[gamblor956]

Pizza parlors and Chinese restaurants have successfully been delivering food for decades with their own delivery staff.

It's only the Silicon Valley delivery services that are unable to profit from delivery, because they insist on paying executives and engineers 6+ figures when all of the value is in the delivery drivers, not the wasteful overhead.

[i_am_proteus]

This. I have a family member who runs a restaurant and employs his own delivery drivers, and has been profitable for decades. He lists food on GruHub as well, but charges all of the markup through to the customer. He includes a flyer with the delivery that says in large text "We have our own drivers! Call us with your order and save 20% compared to GrubHub!"

[syshum]

>>Call us with your order and save 20% compared to GrubHub!

He should probably invest in his own online ordering system, they are not complex is should not cost that much.

personally I hate calling in orders, this holds true even if I am just picking it up, I prefer to use an Online order system.

[ghaff]

I'm not sure what the big deal is in calling if I'm just calling in to order a pizza or a sub.

That aside, at least part of the value of the aggregators is a lot of people apparently want to just go to one place and order from a variety of restaurants. Personally, I don't really get it--I just have menus from the very limited number of decent takeout options around where I live--but setting up your own site doesn't help with that.

[bsder]

> I'm not sure what the big deal is in calling if I'm just calling in to order a pizza or a sub.

Because the dude answering the phone has a non-zero probability of being completely stoned off his ass. This is not theoretical. I am sad that we didn't record the worst one we ever had--it would have made for the absolute best YouTube video even though everyone would have been saying "That's so fake."

Phone orders are very error prone. Online orders help both sides of the equation. The customer knows exactly what they are getting and can verify it; the restaurant can say "We're happy to comp you for X because we're nice people, BUT this is the receipt THAT YOU ACKNOWLEDGED saying what you actually ordered."

[Leherenn]

A lot of people simply dislike calling, no matter the reason.

[syshum]

>>I'm not sure what the big deal is in calling

Because I have no desire to talk to anyone on the phone for any reason. if I could get a personal data device with out phone calling capabilities I would choose that. The POTS phone system needs to be relegated to the dust bin of history

The flip side of that as well, is often you can successfully up sell more items via an online system than you can with a phone order system. The number of times I have "add on" to my order due to the online system having options I did not even know was available is a lot higher than the normal "would you like to add" speech that the phone person gives you which is neither compelling and almost an automatic no as most people do not even pay attention to the offer

>if I'm just calling in to order a pizza or a sub.

The number of times Humans have got my order wrong when talking them over the phone is High... the number of times the computer has gotten my order wrong with submitting it electronic is almost zero

>I just have menus from the very limited number of decent takeout options around where I live--but setting up your own site doesn't help with that.

I would love to see your data on where you believe having having your own website with electronic menus do not help

Hell even outside of COVID, if a place does not have their menu online I will not even go to it physically, I like to look at the menu's and prices before even stepping foot in the place. Gives me a good idea on if I will like it or not.

It should be standard for a place to have an electronic menu with online take out ordering, anything less is subpar IMO

[umeshunni]

> Pizza parlors and Chinese restaurants have successfully been delivering food for decades with their own delivery staff.

And if you want any other kind of food (or food from any higher end restaurant) delivered, you're SOL.

[gamblor956]

In LA at least, I can get Indian, Mexican, and Thai food delivered as well. And salads, if I really want to waste my money. In call cases, deliveries are by the restaurants own delivery staff.

And higher-end restaurants generally don't deliver at all, on any delivery service* because the quality of the food can be diminished during transit. Some have made exceptions during the COVID19 lockdowns, and some have simply closed down for the duration.

[Mikeb85]

Or you can, you know, get it yourself. Also, most high-end restaurants didn't do takeout nor delivery before the pandemic.

[flukus]

Not all food fits into the delivery model, burgers will get soggy, toasted sandwiches will get will get cold, salad will be cooked by the warm ingredients, ice cream will melt. For the most part if a food is good delivered then there were already restaurants offering delivery of it.

[SilasX]

I'm not sure that works as an explanation, because Pizza Hut executives are pretty well compensated too, and their app also shows all the signs of being overengineered (or rather, over rockstar ninja'd).

I think it's more of an issue of the (ready-to-eat) food production and delivery being too highly coupled for a third party to bolt on a profitable service, as in my other comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23093747

[take_a_breath]

Restaurants are outsourcing the delivery to these companies. Many of the restaurants near me never offered delivery until Grubhub, Uber Eats, etc. allowed them to at little cost. The reason they didn't offer delivery before these options is exactly because of the economics of doing so.

It may turn out that the economics of the technology-middle-man aren't sustainable either. In which case they will have to decide between managing deliveries in-house or stopping deliveries.