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Re:Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery S... by nradov on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @11:57PM (#39913471)
That factor is driving the virtual restaurant (ghost kitchen) trend. There are commercial kitchens set up purely to service delivery orders. They use a single facility but have multiple different restaurant brands with different menus (burgers, Mexican, Italian, vegan, etc). These ghost kitchens have no dining rooms and you probably can't even directly order food outside of a delivery service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_restaurant

Re:Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery S... by lynx23 on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @01:37AM (#39913958)
These are the worst quality-wise. Yes, you can write a review if something went really bad. But not having customers right there who can complain and might even get an extra or a replacement gives less incentive to keep quality up. "Specialising" in everything, pizza-burger-kebab-china, is also likely a warning sign.
Re:Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery S... by johnny22 on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @02:19AM (#39914193)
> But not having customers right there who can complain and might even get an extra or a replacement gives less incentive to keep quality up.

This is a super good point. I didn't think about that.

Re:Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery S... by lynx23 on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @02:58AM (#39914394)
IMO thats the most important point of delivered food. Just compare the process and you will instantly see the difference. In a restaurant, the waiter will openly serve you your food. You get instant feedback. And see right away if something is off. In the delivery case, you get a closed package at your door, say "Thanks" to the deliverer and close the door again. Only when the guy (who isn't responsible for the quality anyway) has left you open your package and are confronted with whatever you got. Maybe something spilled, maybe something misses, maybe something was wrong. And maybe its already cold... Whenever you use a delivery system, you take all these risks, and apart from a grumpy review, you can't do much about these... Personally, I think this is where the margin hides. Delivered food can generally have lower quality without customer complaints reaching the vendor.
Re:Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery S... by johnny22 on Wednesday April 03, 2024 @06:34PM (#39924163)
I was thinking about it context of complaing to folks running the ghost kitchen vs say at a pizza hut location. I have gotten free food when they screwed up my order at pizza places, and they did care about resolving my problems.