In urban areas (where most of the demand comes from), Google Maps does not provide the detail required to get this right. If you are delivering to an apartment block you often can't just park on the street outside, you'll get ticketed straight away. This can make an enormous amount of difference, I've had uber eats take 10-15 minutes to find the (quite easy) building I live in, vs seconds from local takeaways who know the area.

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).

> irrelevant in the age of GPS navigation with live traffic (ie. google maps)

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.

Or worse, they don't see the negative feedback - meaning even if they stick around long enough to handle your second order, they still won't know any better.

This is the actual problem with the app model. No one is on the line for your order being late, cold or wrong. The delivery guy doesn't care - he's the most transient and precarious labor possible and he only needs to get a certain percentage right to keep working. The restaurant, traditionally, tried very hard to keep their customers happy, and would send the (in-house) driver back with forgotten items or free stuff if something went wrong. Now they are plugged into a third-party system they don't have any confidence in or understanding of. They do their best but they can't predict demand, be sure when the driver will turn up, or be sure that complaints are legitimate. Meanwhile the app operator doesn't care that much about your order either. Getting every single order right would massively increase their costs while hardly adding much revenue through brand loyalty. Signing up new restaurants or rolling out to new cities is always going to be a more promising strategy.

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?

To make it worse, I have gate code to enter my complex - I have succinct, exact instructions including the gate code and how to navigate to my building. 90% of the time they never even read the instructions, call to ask for a gate code and then take 10 min to find my place.

I can see that happening pretty easy. Are they looking at their phone, reading instructions as they arrive? No, they're driving. They get to the gate, need a code, hit 'call'. I would do that.

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.

In places like Atlanta, gated complexes are common enough that it makes sense to read the directions, maybe while at the restaurant grabbing the food. Even better, one of the 3000 developers could make the app prominently display the gate instructions when they approach.

I ran into similar issues many times. I don't even have a gate code, but finding the building can be confusing. They do not read the instructions.