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DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

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Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#81

Post by _DeadFred_ »

lathiat wrote: post #17
mcmcmc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do issue insulated bags, they just don’t fit pizza boxes

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.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#82

Post by iamthirsty »

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.

> It's idiotic. Just phone it in directly and go pick it up.

I don't have a car at the moment — am I just never supposed to eat outside of home-made food anymore? I've done that math many times, Ubering both ways to a restaurant is even dramatically more expensive than a delivery service.

If you don't live in an extremely walk-able place, sometimes it's the only option.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#83

Post by fortran77 »

r2_pilot wrote: post #54
fortran77 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to compare student loans--debts taken on willingly by the smartest and most privileged members of society--to childcare costs.

Not everyone who takes on this debt is "the smartest and most privileged members of society", and childcare costs are outrageous (according to several families I know; I haven't felt financially secure enough to have my own progeny and at this stage in life it seems unlikely I'll have the opportunity).

That's why I said "it's hard to compare them". One of them is a true problem, and the other is a debt that fully informed, smart people elected to take on and plan for.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#84

Post by Suppafly »

bluedino wrote: post #26
ceejayoz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber made a profit for the first time ever this year after torching billions to accrue market share for fifteen years. https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/8/24065999/uber-earnings-pro... Having to do it via huge price hikes and screwing drivers makes me dubious about their ability to do so more than a few times.

> Having to do it via huge price hikes and screwing drivers makes me dubious about their ability to do so more than a few times. So here's my dumb question: What's with all the people that talk or even brag about how much money they make doing ridesharing, food delivery, etc? Are they just lying? Are they misinformed, bad at math, etc? Do 10% of the drivers actually make money, while the rest break even or lose money…

Most of them are bad at math because they ignore a lot of variables like wear and tear on their vehicles and the fact that their car insurance doesn't cover them using their private vehicle for commercial purposes. It's one of those things that profitable in the short-term but only if you ignore long term costs. Granted some people might have somewhat legitimate reasons for ignoring those costs or may have made some cost benefit analysis in which it makes sense for them, but overall it tends to be a net negative if you actually include all of the costs.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#85

Post by r2_pilot »

fortran77 wrote: post #83
r2_pilot wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone who takes on this debt is "the smartest and most privileged members of society", and childcare costs are outrageous (according to several families I know; I haven't felt financially secure enough to have my own progeny and at this stage in life it seems unlikely I'll have the opportunity).

That's why I said "it's hard to compare them". One of them is a true problem, and the other is a debt that fully informed, smart people elected to take on and plan for.

Nobody is fully informed about anything, whether parenting or deciding to assume debt for potential education. Not everyone who goes to college is smart in all aspects(including finances), and not everyone graduates college. These are both true problems whether you choose to acknowledge this or not.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#86

Post by digging »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #77
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…

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. People are not forced to use DoorDash, UberEats, etc. We never do and are surviving just fine.

> 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 many people were ordering DoorDash before DoorDash existed? I'm not being entirely facetious - it's impossible for customers to behave in a way that's not allowed by the market.

That you are resistant to these tides is not evidence against, it's just accounted for. You're not the target audience. Nor am I. But neither of us has ever made a decision in a vacuum; we choose our purchases from what's available, according to the information we're exposed to.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#87

Post by digging »

nicbou wrote: post #65
bko wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They aren't building libraries with it, but sustaining an underpaid workforce. Someone loses a million, a million gets a few cents.

No, this misses that much of the money is just circulating around the capital holders.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#89

Post by erehweb »

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.

For some people, the tradeoff of cost:time is worth it.

Re: DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)

#90

Post by dralley »

jjmarr wrote: post #76
nicbou wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't building libraries with it, but sustaining an underpaid workforce. Someone loses a million, a million gets a few cents.

So, direct wealth transfer is happening from the rich to the poor. The only flaw with this is that people have to work economically inefficient jobs delivering food, instead of the wealth transfer occurring through taxes on the rich and funding something like basic sciences.

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 an investment standpoint but at least have a chance of providing benefit to society.

It's a serious flaw and not one that can be waved off as easily as you do.

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