms (I was amazed at fake mushrooms) all put together onto a tasteless base. Gives me the boke.

> Fake cheese, Fake chicken, Fake mushrooms

What exactly do you think is on their pizza?

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#56

Post by subpixel »

ahallock wrote: post #32
scrooched_moose wrote: post #19

> Yet Sela believes consumers have been abandoning local shops--even those with fresher ingredients, better flavors and ties to their communities--mostly because they lack the ability to take mobile orders. That may be part of it, but among people I know the majority of it is cost. A 16" pizza at most of our favorite spots ends up around $25. I can get a 14" 3 topping pizza at Dominos for $7.99. The local pizza is gr…

Local pizza is more like 100x better. I couldn't even finish a slice of Dominos, at least the one I ordered from on the west side of Cleveland. I've had better frozen pizza. I don't get who's ordering it. It's not even the 'good' kind of bad, like, say McDonald's fries that one indulges in on occasion.

Chain restaurants don't succeed by being better, they succeed by being consistent. The fear of having a bad meal is much, much stronger than the desire to have an exceptional one. This - along with price - is why McDonald's in NYC is packed with tourists.

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#57

Post by rrdharan »

jedberg wrote: post #36

Back about six years ago now, we had a new guy come on board my team at Netflix as an SRE. He had come from Dominoes. He told us stories about how Dominos saw the writing on the wall and reinvented itself as a tech company, how every step in the pizza making process had an API. He showed us command line tools that you could use to order and track your pizza, so you could set it up in cron and then have it tell you wh…

Yes but do they make their own hardware?

http://blog.pizzahut.com/dont-miss-a-second-of-march-madness...

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#59

Post by lifeisstillgood »

My default advice to workers getting rough end of the stick is "unionise".

here companies with SEO skills are stiffing smaller shops and i cannot think of any better advice.

It is of course hard to do - basically the Teamsters were the only effective ones at it and they used ... unethical approaches - but i do think it's feasible.

Also this is the essence of the open source critical mass problem. Proprietary houses can afford the initial upfront investment to say make a pizza site but which non profit union exists to run an SEO operation to compete here?

Is this just a failing of small shops who are destined to be beaten if they don't grow? is this a failing of SEO at google who cannot distinguish between a local shop and a chain?

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#60

Post by pbhjpbhj »

adamqureshi wrote: post #51
jiveturkey wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The download.cnet.com of the pizza world.

I spoke to the my local pizza shop in NYC. He said between grubhub, uberRush, yelp and now slice, they are eating his pizza profit margins. He said he has to deal with 3-4 software / hardware POS products for EACH service. They are sucking him dry. He can't make money BUT needs them to bring the business. Slice takes a 20% "slice" per order / of his business. Flour costs going up, he makes his own mozzerella. UberRus…

>UberRush takes 33%. //

Man, that is terrible. This is a major problem with capitalism, the optimisation doesn't work when it gets corrupted with marketing - in theory these frontends would compete until they were making practically nothing above their costs, in practice the one(s) with the most capital behind them (or best marketing department) will win and leech the money away from the producers and to the people who commissioned a clever app. It all seems pretty evil to me.

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