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

81–90 of 350 posts

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

#81

Post by faizshah »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #68
faizshah wrote: post #38

Meanwhile I have seen a lot of local restaurants advertising how ordering through their own delivery/pickup service can be 30% less than Uber Eats or DoorDash on their takeout boxes (and consequently in your uber/doordash order). It’s interesting that some of the POS companies are getting into the market: https://www.toasttab.com/local There’s huge room for disruption in this model when a $12 chipotle order costs the…

When I worked at a restaurant that did Ubereats/door dash/GrubHub, we had a 15% upcharge on order through those platforms. We would tell repeat customers they could use our website/app/phone to order directly and save the 15%. Almost no one converted. Convenience really is king.

So what this POS company is doing that’s kind of interesting is they have a mobile app just like Uber Eats/Doordash but it seems to be direct through the restaurant: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/local-by-toast/id1362180579

Actually when I ordered through it I paid $45 instead of $60 via DoorDash/Uber Eats but the order was delivered by Uber.

The reason why I think this version will work is because it’s the same level of convenience in a centralized mobile app so single payment method, single portal to browse restaurants etc.

(I have no association with this company I just was looking into this last week on the train)

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

#82

Post by racedude »

afavour wrote: post #52
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

This.

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

#83

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#85

Post by TylerE »

sroussey wrote: post #48
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the story of most mature industries. Food delivery also remains cutthroat enough that this is a strange place to launch this complaint from.

It is also weird that there isn't a company with 2/3 of the market. Eventually it will happen i guess.

Sysco is probably pretty close if you ignore the extremes of the market.

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

#86

Post by Herring »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #57
nomadygnt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 behavi…

> Not innovating, maintaining high prices, and price-gouging are unstable activities for a monopoly

Depends how good their moat is. Or how deep their pockets are, because they can often bribe to keep their competitors out (Intel vs AMD). Or just buy their competitor outright.

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

#87

Post by robocat »

Reason077 wrote: post #18
ro_bit wrote: post #3

The title scared me a bit before I opened the article and realized it was talking about restaurant->consumer food delivery services. While that isn't great, I was initially thinking was that the companies that facilitate the food delivery supply chains around the world were massively consolidated (I sure hope they aren't)

The food service industry certainly has some major global players too. Names like Bidfood, Sysco, PFG, etc. In some cases, these same companies cater/supply everything from prison, school, and hospital kitchens through to fancy airline lounges and high-end restaurants!

> Bidfood

Wow - I didn't realise bidfood.co.nz was a US chain bidfood.com (Bidcorp).

Food markets keep closing down.

The consolidation of restaurant suppliers really affects the quality of taste a restaurant can get. My ex was a cook and the worse restaurants wouldn't even make their own sauces like Hollandaise - she would tell me what brand it was (often a restaurant supplier brand). It is noticeable when the chef has hand-selected their supplies e.g. tomatoes that have flavour.

The root cause is that consumers tend to optimise for cost.

Quality is harder to give a number to.

We're not completely screwed yet - with time/effort (and moderate means) you can find some amazing places at normal prices.

And there are people willing-enough to spend time/effort plus wealthy-enough but that market is much smaller (more exclusive). And unfortunately there are a lot of expensive places that don't optimise for food quality (because people desire other things for their money e.g. obsequiousness, rent-a-vibe cuisine, gastroflex, mealfluencing, yadayada). Aside: Roget's gets spanked by AI when looking for modern words.

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

#88

Post by astrange »

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?

Five companies in an industry isn't a monopoly. That's very competitive actually.

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

#89

Post by thaumasiotes »

This post doesn't appear to present any evidence that five companies control any significant share of the food delivery market. It looks at transaction volume of major deliverers, comparing them to each other.

But it's not at all clear that major deliverers are even a majority of the delivery market. There are no pizza chains on the list. There are certainly no individual restaurants on the list.

> Why is my $8 burger $23 after fees - An average reddit user

Delivery in China (through Alipay, which may or may not be backed by Meituan) is generally cheaper after fees than it would be if you just went and bought the food in person. This might explain why Meituan has so much more transaction value than Doordash and Uber Eats. But it's not something I'd imagine drives a lot of user complaints.

Post reply on HN