[legitster]

It was never a sustainable business model to begin with.

It takes 10 minutes for a chef to make my meal, and 25 minutes for someone to come to the restaurant, pick it up, and drive it to my house.

The only way it works is if someone else's time is an order of magnitude less valuable than yours.

[dragontamer]

> The only way it works is if someone else's time is an order of magnitude less valuable than yours.

Ish.

There's clearly a logistics problem here. 1-meal being delivered promptly on time scales poorly. But 15 meals delivered to 15 different people within 45 minutes is in fact, a net gain.

Alas, Doordash and Uber have gone about it in all the wrong ways. Its the drivers who double-book this process (ie: picking up more orders than they can handle), leading to inconsistent quality, cold food, late deliveries and more.

Its a legitimate model though. A more "proper" company that's doing this officially is Foodsby, where one Restaraunt makes a single delivery to 15-ish people in one trip at a designated time and location (usually within 5 minutes walking distance of an office complex. IE: One particular office building has a Foodsby drop-off point).

Everyone pays $2 each, the driver is happy, the restaraunt is happy (their personal staff deliver and therefore ensure quality food / hot food at the appropriate, predesignated time), and a ~5 minute walk for a bunch of office workers is a good idea anyway cause we're all sitting on our asses all day.

---------

It double-benefits because professional chefs like doing ~15 or 20 of the same order all at once, its more efficient for them... especially if they can plan such an order ahead of time (Foodsby isn't offered every day for a Restaraunt, they pick-and-choose the days that they'll offer the service).

So the chefs can cut-down on scheduling if they're burning out, or they can plan ahead and offer more days if they know some days are lulls / they have extra freetime.

Doordash / Grubhub / Uber is almost malicious for everyone involved. There's some ideas of convenience to some people, but its not good enough for the overall environment. In contrast, Foodsby (and hopefully more companies that adopt that model) has proven itself sustainable, at least in my area.

[handy2000]

You are describing a completely different service though. Prep-meal delivery also works, but it's addressing a different usage pattern.

In the same way you could propose to replace Uber with... buses? 15 people get on the same bus at a specific time and get dropped off within 5 miles, thus optimizing the process.

[dragontamer]

UberEats is a "bus" that pretends otherwise.

I've seen the Uber drivers come in. They always grab like 4 or 5 orders, and possibly drive to a 2nd or 3rd restaraunt before they start delivering.

Its not like those UberEats drivers have a big penalty if they arrive late or if the food is cold.

-----------

What I'm saying is, consolidated food delivery services is *already* what we have with DoorDash/UberEats/whatever, they just lie to you about the details.

The reason why Foodsby works (albeit on a smaller scale) is because they're honest about it. There's nothing wrong with consolidating orders to minimize driving time, the problem occurs because those other services _PRETEND_ they're a 1-to-1 order service with dedicated drivers. IE: Its the lies where things have gone wrong, not necessarily the practice.

If all the drivers are double-booking / consolidating orders anyway, then work it into the model. Embrace it, rather than pretend otherwise.

[Zircom]

>I've seen the Uber drivers come in. They always grab like 4 or 5 orders [from the same restaurant], and possibly drive to a 2nd or 3rd restaurant before they start delivering.

Having done Doordash/Ubereats in the past myself that is ABSOUTELY not the norm, god I wish it was that streamlined. Picking up a single order and delivering it straight to the customer is by far and away the most common scenario for the drivers.

They do have stacked orders which are the multiple pickups you're talking about, but I've never had more than 3 orders "stacked" together, and I would say it's more common to have stacked orders from multiple different restaurants rather than multiple orders from the same restaurant. And from the driver point of view stacks suck because almost always only one order in the stack will have a tip, the others will be no-tip orders they couldn't get someone else to deliver by themselves.

Doordash also recently changed how they pay out on these stacked orders to the drivers detriment. It used to be you'd get the base rate for each order in the stack, so 3 orders stacked together would be the base rate x 3 + whatever tips by each customer, but now they pay them out as one big order no matter how many orders are stacked together, so you get a single count of the base rate even if you're delivering two or more orders in a stack, which again are usually only a single order with a tip, so you're effectively delivering the other orders for free.

[dragontamer]

Thanks for the anecdotes. Good to hear how things work from someone who has actually experienced it.

All I've seen are the big orders that get handed to someone who immediately runs out the door and into a car that they left running (with the keys in and everything), lol. They're obviously stressed and trying to make time.

I guess the big orders / stacks are more noticeable to me and obvious what's going on. If a more "normal" driver comes in, it looks like any other internet order (like my own, except I'm picking it up personally).

[handy2000]

You are partially correct describing that some delivery drivers already batch their orders. But that's still a different use case. Foodsby can't scale to 15 min increments for all restaurants in the city. While some people can preplan and are OK ordering food from a specific restaurant that Foodsby works with, most people don't want that. How many people want to order food from an expensive Spanish (i.e. Spanish, not Mexican) restaurant I order from sometimes? So my options are going to be: #1 not ordering from this restaurant because it's not a common food preference and is expensive or #2 wait for 15 people to join the order for this restaurant and get food hours or days later.

It's a good business idea, it's just a different usage pattern. I order food when I am hungry. I don't preplan, don't like food from the majority of popular local places (pizza, Mexican, Chinese).

[dragontamer]

> Foodsby can't scale to 15 min increments for all restaurants in the city.

For some definition of increments and "all", yes they can.

Restaraunt#1 delivers at 10:15am.

Restaraunt#2 delivers at 10:30am.

Etc. etc. etc. Covering the entirety of lunch hours. This is how it works in practice, today.

If you're in a location with lots of Foodsby usage, then you might have 3 or 4 different Foodsby locations to check within a reasonable distance, which dramatically increases the restaurants and timeslots available. Like 1x Foodsby is already fine, but if you're in an area with 5x walking-distance Foodsby dropoff points like I am, things start to get really convenient, and the selection becomes dramatically wider.

It also means for the drivers, that one "trip" can hit 3, 4, 5 offices in one drive. I'm sure that on Foodsby days, these drivers are delivering multiple dozens of meals. In fact, the *MANAGER* of one local Restaurant was the driver for one of my recent orders (we recognize each other's faces because I visited his restaraunt a lot, so it surprised me to see the manager making delivery runs). So its more fulfilling work than typical grunt labor, since they're making so many deliveries on relatively low effort. If he's got ~30 orders, that's $60 ($2 per meal) in less than 30 minutes of driving/delivering, which is certainly more money flowing than most UberEats / DoorDash setups.

--------

Now yes, you may be arguing that "its not what you want". But... when that Spanish Restaraunt says "We're offering $2 delivery (no tip) 3 days from now at X-oclock"... I think you'll be thinking of using Foodsby that day.

Or maybe you check the website to see today's Restaraunts and whether or not your favorite is on the list.

-----------

In any case, _THIS_ is innovation. Actually playing with models and finding things that are better for everyone (chefs, restaraunt owners, drivers, users) as a whole. I'm sure other models can work too, for some sliding scale of individualism, bulk deliveries and whatnot.

But as far as the personalized 1-to-1 service? Its dead, its so dead I'm convinced it never even existed. UberEats _never_ promised a driver on the standby ready to personally serve you, and months/years of using the service has made it obvious to everyone.

There's only so many times that I get a meal 1.5 hours too late that causes me to give up on UberEats (and similar) services.

[somethoughts]

Interestingly in Silicon Valley, there's an angel funded startup founded by an ex-Google foodie who worked with some of the more notable Asian restaurants (the super popular ones with long lines).

She arrange it such that users from a given neighborhood could order via the website app by 4:30 from a specific set of 2-3 restaurants per day. The orders from a given neighborhood are bulk ordered for 3-4 drivers to pick up from the 2-3 restaurants and delivered to the same neighborhood between 6-7pm.

The list of 2-3 restaurants for a given neighborhood are shared a week in advance and in cooperation with the restaurants so they can handle the surge. Since the restaurants no it will likely be reheated the packaging is optimized.

Because there is a rotation of the restaurant - it paradoxically avoids the tyranny of choice issues with picking a restaurant and actually feels fresher in a discover new restaurants type of way.

During ZIRP/Covid the menu prices were sometimes lower and there was no delivery fee. Post Covid they do have a membership option or a very modest delivery fee.

[handy2000]

> In any case, _THIS_ is innovation. Actually playing with models and finding things that are better for everyone

Yup, that's a good point. The current model doesn't seem to be sustinable.

[OkayPhysicist]

Uber was experimenting with that exact process before covid. For a lower fare, you let Uber dynamically re-route your driver to pick up more people headed in roughly the same direction as you. Worked alright, maybe took 1.5x as long for you to reach your destination while you paid about half as much as you did usually.

[lozenge]

Busses work, though. If you removed busses, there is no amount of Ubers you could add to the roads to "fix" the system. It's clearly impractical for each office worker to pay for even half an hour of someone's time every day to deliver a meal just to them. While most counter services can serve 20 meals with the same half hour of wages.

Uber Eats is doing it here in London with "ghost kitchens". 15 fast casual brands cooking (mostly reheating really) from 3 kitchens in 1 building. A much better chance for delivery drivers to be able to pick up multiple orders. It still isn't enough optimising though, as the destinations are still scattered.

[Consultant32452]

I spent a number of years working at a pizza place in high school/college and on busy nights they had a dedicated "router", a human who was sometimes also a driver, who grouped orders together so they got where they needed to go in a timely fashion and the food was always warm.

When I order DoorDash my driver either only has my order or they have a secondary delivery that is insanely out of the way. This is a very inefficient use of driver time.

The pizza place is practically all delivery and it's easy to bunch up the orders heading in the same direction. Comparing that to UE/DD, a single restaurant might have 2-3 delivery orders at any given time, but what are the odds they are all headed in the same direction? I wonder if extreme density cities have less of a problem with this.

For reference, I live in a "2nd tier" city. Not NY/LA, but a city everyone has heard of.

On an unrelated note, I've always thought the big problem is their market is too narrow. These companies should deliver literally anything that can fit in a passenger car. One example I know of is that auto shops do not keep parts for every car in the shop all the time. They contract out to parts warehouses. Those warehouses have employees which deliver your new carburetor to the auto shop that's installing it. There's no reason your Uber driver can't pick up pasta and a carburetor.

[oldandboring]

> On an unrelated note, I've always thought the big problem is their market is too narrow. These companies should deliver literally anything that can fit in a passenger car. One example I know of is that auto shops do not keep parts for every car in the shop all the time. They contract out to parts warehouses. Those warehouses have employees which deliver your new carburetor to the auto shop that's installing it. There's no reason your Uber driver can't pick up pasta and a carburetor.

Looking at the Uber app, under Delivery > Services it actually looks like they do purport to offer delivery for basically anything. Groceries, Alcohol, Pharmacy, Flowers etc. I have never once tried it or met anyone who has. Maybe I'll give it a shot tho.

[johnnyanmac]

>The only way it works is if someone else's time is an order of magnitude less valuable than yours.

Targeting mainly the wealthy isn't necessarily a bad business strategy.

It should also be noted that it's also useful for bulk order to people and those unable to physically move themselves to a place (disability, lack of car, etc). It's not a "use everyday" mechanism, but it has uses.

[lokar]

But the whole structure of these companies (and valuations) is based on a much larger scale/market.

[bloodyplonker22]

Indeed, the only way it is working right now is because a significant piece of their revenue is from discounted gift cards so their revenue grows while taking a loss. In the future, they will have to replace the driver with something automated if they want to make money.

[shiroiuma]

>It takes 10 minutes for a chef to make my meal, and 25 minutes for someone to come to the restaurant, pick it up, and drive it to my house.

And in that 25 minutes, the food has gotten cold and its chemistry has changed too. You could reheat it in the microwave, but now it'll just taste like reheated leftovers.

Why do people buy this crap?

[adolph]

> The only way it works is if someone else's time is an order of magnitude less valuable than yours.

Food delivery also seems to work with vertically integrated geo-segmented services like pizza and Chinese takeout. My best guess is that the profit margin and delivery packing are high enough to make it worthwhile.

[prawn]

I wish there were Indian curry vans instead of ice cream vans, driving around the streets playing distinctive music from 5-8pm. Group buy discounts for individual streets to promote pre-purchase, etc. Do a different suburb each night of the week. Please someone make this.

[pcurve]

Most of my favorite local restaurants use other platforms now. It's been 3 years since I've last used Uber or DD. If they don't deliver, I just go pick it up myself.

[grecy]

> The only way it works is if someone else's time is an order of magnitude less valuable than yours

I mean, you've basically just described the entire service industry and virtually any job in North American where tips are expected.

There is an entire class of people ready to serve you.

[legitster]

I mean, don't get me wrong. My first job was fast food. But there's a difference between being able to serve 50 customers in an hour and 2.

[grecy]

My buddy's first job was pizza delivery driver in the late '90s.

He was lucky to get 2 deliveries per hour...