I never understood why these delivery services are popular.
Yes people are lazy. But lazy to the point of paying an additionnal fee to be waiting twice the time it gets to fetch the same food yourself and receive dishes that are cold instead of hot? What is the incentive really? If only those delivery services would use devices that keep food warm and deliver from somewhere far from home, I would maybe understand, but they aren't even available in a wider than a small radius around your house, so it is always more convenient to walk/cycle/drive to wherever you would order that food anyway.
The only ones that do it relatively well are pizza joints and they usually have their own delivery service so you don't even have to use these apps.
I live in Bratislava and order food to work everyday. Delivery times are on par or less than what would take me to fetch the food myself. All delivery services in the area use thermally insulated boxes to transport the dishes - I can't remember if I ever received a cold dish (that wasn't supposed to be served cold).
And because I'm a software developer with a flexible work schedule paid hourly, the act of going to grab the food myself and not working for 30 minutes would cost me way more than delivery costs (even cooking my own meals can be more expensive when time is factored in, compared to food price at restaurant + delivery cost (for ~2 portions prepared in 30 minutes. Proper meal-prepping would be cheaper of course, but yeah I'm too lazy to do that)).
Also the food delivery services often offer discounts and with them it's sometimes cheaper to order the food than going to the restaurant and eat there. Yesterday I ordered with a 30% discount - I got a dish which would cost 10.80€ at the restaurant for 7.50€ including delivery.
> I'm a software developer with a flexible work schedule paid hourly, the act of going to grab the food myself and not working for 30 minutes would cost me way more than delivery costs (even cooking my own meals can be more expensive when time is factored in, compared to food price at restaurant + delivery cost (for ~2 portions prepared in 30 minutes
Off topic but I quit consulting because I had this exact realization. Sure making $1000 to fix a production outage in 15 minutes on a Saturday was amazing but it made me always think about life in billable hours to the point where I was not hanging out with friends or going to the gym anymore
Maybe I'm biased because I'm from an eastern EU country where hating your job is the local culture and cost of living is lower than in the USA, or because I worked like this part-time during college experienced FOMO because of it, so I learned to prioritize social events, but I never had this issue.
In fact, I'm the exact opposite - I value this kind of job arrangement, because I can earn enough money to live comfortably (and save some money) just by working 100-120 hours monthly, which gives me much more free time than working a normal full time job + I have the flexibility to take a day off (or even a week or two of vacations) anytime I want, but I still can work some weekends if I want some extra money...
A legal job I once did paid billable hours. There was something to be said for being paid for travel in off-hours, etc. But it does create this always on-the-clock mindset. On the one hand, you're basically never working for "free." On the other, as you say, you're always cognizant of the fact that you could be being paid if you work another hour.
Ironically delivery apps to be designed for walkable (ie non US) cities. At least where I lived in the US, driving was always very congested and adds extra time for parking and such, always at least 30 min with huge variance based on traffic. Plus you have to pay for the energy to transport a 1.5 tonnes vehicle for.. usually a single meal.
In Europe it’s an electric kickbike or scooter at most, and they can pick up the food without parking. Still, not perfect, but a lot more efficient and the margins can be lower. They don’t have to hit you with those deceptive fees and tip shaming - often it’s the same consumer price.
To me, in the US it would make much more sense to chain deliveries similar to Amazon packages. A set daily menu, heaters in the truck, and multiple stops with TSM style route. Maybe that’s too much communism but it would at least make sense logistically.
A lot of offices around me have food delivery services operating in the lobby of the building. This food delivery service will often only serve a few restaurants every day with the restaurants rotating daily. Everyone is supposed to get their orders in by some cutoff in the morning, the food delivery operator makes one big pickup for all the orders for the building, and it all gets delivered at the lobby. You get a text when the delivery arrives. Delivery is really cheap since its essentially a cost shared with potentially several people.
The one operating in my building these days is Lunchdrop, but I've also seen Foodsby offered at other buildings. On the days I go into the office I look at the menu for the week and pick what meals I might want or I'll just plan on bringing in food. I get the email with the menu for the week either Saturday night or Sunday and can then order days ahead of time.
> And because I'm a software developer with a flexible work schedule paid hourly, the act of going to grab the food myself and not working for 30 minutes would cost me way more than delivery costs
That doesn't make sense. Quite the opposite being flexible + paid hourly means that you are free to take a decent break.
Not taking proper time for a pause in the middle of a shift is both incredibly unhealthy and extremly unefficient as we can't be at 100% for long hours at a time.
Having said that anyone can prepare a decent meal in just a few minutes, there are literally tons of recipes where you just have to crudely cut stuff and throw them in a baking dish and in the oven or cook in a wok. + when you are working at home you can always eat some dinner leftovers + a bit of pan.
Your prices seems fine but I guess that is only because your delivery services are still in the pre-enshittification phase where they are competing for monopoly and actually losing money.
Are you talking from experience with DoorDash or Deliveroo? This has not been my experience with Deliveroo in London, UK. There’s just no way I could get the same food quicker, everyone is on motor/pedal bikes so delivery is usually about 20-30 minutes. Food is always hot on arrival bar the odd item (Nandos chips specifically, always cold).
Also I’m ordering Deliveroo specifically so I can get the time back, that’s the price you’re really paying - I had a long day at work and I want the time to relax and not spend it sourcing and making dinner.
Not my experience in London. In any zone that is not Zone 1-2, or other Deliveroo hot spots, my experience has always been not great with times that do reach also the 45 minutes to 1h for food delivery. We still do it occasionally _because we are lazy_.
However, we did draw some lines as some foods are not enjoyable in case one of those long wait times happens (e.g. pizza, burger, cooked meat dishes, etc).
Zone 2-3 here; Deliveroo is the only service that failed to even turn up, delivered to the wrong address then tried to blame me for "putting a pin in the wrong place" which I did not. Worse service ever.
I am in Spain and the only restaurants that these services propose are in a 5km radius so it is often easier/faster to walk, cycle or take the motorbike to said place. The apps hide all stuff on other sides of the city so I wouldn't be able to order from 50km away anyway.
In the US and none of the food delivery services deliver from some place as far away as 50km. I don’t know why you think that would be necessary in the US. That being said I have never received a food delivery that was cold or that wasn’t delivered in a timely manner.
I was poking fun at the fact that distances in the US tend to be bigger than e.g. in Europe, I figured that the delivery apps don't allow for that much of a range. Since I've read the complaint about cold food frequently, but like you have never received cold food, I figured it must be some US specific thing (but I guess not).
If the restaurant is 30 miles away it's also going to be cold if you pick it up yourself and drive all the way home. And you'll be driving roughly twice as far, assuming a delivery drivers was positioned close to the restaurant.
If you're going to be using an air fryer why bother with delivery then? Just put frozen food in there at that point for 10% of the cost of delivery+tip and you're eating sooner to boot.
French fries often don't travel well from the kitchen to the table. The hamburger/fries/related seems to be a pretty bad target for food delivery. Pizzas can at least be put in a warm oven which I do even if I'm just picking something up myself.
What's more, these services only go to make the customer experience of people who have actually turned up at the restaurant worse because the same staff are now having to cater for twice the amount of orders while they manage a long line of motorcycle drivers crowding around the entrance. Personally to me it's wild, spending restaurant money to eat at home.
Someone nailed it in the thread above related to the -time/+money, but after a couple of years working on it, I realized that the people that use those services are not the public that would go to a restaurant for a gastronomic experience, and that's ok.
At least for me, the biggest 3rd or maybe 4th order effect of the food delivery industry and their dark/gray kitchens is that the concept of having a nice cooked meal locally is almost over, with some exceptions.
Due to the over-optimization of the kitchens and the offset in terms of revenue that restaurants can have (i.e., orders without increasing the real estate), we have a bunch of pre-set mounted meals in almost all restaurants, and the probability of eating something tasty and unique is very low due to that.
The irony is that, at least in my experience, the best non-chain and/or fine restaurants that I found were the ones in some shopping centers in the Nordics for a simple accidental association: none of those has any possibility to have food delivery due to hard physical constraints, and my assumption is that, since they do not have this possibility, they have to deliver the best meal possible to have people return and build a positive reputation.
I am the type who would both go to a restaurant for a gastronomic experience and order from Deliveroo.
When I want "an experience" I travel to a high-end restaurant. A local restaurant does not deliver that experience, whether I order home or go eat there. When I feel like that quality food, I order it because I don't want to spend my time for that quality food.
> I travel to a high-end restaurant. A local restaurant does not deliver that experience
That is very generic.
There are people who travel to restaurants that are a walking distance from my place because they are known from afar to be very good. And they are not necessarily "high end" in the sense that they don't serve plates dressed according to a chief desire nor do they have sommelier, they just happen to make very good dishes anyway.
Not all good restaurants are the ones where you are greeted by some people in a tuxedo. And the good ones aren't necessarily far away from you.
It is however true where I live, and in all of the locations I've lived throughout my life.
And I did not say there aren't good ones closer, but that they don't offer enough of an experience for me to value wasting time traveling there, and eating somewhere where I don't have the comfort of being in my own home.
Some time I just go to the restaurant next door BECAUSE it is more comfortable than being in my own home: I don't have to set the table or clean it afterwards, wash anything or make sure they are correctly put in the dishwasher, or manage the trash etc and I can meet people there I wouldn't necessarily want in my own home, at least at that exact moment.
For me it's exactly the opposite, and there lies probably the reason why you don't understand why anyone would do this. I'm much more comfortable at home, and I don't want to run into people most of the time, or have a bunch of stranger around me when I'm relaxing. And I don't want to feel I have to eat by a dining table - I might eat while working, or while watching TV.
When I go out to eat, the experience needs to have sufficient redeeming qualities to overcome what to me is the substantial detriment of not being at home.
Your lack of empathy is obvious when you say the benefit of these services is that "people are lazy". Many many people simply don't have extra time, and taking one thing off of their plate makes life easier. For many decades, pizza was one of the only meals you could get delivered, these services just expand that to more restaurants.
I have other things to do, and don't drive. That's the incentive.
Cold food has never been a problem for me with these services.
I'd pick Deliveroo over a restaurants own delivery service any day because it means not having to keep track of numbers, having tracking, and trusting their customer service. In fact, to the point that while Deliveroo allows restaurants to do their own delivery, because you lose the tracking I tend to avoid ordering from restaurants that do.
When I don't want to make my own pizza dough and order it, I just call from the google maps link. It doesn't take longer than finding any delivery app in my smarthone.
And I will just wait 10 minutes, hop on my bicycle and 2 minutes later I get my pizza right out of the oven and head home directly much faster than any delivery rider would because they mutualize orders and let the first pizzas lose most of their heat while waiting to have sufficient orders.
None of the places I would like food from are within a 2 minute, or 10 minute bike ride. Maybe a 30 minute one. And uphill most of the way back.
Google Maps seems to me like an awful hassle vs. searching for the dish I want and picking a restaurant based on what they serve rather than where they are based.
Also, Deliveroo rarely combines orders, but if you have a problem with that (can happen for very popular locations) you can pay for priority, so that part isn't an issue with them in my experience.
People are odd in terms of what they will tolerate. I prefer having a 15 mins stroll to pick up my coffee or food, for others it’s deal breaking.
The time argument is also weird. I find that I have a maximum of 6 hours highly productive work in me a day, perhaps an additional few hours of less productive work. A stroll or cooking recharges my mind. I envy all the people here who are working a productive 12 hour day.
It really depends on where you live. I'm in a suburb and my "15 minute stroll" consists of one mexican joint. Nothing is "walkable" from my place. A real shame because I have a plaza only a mile away... up the steepest hill possible. I get lazy.
in an urban area it makes less sense. Friend's house is across the street from a plaza consisting of a grocery store, corner store, starbucks, froyo joint, and a few other eateries.
People who say they are productve 8 to 12 hours a day with barely pause are just liars (or slaves that get whiped at the second they stop).
Heck, when I became parent and decided for a couple of years to work at 80% I realized I was doing the same amount of work as before and as much or more than any other colleague working at 100%. I only came back at 100% because I realized businesses are willing to subsidize procrastination over efficiency and I didn't find normal to be paid less if all I was asked in return was spending 1/5 of my work time time doing nothing productive for the company.
I think that's a French thing yeah. Here in Spain if people make dinner it's really a special occasion and you'd tell them they are coming for 'dinner'. Usually you do something really simple like finger food, get takeout or just grab some beers and snacks at the cafe downstairs.
The idea is to spend the most time with your friends, not in the kitchen. But I know in France food is a bigger thing.
The thing is also that here dinner is usually an afternoon thing.
My experience in south of Spain is that nobody invite people at home but the migrants. Spanish just like to meet outside.
But maybe that is a particularity of my area where houses / appartments are small, food is relatively inexpensive outside and weather is almost always good enough to go out.
Also preparing dinner doesn't mean you can't spend time with friends. As a French if I am invited to dinner and someone is cooking, I usually offer my help in the preparation. It is a nice occupation alongside a beer or a glass of wine and a great way to share an activity while having a chat with your host. Actually there are some other cultures where preparing the food is an integral part of the whole "spending time together thing". For example in latin america women would chat for hours preparing stuff in the kitchen while men would typically doing the same around the BBQ.
Same here in Catalonia, inviting people to your house is not really done. We just meet outside.
And the menu deals during lunchtime are amazing. 12 euro for 3 courses. Add some drinks and you have passed hours for cheap.
And yeah I have seen that latin thing, my ex was a latina and I saw them often socialising while making food. But in that culture preparing food seems to be very much a "women-only" thing where the men hang on the couch with a beer :P Whereas our roles here in europe are much less traditional. So it's not quite as mixed for them in terms of the pre-dinner socialisation. I tried to go into the kitchen to help/chat at one point but I didn't think I was very welcome there.
However I only know that one latino family well. Perhaps they are an outlier.
> The only time its okay to order food its when people came for something else in the first place
When I invite friends over it is always for something else other than food, by which I mean it's for hanging out together. Food just needs to be there because if we're going to be hanging out for 4-8 hours we'll need to eat.
Meh. I'm from balkans and there are 100 things that you'd say are "our culture" that neither I nor my friends care about. If I couldn't invite friends to play board games without they expecting me to cook, I'd find better friends.
I'd say that if I invite friends to do "anything", it is because I am prepared to feed them if needed. I don't have to cook per se, I can just heat premade (by me or bought) stuff. I also expect them to bring something to drink if they like beers or wine. It is not like one necessarily need to spend hours in the kitchen.
Grabbing a bag crisps and a pizza ready to go to the oven beats having to fire up an app and decide/argue for minutes wether we want sushi, poké, noodles, pastas or a pizza.
> I'd say that if I invite friends to do "anything", it is because I am prepared to feed them if needed
Agreed! Though I think ordering is also perfectly fine, as are the other options you mentioned.
But what prompted me to respond in the first place was:
> but here in France if you invite some friends over, you are expected to cook. The only time its okay to order food its when people came for something else in the first place (moving, doing some handywork...)
I think the poster narrowed that to the typical invitation to meet and have lunch.
I wouldn't "invite" people to help me move or do some handywork, it would rather be called "asking for help". And I know there are other kinds of invitations: playing board games, video games or music, making arts, group sex or whatever other activities one can think of that can be done in groups and yes in that case you might not expect the host to cook necessarily. My experience is that in France people would generally bring something anyway or at the very least ask what they should bring, even if it is just a bag of crisps and a few beers when meeting someone at their place.
Among my crowd in the US, the host may order some pizza but it's generally pot luck to some degree. Personally, I'll at least cook a main dish (and would be happy to do more) but people will bring stuff anyway and then we'll have too much food :-)
> What if they don't have transportation, what if they are too sick?
Some customers of these would fit this, but I suspect the vast majority of the valuation is from delivering food to people who could pick it up themselves if they had to.
That's just bullshit. You don't know how far away the restaurants are and how many people don't own cars or if they do, the traffic back and forth and wait time would be more than a guy on a motorbike.
People want to insert morality and virtue in every stupid thing. Cold showers, delivery or not, wake up times. Get a grip and sort your own shit while other people decide to use and pay for other services that you might not.
It's fine to criticize cost or experience but to pretend you're superior for your choices... Ridiculous.
It's one thing to pay the reasonable costs (including a living wage) for things you want, it's another to demand a massive company enslave those with little other choice to provide you what you want at a low price.
>> Some customers of these would fit this, but I suspect the vast majority of the valuation is from delivering food to people who could pick it up themselves if they had to.
> That's just bullshit. You don't know how far away the restaurants are and how many people don't own cars or if they do, the traffic back and forth and wait time would be more than a guy on a motorbike.
But they had to before deliveries were so widespread and common. Sure pizzas have been delivering for decades but I think a fraction of the population was simply better prepared and would always have something ready to heat / easy cook whenever they wanted.
I think the offering somewhat induced the lazyness.
Pizza delivery has been ubiquitous in small town America for decades, and pizza has nothing uniquely suitable to delivery except perhaps standardized packaging. And takeout from all types of restaurants has been even more ubiquitous.
So I'm not sure why you're so confused by the popularity of a service where someone else picks up your takeout order and brings it to you. Other than valid concerns about the labor practices of these delivery companies, and of course the occasional botched delivery (this also happened every so often with traditional pizza delivery in my small town growing up in the 90s), there's nothing to be confused about. It's just paying a bit extra for convenience, a tale as old as time.
Laziness and here they are not that much more expensive. A few euros at most. Regular discounts make it close enough. So not having to walk to my car and drive somewhere and back is reasonable effort save.
And vast majority of time food is entirely fine and warm enough.
That's actually what turned me off from Doordash as the pandemic ended. they added a bunch of extra fees to the point where some $15 order doubles in price after all is said and done. "service fee", deliery fee, and then tip. Not to mention the fast food itself is just more expensive.
They are and I include myself in this category every now and then. But even when I had to go into an office every day, I had quite a few things I could toss into the oven or skillet and have ready in a few minutes.
Have some friends over and want to get a couple pizzas that everyone is happy with? Sure I get that rather than someone having to go out and pick them up. But, as a routine thing, I've never gotten the attraction of delivery.
Same here. I prepare 2-3 meals for myself every day. Breakfast this morning was scrambled eggs. It took maybe 15 minutes, and for part of that time I was also checking emails and getting dressed for the day. For lunch I'll throw together a salad in a few minutes. Meal prep just isn't the hardship people seem to think it is, and by doing my own, I spend about a tenth as much on food as my co-workers who get everything delivered.
That doesn't mean I begrudge them their use of these services. If that's what they want to spend their income on, that's their business. I just think it's foolish and based on misconceptions.
> Meal prep just isn't the hardship people seem to think it is
For you, and your circumstances. For other people, it’s exactly as hard as they think it is.
I can’t use a knife, or look down to prepare food without risking the inability to use large parts of my body for the rest of the day and potentially the next.
Though my answer to this is shakes, not food service to be fair.
Buying a dozen eggs and maybe some cheese and associated veggies is still a lot cheaper than getting meal delivers. Also sautéed shrimp. Pasta with even store bought sauce. I sometimes don’t feel like cooking either but it honestly doesn’t need to take a lot of effort or money.
Yes, but it feels a lot worse. What's competing when I'm at the grocery is different from when I'm ordering delivery. I've cut down my Doordash substantially but I still have my down days a few times in a month where I'm either really lazy or really crunched for time at work.
I do in fact have pasta but I wouldn't call it much of a meal by itself. I usually cook it with some ground beef or turkey and try to keep some leftovers, but that leaves the realm of "quick 10 minute meals".
I'll keep the shrimp in mind when going for groceries next time as well. I'm all ears for some quick and tasty sources of protein.
Frozen shrimp was good when I had a priority on quick dinners; usually some shrimp scampi variant. Have a turkey farm in town so a frozen turkey pie isn't a bad option. You do have the option of refrigerated ravioli or tortellini with some store-bought pasta sauce which comes closer to being a whole meal. After all, not every meal needs to be a complete/balanced one. I've also found other frozen stuff like soup dumplings that are really quick/easy to prep.
I think you're arguing against yourself in the last paragraph. Decades of ordering pizza proves the market for food delivery. And the app makes it even easier than calling and talking to a person for both sides.
I haven't used DD or ordered pizza since 2022 at the latest, but I usually got enough food that it didn't get cold. Since it was so expensive I'd load up on appetizers and extras so I could get at least 2 meals out of it.
I don't get it today because I heard how expensive it got, and my apartment complex is huge and I don't trust them to find my unit.
For whatever reason, pizza and Chinese delivery seems to work--at least in reasonably dense areas. I haven't really used since college, long time ago. Don't really have reasonable options these days. I probably would now and then if they were available but I fall back on some things that I just keep in the house and basically take no time/effort.
Just to add to this conversation, because I haven't seen it discussed yet -
One of the groups of people using these apps are the disabled. Those aren't people who can just hop in a car. And they aren't always able to walk. But they absolutely are people who feel run ragged and too tired to cook some nights.
Australia's NDIS even partners with some of them to perform that service.
>One of the groups of people using these apps are the disabled
No they aren't, certainly not on a large scale.
I know and have known a LOT of disabled people (as well as "disabled" people) in my life.
I think there is very little overlap between
a) the population of disabled people and
b) the population of people who have enough money they can afford the cost of restaurant food + delivery fees + tip on more than a very occasional basis.
It's exactly the opposite from what I've seen. I've seen the disabled people in my life get grocery delivery (with informal arrangements before apps existed). I've seen them get bulk frozen food delivery. I've literally never seen someone who is homebound order delivery food. They can't afford it.
How do you afford food delivery on disability? Does a family member pay for it for you?
Maybe Australia is different but here in the US people on disability only have a few hundred bucks to spend on food a month aT MOST. A single delivery meal is a quarter of that.
I wasn't saying anything about you, I was talking about people I know. Disabled people, as a group, simply don't usually have nearly enough money for food delivery.
NDIS is a government organisation. That means they're the one paying, when they're the ones running the program...? The income of the individual doesn't matter - their disabled status does.
> The only ones that do it relatively well are pizza joints and they usually have their own delivery service so you don't even have to use these apps.
At least in my area, the pizza joints also use DoorDash now. They're not just available on DoorDash. It is delivered by DoorDash also when ordering directly from the pizza joint.
You can prepare food at home if you're not too comfortable in the kitchen. You can learn to enjoy it too after some first failed attempts, everybody fails at the beginning of this journey...
I could understand getting delivery as the emergency resort but doing that on a regular basis does not make sense to me. I think of preparing food as a form of self care.
I know there are always edge cases, but, just spit-balling here, maybe the other parent? When I was a kid, my dad got the pizza while mom stayed home. It's a tradition I brought to the next generation as well, and, by god, I hope my kids continue it as well.
Also, consider if you can order from a restaurant with in house delivery instead of using Door Dash.
I am not arguing about the principle of getting food delivered but on the actual result. The experience is just crap between delays, errors, state of the food at delivery. It is like when you compare the picture of a burger in an ad and look at it on your tray when you actually get it at McDonalds or Burger King.
But I guess a fraction of the population just want food to stay alive (at least the next day) and don't really care about the experience and enjoyment of actually eating it. Same reason some people buy and eat junk food on a regular basis.
It is crazy because some societies manage to make fast food quick and easy to get while still being an enjoyable experience. Like going down the street to eat Tacos or Esquites in Mexico. The food itself may not be the healthiest one but at least it is always warm and ready when you want it and tasty and there is always a place to go close to wherever you happen to be. So you just happily fetch it in the street, have a laugh with the owners or other customers and then resume your business without having to order stuff on a smartphone and wait forever to get something crappy.
Not going to presume your lifestyle, but many regular users of food delivery are paying a steep premium to eat junk for the convenience of not having to drive 10 minutes
I substantially reduced my doordash, but I still have off days where I either just drove back home tired or otherwise just feel too down to order out and am low on groceries. It's a nice "once a week" kind of luxury thesse days
No wait, simply order early or hold off eating for 30 mins, while you for sure have other things to entertain yourself with. Or not, because you're busy doing work or whatever, and the exact time of the meal isn't the biggest concern. Neither is if food is hot. You eat 3 meals every day for an entire life time, not all of them needs to be amazing.
Those services have their use, and I'm glad that they exist, but it feels like people are just abusing them for convenience. It's unfathomable to me that there are people (I personally know of a few) who use a food delivery service on a daily basis for no good reason other than "i'm just lazy". The amount of money being wasted really makes my head spin.
> What is the incentive really?
> I would maybe understand, but they aren't even available in a wider than a small radius around your house, so it is always more convenient to walk/cycle/drive to wherever you would order that food anyway.
I know that you mentioned the incentive from the customer perspective, but since I've worked in 2 of the top 5 world food delivery companies, I can have some insights about it beyond people's laziness.
1) Availability of different cuisines regardless of distance: If you're talking about a bikeable, small-sized European capital or city with a limited number of restaurants, yes—you can place your order in person without any issue. But if you're in a mid-sized city with a high variety of restaurants, like Berlin, that’s not feasible. Most of the time, people don't use the app to order from the local pizza place; they use it to get a nice Indian, Japanese, Nepalese, or Thai dish from a restaurant 6 to 10 km away, especially on a rainy Friday.
2) It’s hard for restaurants to coordinate table bookings with walk-ins: Many restaurants join the platform because, while they can manage bookings and some fixed demand, they also risk losing walk-in customers (dynamic demand) when there's no space available. What restaurants do now is manage both bookings and walk-ins without worrying about losing revenue—because delivery can make up for no-shows or frustrated walk-ins.
3) Food delivery removes waiting logistics: If you walk, cycle, or drive, you incur the full logistics cost plus the opportunity cost (e.g., if you're organizing an event and need to set aside an hour for food). With delivery platforms, you can "actively wait"—you place the order through the app and do other things while waiting. You’re paying for both the logistics and the saved opportunity cost.
4) Restaurants can optimize menus and kitchen efficiency instead of real estate: This relates to point 2. In my experience, restaurants are becoming more like a front-end experience for dine-in customers, but many are transforming into what could be called "kitchens as a service." Customers order remotely, and a highly optimized kitchen, in terms of logistics and execution, prepares a specific dish. One thing I've noticed—and personally feel conflicted about—is that restaurants are betting on hyper-optimization by selling more of what I call "pre-mounted standardized dishes." In other words, instead of restaurants thinking about increasing their space to accommodate potential walk-ins, they will move towards maximizing kitchen efficiency.
Example:
In Brazilian food restaurants, they have preset portions of rice, beans, French fries, and salad, and just reheat pre-cooked steak. For Thai food, they keep cold dressings in containers, and all noodles are pre-cooked and stored in warmers, and so on.
> 1) Availability of different cuisines regardless of distance:
That is my main problem, it doesn't work that well in my place. Food delivery apps here only propose me stuff that is in a 3 km radius or so and not the 6 to 10km ones away. So in the end if I want something different than what is in a walking/cycling distance in my neighborhood I need to move myself.
Delivery times don't matter as much - you can always order 15-30 mins earlier, you could also microwave the food a few seconds if it is cold.
That said, I am not a fan of ordering often - food quality is generally bad in my area, those extra fees are just nuts and the drivers get screwed the most, followed by restaurants.
Food that comes to your door when you have already starved to death or binge eaten bags of crisps or bread while waiting for it, is visually unappealling thanks to have been stored in carboard boxes and been transported carelessly, is missing the actual sauce you specifically asked for and more often than not barely warm anymore.
That is the problem. After some failed attempts, I just make sure I always have stuff to pick and eat at home and if I am not feeling it, I just walk to a food place next door as it won't be worse than what is deliverable AND will be ready when I am actually hungry.
I mean in bigger cities lots of people don't have cars, they might also be in the middle of something and so having someone else get the food makes sense. And a lot of people have "too much money", leading to them being like "yeah I'll pay like 40 bucks for somebody to bring these burgers to me so I can just keep on playing something with a friend".
And you know... if food is cold, you probably have a microwave?
Whether this is a good use of money is debatable but I think it's pretty easy to imagine scenarios in which this would be used.
Order $40 of mediocre food and pop it in the microwave when it gets to you, cold. No surprise this is the community that brought us Soylent.
Do these people even like food? Fine if not, but in that case stock up on broccoli, rice and chicken and eat it every day; you'll save money and be healthier.
Basically they _consume_ food like they _consume_ shows on Netflix.
They want tons of choice, they want something constantly new, but they never actually enjoy what they consume.
Ask them what they ate last week and they can't tell you.
Ask them what they thought about what they just ate, same result.
It would be fine if it wasn't for the tons of trash that creates and the cooks/delivery people that are exploited by this system.
I'm not sure the comparison with Netflix is fair as the latter does have some good shows. But, in the case of food delivery, yes, some subset of people are neither choosy nor especially price-sensitive and they're an ideal target audience.
They do use devices to keep the food warm such as the pizza like boxes. Also, my family members who DoorDash wait by popular destinations to pickup orders quicker and they deliver them within 20 minutes.
In the US, I think you underestimate the power of lazy.
But seriously, people without transportation (or whose family has a single vehicle and it’s at work with someone), people with disabilities …
In any case, it’s seriously overpriced. Uber Eats offered me “$30 off” and the final bill would still have been twice the restaurant prices - and Uber likely has a markup on that as well.
There are an almost unlimited number of services out there that many people want but aren't willing to pay the true cost of providing. Food delivery (in whatever form) is one such in many cases.
It's fairly impressive how it isn't profitable to essentially act as a middleman between two resource centers that you do not need to directly pay for. I guess the unfortunate fact is that food service was always a low margin business and the compensation needed to survive in America never made food servicing itself viable. At least, not for the last 40 years or so.
It does make me curious what the costs are on the app side, though. We keep saying tech is scalable but many such apps have this same story. Is there a cost center I'm missing for such an app that makes it so hard to profit off of, or is it just reckless abandon of spending?
You introduce a middleman, and it eats into the already thin margin. And it's not just one middleman. It's two: the app and the delivery guy.
The average profit margin for a restaurant is 3-5%. Then you add the app that needs money. Then you add the delivery which needs money. The only way to keep the original restaurant price is to heavily subsidize the app and the delivery.
The "tech" is scalable but that 1.) Assumes scale and 2.) Is often being provided by developers and others that are being paid far in excess of what anyone else in the food service industry is making.
It seems like the neighborhood Facebook feeds are full of people complaining about incorrect orders, missing food, stolen food, food that got delivered to the wrong house, as well as drivers complaining about not getting tips, customers incorrectly reporting food as stolen or missing...
Let me explain - it is not a replacement for daily meals - of course we do cook both from scratch and frozen stuff for dailies. I would go broke pretty quickly if we ordered delivery every night.
It is a replacement for eating out. If you have little kids and take them out for dining (let's say as a treat), first you need to agree on where to go, then a bunch of complaints about the lack of X / Y at the menu, then them getting bored etc. Delivery means you can do this all at your home's comfort - if somebody wants to make a scene - sure go ahead!
Otherwise I would also prefer to eat in the restaurant, cheaper and easier as well.
First you have to have frozen chicken nuggets on hand at home. That means that you've already been to the grocery store, picked some up, and brought them home somehow to be stored.
Now you've also got a working and clean air fryer, sink, utensils, and other kitchen accoutrements that can be used on the nuggets. You may also find it necessary to have, on-hand, some condiments or side dishes to make a complete meal of the nuggets you're trying to make.
Then you put them onto a plate -- hope you got a plate -- and eat them with clean utensils, and then you clean that stuff up, wipe the counter, wash and put away dishes. Then you make a note on your shopping list or inventory, to replenish what you just ate.
It's not a simple proposition, all of these steps, especially when someone is a bachelor, mentally ill, isolated, etc. You feel it's easier for you, that is great, you've got some life skills, but other people struggle mightily with just the cleanup bits, for example.
Are you not using a plate or utensils with delivery? Maybe not a plate but surely utensils. Do you never use additional sauces or spices with delivery?
Delvier food often comes in layers of bags, tons of extra stuff, there is often sauce overflow and so on. Tons of trash you have to deal with and so on.
> especially when someone is a bachelor,
I'm a bachelor and I can easily make food as good at home. Cooking for 1 person is easy.
And I'm not just heating up forzen chicken nuggets. I know in the US most people go shopping every 2 weeks, driving to some big box store getting tons of stuff.
I just walk to a store, or pick some stuff up on my way home. Fresh meat and fresh vegis always.
> mentally ill
Doing something yourself is better for your mental health then getting delivery.
Is this a point being made via absurdity or is this your sincere position? Buying a five pound bag of frozen nuggets and a bottle of ketchup isn’t climbing everest. Maintaining a shopping list takes no effort at all. Being depressed doesn’t get better by eating out of a carry out box.
Your whole comment is just infantilization, plain and simple.
This is what always gets me about it. I get being to lazy to cook and to drunk or busy to drive or whatever. But there are actually tons of pretty good frozen prepared meals these days. If you're lazy and this happens to you all the time, throw a bunch of those in the freezer. Cleaning a baking sheet isn't actually more cleanup work than dealing with take out trash. You'll probably get the food just as fast as the delivery service as well.
There's definitely something to be said for having some things in the freezer you can throw in the oven now and then. I cook regularly but I have those.
My mother cooked but, when I was growing up, tossing a Swanson TV dinner or some Stouffer's frozen thing in the oven if my parents were going out was pretty routine. I'm sure I'd turn up my nose today but I probably regarded it as a bit of a treat at the time.
My kitchen has never been as prepared since I had kids. I used to have a very limited stock of food but it changed when I had kids. So quite the opposite in my experience.
They want you scared alone and staring at a screen. These services allow people to withdraw from the social interaction of ordering food in person- they feed off of and encourage social anxiety.
I think the DoorDash culture is promoted because it means you can now work an hour more of (often unpaid) overtime, without worrying for your dinner. Or that you won't resist the extra time commuting to a far office location, so that your employer can save on their office space rent. Or won't complain for being forced to live out of the city because funds have bought up all the housing for "investment" and you can no longer afford a place in it.
Honestly when I lived in Ireland I sometimes preferred an app because there were times I couldn’t tell what people were saying (loud background noises, accents, etc)
You need to check your privilege. This is also a very ableist take.
Some people don't want a car. Some can't afford a car. Some can't drive. Some simply don't want to pay to maintain, insure, fuel and park it. Some simply don't want to take the time to leave the house, get their car, drive to some place, pick up their food and then drive home
There is absolutely both a need and a desire for delivery. Yes, you can get a bad delivery experience. I've had more than one pizza delivered where the boxes were clearly on their side, possibly because they fell off the car seat. Some drivers had hot bags. Most did not. The dedicated drivers for Dominos do, which is why that works.
Where delivery works particularly well (IME) is NYC and there they most often are on bikes, sometimes scooters. It tends to be an incredibly efficient operation.
I personally believe that money spent on delivery food is a waste of money, unless it's an emergency or it's sushi: any type of food (excluding sushi) will arrive soggy (especially pizza or burgers) and/or cold and it will definitely be more expensive than necessary.
Yes people are lazy. But lazy to the point of paying an additionnal fee to be waiting twice the time it gets to fetch the same food yourself and receive dishes that are cold instead of hot? What is the incentive really? If only those delivery services would use devices that keep food warm and deliver from somewhere far from home, I would maybe understand, but they aren't even available in a wider than a small radius around your house, so it is always more convenient to walk/cycle/drive to wherever you would order that food anyway.
The only ones that do it relatively well are pizza joints and they usually have their own delivery service so you don't even have to use these apps.