I feel like I'm living in a different world than this thread. DoorDash is practically giving away money with their service it's unreal.

DashPass is $10/mo which which turns every delivery into ~$1+tip. The idea that I can buy 30min-1hour of a real human's time and labor for $3-4 to deliver me food is silly.

My usual Indian take-out order is $16 if I spend 40 minutes for the round trip or $18 to get someone to deliver it to me.

It definitely depends heavily on the market you're living in - some are very heavily subsidized, others are not. As a counterpoint, I recently had a $30 off promotion for uber eats. Ordered a couple of hamburgers, and the food tab came to $29 - which was zeroed out after the promotion.

Delivery fee + service fee + tip meant I still ended up paying $18 for the service. I can't imagine I'd ever be a buyer at the full price.

Last time I used it there were two fees (I don't remember exactly what they were called but it was like a service charge and a delivery fee) and dashpass only covers one.

Also in my experience (in Chicago) the food in the app costed $1-2 more per item (this wasn't listed anywhere, but if you compare the cost with what the resturant charged it was a lot more).

Also there was at least one resturant that I visited that would give you less if you ordered through a delivery app to make up for the fact that they had to pay a fee. This is shady and shitty on the resturant's part and not really DD's fault (although frankly it's kind of predictable) but it was still a thing that happened when I used the app.

I haven't used it for about a year though (because of the above shady practices) so they might have changed.

I had this same experience. Decided to try doordash because I had a $5 coupon in the mail + free delivery on the first order. I was suspicious of pricing so decided to check what the total would be for same order through restaurants site. All of the item prices were inflated on doordash. The $5 coupon + free delivery brought the total down to about the same price if I ordered directly from the restaurant.

I don't like that they inflate prices and will not order directly from them because of it. They should be transparent about how much their service costs rather than hiding the true cost of their service in the item prices. I feel like it's likely their fault and not the restaurants since it seems like every restaurant has inflated doordash prices. My only theory is that they may be charging the business service fees in addition to the service/delivery fees they charge the customer.

They do white label delivery for a fast food restaurant I order from. I've had it take 2 hours to deliver multiple times and even had one order get cancelled by doordash after they couldn't get anyone to pick up the order. Most of that delivery time is made up of it switching between multiple people who they expect to pick up my order. Once someone actually picks up my order it only takes about 5 minutes to get to me.

That's assuming that a real human's time is devoted to you for that period. DoorDash seems to have drivers execute multiple orders concurrently. If someone else in your area ordered from the Indian place around the same time (or another restaurant nearby), the same driver will likely pick up both orders and deliver one and then the other. You're definitely not buying a dedicated slice of that human's time for $3-4.

I'll bite. I tried to order a Taco Bell bean burrito. Small item, so you can throw stones about that, but here's the price:

  - $2.03 for the burrito (vs 1.29 in store)
  - $2.99 for fees and taxes
  - $3.99 for the delivery fee
  - $2 for the dash tip??? Is 20% customary? It's the lowest dash suggests.
  - $11.01 for your burrito

So, for your $1.29 burrito, the price of the item is jacked up by nearly 60% to start. And slam fees, taxes, tips, and you're talking about a total that's 800% higher than the actual item.

It's ludicrous. They're catching you at every point to extract cash. Yes, a human delivered something to you, but for the cash conscious, this is an absurdly expensive tilt.

Well, you said we could throw stones, so... this is a very unrealistic order. The parent comment is talking about a specific (long term) promotion that makes the decision very reasonable, but a realistic fee might be:

- $15+2 for say, pad thai + taxes - $4 for delivery - $3 for tip

I'm not saying that paying 40% extra for food is a reasonable decision for most people, but (a) I can afford to pay $7 to avoid traveling across town for a specific meal I want, and (b) these numbers get even better with a larger order. If you're the consumer that wants a single $2 bean burrito, the market answer is clearly that you should put a dozen in your freezer and microwave them yourself.

I also think the Doordash business model is not super valuable, but it clearly has some value. Restaurants make an increasing portion of their revenue from delivery (especially during COVID), and having to staff, manage, and route a delivery person themselves is not their core competency. Does signing up with Doordash marginally increase revenue? Yes.

The fees/tip are much easier to justify if you order more than $2 in food.

Delivery drivers do multiple restaurants at once and some use multiple delivery apps, so it's somewhat more efficient than taking the roundtrip yourself.