When you build infrastructure that requires you take cars everywhere you minimize people going to get things for themselves
Delivery is good option for people with limited mobility
I’ve never ordered food to my door. Not even pizza. The rare times I order takeout pizza I pick it up myself. Unless you’re a senior citizen it just seems so wasteful and lazy and comically expensive to have food delivered to you. I mean I get that we’re absolutely going to destroy this planet, but holy shit are we speedrunning it.
I assume that most deliveries in NYC are by push bike couriers and vesper type scooters. Thats more typical than yank tanks for this sort of thing in most densely populated cities I’ve seen.
It’s mostly scooters and e-bikes.
this is some quality ragebait right here
I find it funny that the tip is already there before you get your food. I mean, did the driver make the burrito? He might be late and you get cold food, he might be a dick.
Mandatory tips in general is a silly concept for me. The driver should be earning a fair salary without it and the price of the food/delivery should account for the staff costs. And any tips should be a voluntary extra. I feel the same about adding taxes on top of the sticker price the way they do in the US. That was an unexpected culture shock for me when I went there a few years ago.
“should” is really pulling all of the weight here.
Especially given the high probability that the app doesn’t even pass on that full amount to the driver.
None of us need to purchase this goofy ass delivery powered by virtual slave labor. Spend no money, cause no harm. Let those capitalists seethe we no longer need to endlessly consume to be happy.
Said this few days ago and people had a melt down…
God forbid normie has to fix his idiotic consumption habits.
They don’t even have to change their habits.
You can get delivery from many local takeaways without needing to send half (or more) of your dinner money to a silicon valley billionaire.
I remember seeing a video about a similar service in the Netherlands for delivered groceries.
They deliver by bike, are faster by bike.
…and still are a bit of a controversial issue.
I worked as an engineer at a food delivery company and I almost never used my own companies app, these companies charge both the customer and the restaurant and the restaurants raise the prices of their menu on the app to compensate for it, plus the delivery takes a long ass time and the food arrives cold. And the business is still mostly unprofitable and these companies stay afloat from investments while they suffer losses.
The expectation comes from SoftBank investing billions into Uber to kickstart the ride share industry.
We looked at GrubHub and said no when the delivery fee and tip would’ve been more than our meal cost.
The delivery services are a boon and a bane for everyone. For the restaurant, you no longer need to pay wages or insurance for dedicated delivery workers, but now have service fees that cut into profits. The customer has to cover many of these costs in all these extras fees and service charges, but get did delivered to them. And the driver has to pay for gas and insurance out of the pitiful payments and tips they get. If you are in a rural area, forget about getting enough local orders to cover anything.
And the rich take a huge profit just to run an app.
Are any of them actually profitable or are they still in the “drive established competitors out of business with unsustainably low prices” phase?
At this point it is hard to tell because most of the large US tech companies have decayed into this being the only way they can pursue the growth in profits Venture Capital, Private Equity and the US finance system in general demand existentially.
I think there are plenty of ways to make a profit here and these US tech companies will likely kill as many as possible to defend an inefficient, dead end business strategy.
Fuck Uber especially, those genocide supporting scumbags.
Will never use anything from them
Why does OP think every delivery is made by car? Often times they are made by bike.
I’ll add in addition to the “not where I live” replies, I live in pretty textbook white suburban america and I believe I have never seen anything delivered to me or a neighbor or relative by a two-wheeled vehicle of any kind, even motorized. Every single time it is a private 4-seat passenger vehicle or larger.
It is different in other areas of course, like when visiting cities and other countries.
But damn are such vast swaths of suburban and rural america designed so specifically around cars. It would take forever to change even with a progressive culture & government. With the culture and government we have now, I will be stunned if I am not driving my own vehicle for the rest of my life, and I will not be surprised at all if it’s mostly ICE vehicles. I drive a well maintained 13 year old Mazda3 that gets 40mpg, so it’s not ideal versus more efficient and environmentally friendly types of transport, but at least it’s a more efficient use of the existing infrastructure than most americans.
In high density urban settings this is absolutely true. 99% of my orders are delivered by bicycle.
The large majority of them are made by cars.
Especially in NYC. Bike delivery has been a thing there long before uberdashhub. Hell, it was a fucking plot point in Spiderman 2 back in 2004:
I think it was TMNT 2 that had a delivery guy on a moped back in like 92.
I see you’ve never been to the Midwest. Or the south. Or anywhere that isn’t Boston/new York/San Francisco.
I mean the post clearly says $30 in fees in New York city
Not where I live.
I can’t be arsed to wait for food delivery. I’ll pick it up if I don’t have the supplies and time to cook it. I was thinking I want a CWS for om Taco bell, but I still have planned-overs in my fridge. Also, the upcharge on food delivery apps are insane. I’ll bake a frozen pizza instead for 5 dolla.
This cuts both ways actually. you can have 10 guys going through a drive thru or one 1 making 10 stops. The one guy making ten stops results in less traffic and fewer emissions.
Does that happen in a meaningful amount? Drivers getting multiple orders for the same place with close by destinations? I think it’s vastly more common that you just have 10 drivers at different locations on behalf of 10 customers.
At best it’s 2-3…
That comment is a cope
