It works great "inhouse". They tend to know all their regular customers and area and know exactly how to get there, where to park, which bell to press etc. They will also know if there is bad traffic or an accident closing a major road and adjust wait times and order frequency accordingly.
The person that runs the delivery joint can also wait until he knows his/her driver will be making his way back, and only start cooking then, so the next order doesn't get cold waiting for a pickup.
It all goes to shit when you put a tech platform which has absolutely no real interaction with the kitchen and outsource the riders entirely, with virtually no quality control and no local knowledge. Plus they also want to take 30-50% commission for the privilege.
Ubers margins are comically bad. Uber Eats did $13bn of revenue and they made $30m of EBITDA - 0.2%. The credit card networks are probably making 10x the money that Uber on each order. And that EBITDA will be with them pulling out all the stops now they have realised they need to get profitable fast.
>They will also know if there is bad traffic or an accident closing a major road and adjust wait times and order frequency accordingly.
irrelevant in the age of GPS navigation with live traffic (ie. google maps)
>where to park, which bell to press etc.
while I don't doubt delivery drivers accrue such knowledge over time, I doubt that the turnover is low enough for this to actually make a difference. It's certainly not enough to make such a service unviable.
>The person that runs the delivery joint can also wait until he knows his/her driver will be making his way back, and only start cooking then, so the next order doesn't get cold waiting for a pickup.
This doesn't seem very hard to do. Restaurants can let the delivery platform know how long each dish to prepare, and the delivery platform can tell them ahead of time when to prepare the food (after factoring in driver availability and distance).
This is one of the reasons uber eats often delivers horrendously cold food (with no refund option these days). If you got cold food from a local joint with inhouse delivery they'd usually refund or redeliver for free, because they know it was their fault. They can't offer that through these platforms as it is rarely their fault and even if it was they don't get an option to interface with the customer like that.
On the final point - firstly, it's not as simple as that as not 100% of orders are coming through uber eats, so they don't really know exactly how busy the kitchen is. Secondly, uber was so desperate to grow market share they would push kitchens to take orders regardless of capacity to serve them. The only option AFIAK was to shut off Uber orders entirely, there was no "take 4 orders per 30 minutes max" option (maybe they have added that now).
The confused phone calls I get from delivery drivers just about every time I order begs to differ.
And that's assuming they bother to call rather than just leaving my order with the basement apartment or one of my neighbors or in the same address only on Northeast [name] street 8 blocks away rather than Northwest [name] street.
These drivers churn so much they never learn their way out of routine dumb mistakes like that.
Meanwhile, you are hungry and tired and you just spent $50 on $30 worth of takeout. You really really want someone to care about your dinner as much as you do. But next week when you're hungry and tired again, won't you roll the dice again and hope they get it right this time?
If I lived in a Chinese Puzzle Box I would have to get used to people wanting help to open it. Because they don't actually give a damn about the puzzle box. They just want to drive straight there.
That's not true where I live (obviously, YMMV). Granted, I live in a very urban area (NYC) and most deliveries are done on bicycle, as the distances are shorter and it's much faster for the delivery folks.
Most restaurants near me have had delivery services for decades. Depending on the restaurant, they might have dedicated delivery folks, but others would just send a busboy as needed.
In fact, the big problem used to be all the restaurants leaving their delivery menus in building lobbies or even slipping them under the doors of non-customers.
Now the problem is that many of these restaurants are going out of business because the fees on the "delivery" apps eat up their entire gross profit margins.
Absolutely. Which is why I qualified my statement with "YMMV."
That said, I think one aspect is broadly applicable: Most low to mid-price restaurants (not chain restaurants) operate on pretty thin margins. And the 12-30% (just for "listing" on their website) can often eat all the profits from the business.
And that doesn't include the "service" fees and delivery charges either. Making the whole enterprise a bad deal for everyone except the UberEats/DoorDash/GrubHub/etc.
Edit: Fixed typo.
Does that make it a bad deal for the consumer? Maybe, but lots of people seem to be willing to pay the premium for the experience and convenience of ordering through the app.
Locally I've seen plenty of restaurants have different prices on UberEats than online.
I'm talking about service fees to the customer, not the restaurant. The restaurant is already paying 12-30% on every single order. That includes phone orders via the fake websites these services set up with a VOIP number (not the restaurants' own numbers) that forwards to the restaurant.
As for upping the menu prices, IIUC, these services (GrubHub definitely, the others I'm sure do the same) require restaurants to charge the same prices as their eat-in menu.
You're welcome to disagree as to whether or not it's a good or bad deal for anyone, but I've seen (and had it confirmed by several former restaurant owners) restaurants go out of business because they, can't make a profit via the delivery services. Even ones that had been doing just fine for decades.
>Locally I've seen plenty of restaurants have different prices on UberEats than online.
Fair enough. I wouldn't use UberAnything even if it was free, so I wouldn't know. But I am certain about GrubHub/Seamless.
I expect you're still "unconvinced." Which is no skin off my nose. I'm loathe to tell anyone what to think, do or say, as it's neither my business nor my concern.
It's cheaper and more convenient to pick the food up myself.
but
> Plus they also want to take 30-50% commission for the privilege.
If food delivery works great in house then why do restaurants pay Uber so much? I'd wager employing drivers is impractical for a lot of restaurants.
Uber, Doordash, etc get away with charging such premiums not because delivery is so costly but because they've made themselves into a new phone book. Hungry customers open the app to look for a restaurant, and the restaurant wants to be listed there.
However that's not really a win for the restaurant. It might not increase their business, just stop them from losing it. If the app didn't exist at all, those customers would find them another, less convenient way. But because the app exists, the customers stopped using those ways.
Doordash would offer a restaurant before partnering with them by calling in the orders so they could have sales numbers to pitch to the restaurant owner when they want to take the 30%.
All this seems to mean in practice is I get a crappy Uber Eats delivery but have to order it through the McDonalds app, which is somehow even worse than Uber Eats.
I've just looked at the McDonalds app, and it says my local McDonalds is 24/7 and lets me order to collect from there. I know for a fact that it's shut right now, and the official store locator also says it's shut.
I stick to Deliveroo and Just Eat where possible because their apps and service tend to be pretty decent.
But pizza and chinese delivery was a thing in the US long before delivery apps were a thing. Clearly it was practical at some small scale in the US. I don't see any reason why it can't be expanded to other restaurants (eg. by sharing delivery drivers so a restaurant doesn't have to have an entire FTE on payroll).
it scaled pretty well, I would just take 3-4 orders per-ride depending on distance ended up with a decent chunk of change just from the weekends, and there was a decent amount of downtime and socializing waiting for pizzas to be cooked
with the gig stuff drivers are shuttleing between multiple resturants non-stop in ill-defined areas to random customers and probably walking away with less cash it's a stupid system
What on earth are you talking about. Pizza and Chinese restaurants have been profitably delivering food for decades.
The UberEats model in particular may be unprofitable, but there are absolutely profitable models that have existed for far longer than I’ve been alive.
Uber gets away with charging one side of the market 30% of food prices and charging the other side of the market a delivery fee, a service fee and a tip. This typically comes out to 50% of food costs if you use an average tip.
Automation could be disruptive here…someday in the form of food delivery land and/or air drones. It really is the same with ride share: it just isn’t economical considering how much human labor is worth, self driving vehicles are more than likely required to make it economical enough to be ubiquitous.