I think it’s just too hard to organize drivers and delivery. I’ve never experienced a restaurant where their own delivery drivers are as fast, efficient, smart as Uber/etc.

I’d rather just go pick it up myself than use restaurant delivery.

I’m sure there may be exceptions somewhere, but even in Manhattan the deliveries that work for the restaurant sucked.

I think it’s that there’s no simple feedback loop.

An example is my local mom and pop pizza place. They used to have a few teenagers who would wait tables and drive deliveries. They meant well and tried hard, but it would take a long time for delivery. I’m a 15 minute walk and it would take two hours for two pizzas. If something was off I could talk to the owner and that took a long time but it was never anything bad enough to fire the poor driver, nor should they be. So the poor delivery lingered on.

They switched to Uber and deliveries went to 15-45 minutes. Not perfect but much better. Also easier to enter the order on my phone than calling it in.

Any time the food is cold or off, it’s easy to rate and get fixed.

It’s like taxis vs Uber rides. Taxis did have some advantages, but it way better now. Generally Uber drivers make more than taxi drivers, but there were some owner operator taxis (super rare at least in NY where almost all cabs are owned by big firms) who are losing out.

Have you... actually ordered from a restaurant that's done self-delivery for more than 5 minutes?

I've never, not even once, seen the same driver from one of these services.

This is a huge problem, because every mapping service directs them to an automated exit-only gate that nobody anywhere has the power to open for them -- certainly not if they just sit there for 5 minutes helplessly then chuck it out the window and drive off.

On several occasions I did not even receive a call, text, or any other indication to expect to find my food a thousand yards away sitting in the rain in a parking lot.

They are delivery dilettantes, with no knowledge of their delivery area, no oversight, no guidance.

Most of them have no fixed delivery area, they just follow the next call until they end up two hours away in another county they didn't even realize existed within the borders of their fine state until that evening.

I have received orders so delayed there were legitimate food safety concerns -- upwards of 3 hours from the time of preparation.

3 of the 4 delivery services I have tried did not take responsibility for so much as a single one of these failures to deliver.

2 of them charge more than double menu price for most items on most menus because they added the full base price of an item to (the full base price of an item plus the full upgrade price of an item) in an intentional and deceptive manner.

I informed them of this repeatedly and went up a completely scripted escalation chain that very obviously started in another jurisdiction and very obviously said exactly what I was later informed after requesting a point of contact for service of process was absolutely not their policy (specifically: they have my money now so I can go and find something convenient with which to fuck myself)

I have to conclude that either you've been trying to order take out from the hardware store and been sorely disappointed that your pizza never arrived or must live in alternate reality filled with sunshine, rainbows and GrubHubs that aren't openly defrauding their delivery partners, customers, and shareholders

> Have you... actually ordered from a restaurant that's done self-delivery for more than 5 minutes?

Yes, of course. Aside from the example I gave where I used their self-delivery for 10 years before switching to this new gen.

And I suppose I’ve ordered from about 500 self-delivery restaurants, although I don’t keep a log.

It sounds like you’ve had some bad experiences and they aren’t like mine. I have had really bad experiences with doordash and grubhub where they wouldn’t fix problems, but Uber is about 75% responsive that is so much better than self-delivery.

From first principles it seems like self-delivery can’t compete unless they are really into delivery. Because they can’t scale well beyond their drivers on hand and it’s not possible for them to send out 10 orders at once, etc

I have used several delivery services, and my experience in two major metro areas has been that they are virtually indistinguishable from restaurants that have delivery people. The single biggest difference is that they tack on their own fee- a minor inconvenience since they take the orders online and so are less likely to get it wrong.

> because every mapping service directs them to an automated exit-only gate

You know that you can easily fix this, right?

This comes across to me as very self-centered. Perfect service over having the drivers earning a livable wage?

Why? Because I wanted the meal I paid for to be on time and hot? For the record, I tip extremely generously on the delivery apps as I recognise the importance the riders are doing during the pandemic.

I will never ever willingly tolerate that two hour delivery again. At any price or discount. It was a week night and we were starving by the time the food arrived and it screwed up our routine for the day.

I would pay a reasonable premium to have that meal delivered to me on time and hot.

So really, deliveroo/uber eats created entirely new business. A friend who runs a restaurant said he thought they were the devil and was never going to join them until the pandemic but he said he is now a believer. Adapt or die.

As for drivers earning a liveable wage, I am for that and maybe regulation is required, who knows but you bet your ass the more efficient business with huge economies of scale will have more power to pay their drivers properly than indie mum n dad restaurants.

> bet your ass the more efficient business with huge economies of scale will have more power to pay their drivers properly than indie mum n dad restaurants.

The only thing we've seen these "economies of scale" doing the last decade is the exact opposite, namely using all their muscles to pay workers as little as possible.

Drivers aren’t likely to sustainably earn a livable wage by delivering cold food two hours after it was expected either.

Why are you going after the one-data-point anecdote instead of the broader picture?

The broader picture is that all of the money to pay the driver comes from the customer. If the driver-restaurant system isn’t creating enough value for the customer to pay them a living wage, they won’t get it. Either they’ll get a lesser wage, go out of business, or both.

That anecdote was immediately relatable to many of us who have gotten late, soggy, cold food delivery.

No. Your premise seem to be that this anecdote is correct and that that is the inevitable result of non gig-job delivery. I'm pretty sure that there's a lot of anecdotes out there with bad Uber Eats deliveries too.

I did (and do) not argue it’s inevitable, but it is quite common in my experience.

My solution to their failure is to go pick it up myself, including purchasing some of those red insulated delivery boxes for our family use. It makes takeout much more enjoyable when the timing is predictable and the food almost as high-quality as if served on-site.

As a customer, my concern is with a goods and services I’m buying. The restaurant’s relationship with its employees, food suppliers, and power company is their concern, not mine. If a restaurant wants to pay $100/hr or any other legal wage, that’s their business, not mine.

> is their concern, not mine.

Well. This is self-centered to me. I don't want to buy anything from anyone who doesn't treat people with dignity.

It’s inarguably self-centered but entirely practical. I can’t review the employee handbook, employee promoter score, supply chain sustainability reports, and corporate social responsibility policies of everyone I order so much as an $8 pizza from.

There's nothing opaque about the labour relations of the gig-economy.