Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

marketsaintefficient.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 350 posts

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#51

Post by yoyohello13 »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #35
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #11

This is essentially the story of tech companies across nearly every industry where they have come to dominate. This is one reason that I see most tech companies as essentially a net negative for society at large, as the goal is nearly always to control a large monopoly (and this is fully admitted by many tech leaders, e.g. Thiel) which the Internet makes possible. Pre-Internet you would see the same dynamics, but usu…

And why is a large monopoly a net negative? I read his book and he says that monopolies are 10x better products, and if monopolies are 10x better then why are they bad? Are you arguing that it would be better to keep using 10x worse products, for the sake of there not being any monopolies?

Man who believes monopolies are good says they are 10x better? Color me shocked…

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#52

Post by afavour »

esco27 wrote: post #28

The food industry is due for a good old opensource disruption, where each restaurant can setup their private menu hub (like you would an instagram account), add their payment processing details, and start delivering their own orders. It's a win-win for the restaurant and their recurring customers.

Stuff like this already exists (AFAIK not open source but cheap enough that restaurants would prefer to use it if they could). The problem is modifying user behaviour: people used to go directly to the restaurant to order food but are now very used to opening the food delivery app, browsing it, and ordering.

You could have the slickest ordering experience in the world and it won’t help you if no one sees it.s

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#53

Post by bawolff »

andybak wrote: post #13

I still tend to discover a takeaway or restaurant and then figure out how to get them to deliver. I've never not ordered from somewhere I was keen on based on their choice of delivery service. If the consolidation results in price hikes and poor service, what's the lock-in? Why can't the takeaways just go rogue and offer independent deliveries?

> Why can't the takeaways just go rogue and offer independent deliveries?

Because delivery is really expensive. To do it well over a large area you have to have a lot of staff. You also want to keep them all busy, so it works better with a lot of resturants. Margins are thin, lots of risk in an area that is very different from the core activity of the resturant.

Its an almost textbook example of a situation where a specialist company makes sense.

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#54

Post by gandalfian »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #11

This is essentially the story of tech companies across nearly every industry where they have come to dominate. This is one reason that I see most tech companies as essentially a net negative for society at large, as the goal is nearly always to control a large monopoly (and this is fully admitted by many tech leaders, e.g. Thiel) which the Internet makes possible. Pre-Internet you would see the same dynamics, but usu…

And long before that Warren Buffet talking about only backing companies who have built a competitive moat.

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#55

Post by bawolff »

afavour wrote: post #50
bawolff wrote: post #49

5 companies dominate a market that 5-10 years ago didn't even exist. That doesn't exactly sound terrible.

Of course it did. People have been ordering delivery food for decades. They just called up the restaurant to do it.

I dont know where you live, but that was absolutely not true where i lived.

The only exception was chinese and pizza. Nobody else offered delivery. The current delivery market is much more than that.

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#57

Post by cjbgkagh »

nomadygnt wrote: post #45
koakuma-chan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why is a large monopoly a net negative? I read his book and he says that monopolies are 10x better products, and if monopolies are 10x better then why are they bad? Are you arguing that it would be better to keep using 10x worse products, for the sake of there not being any monopolies?

Monopolies are anti-competitive. Without competition there is no incentive for innovation, lowering prices, not price-gouging etc. Is a 10x better product really 10x better if it is also 10x more expensive and there is no alternative?

Not innovating, maintaining high prices, and price-gouging are unstable activities for a monopoly, as in it would open up a void for effective competition. The real anti-competitive actions is that it becomes cost effective to do regulatory capture / pay bribes to politicians. A monopoly can pay to play in a way that fledging competitors cannot. Once the industry has been captured then they can do rent seeking behaviors without worrying about competition.

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#59

Post by asdf6969 »

b112 wrote: post #27
spacephysics wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of their infrastructure for handling orders (iPads, software integration into their payment system) was done around Covid, and some have started to integrate in-person orders through the same “single unified system” creating a higher and higher cost to switch delivery systems. AFAIK there’s no well-supported open source order/delivery management software. The companies that were ready during covid took all the e…

And yet, why do you need software? In the 80s, I delivered pizza with no software. The place had a normal cash register, for pickups. People would call, order, and we'd write it down. They it'd go on a wire with a clothes pin, until made. Then it went with the driver. Each delivery was written down before leaving with it. This worked for decades for everyone in the industry, flawlessly, perfectly, without issue. Why…

Everyone hates calling and apps give customers a list of restaurants with menus to browse. Restaurants also do all of their in-restaurant management with software (why not paper? ask them idk) which I assume has some integration with the app.

I can imagine some type of open protocol that lets them self-host an order service though, or at least an open solution that’s hosted by many providers and many separate apps. That would be nice for everyone

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#60

Post by watwut »

to11mtm wrote: post #31
daedrdev wrote: post #23

I think the truth is restaurant food delivery is a luxgury good, literally “private taxi for your burrito” yet many people spend like it isnt.

Restaurant delivery... I tend to agree. 'nonperishable food' or 'properly packed short travel' (i.e. dairy/frozen) IMO is a fairer niche of 'could be non-luxury with better societal outcomes', except for the 'as close to JIT as possible'. There's ways to optimize the process to where something on the scale of 10-20 homes could get their main groceries delivered two or 3 times a week and the overall cost would be lowe…

Difference is you can stock large quantity of frozen foods any time it is convenient to shop. As in, frozen food delivery is not all that useful.

When you work from home and cant cook, delivery can happen right now. Or if you are having a small gathering with friends, delivery makes your life easier exactly when you need it.

Post reply on HN