I've honestly never quite realized up until now how utterly ridiculous it is that people (especially in the US) regularly demand that their food be chauffeured to them.
Just fyi, like 99% of food delivery via gig workers in nyc is done via e-bike
Even if done in a car in areas where a e-bike isn't really feasible, they usually take several orders at at time. I think 1 car picking up and delivering 3 orders is probably slightly more efficient than each person driving to the restaurant.
It should be way more efficient considering they could do a pickup from a restaurant near their last delivery. Play the traveling salesman game decently and you'll easily beat individuals driving themselves many times over. The driver might also do a pickup job from a restaurant they like and decide to get their own food at the same time.
they usually take several orders at at time
I'd like to see some stats on this. When I see uber eats workers pick up at McDonald’s the orders seem to be singular.
But my anecdotal experience is not usable data.
slightly more efficient that each person driving to the restaurant
Of course. But the correct solution here doesn't require any individuals driving.
More people need to learn about and think about externalized costs.
"This plastic cup is free! ... if I ignore the fact that it's going into a landfill or worse"
"This delivery is free! ... if I ignore the fact that the delivery guy is getting fucked by capital"
More governments need to tax externalized costs.
You're last point doesn't hold if you tip generously, which i bet most people in this forum do. I've heard that delivery people in the right neighborhood can make bank. In which case they're still "getting fucked by capital" but no more than any of the rest of us
other countries deliver most things using motorbikes, it always sounded ridiculous to me to use a car to deliver food
OOP has no idea what they're talking about, in NYC too all food deliveries come by bike, and in the large majority of cases it's an ebike
Most food deliveries in NYC happen on two wheels.
To be fair, most drivers have multiple ongoing deliveries (and space for them). So it's not quite one car per burrito
its also expensive, if you calculate the maintenance /insurance and gas into your vehicles. thats why there isnt more deliveries services for instore shopping outside of a few.
I've lived several places. In some, I could walk to get food, and I gladly did so. In others, I could not.
Should I have starved?
If your argument is "you should have driven," then you are depending on cars. Whether it's the buyer or an employee doing the driving has little effect on how much a car is being used. The environment doesn't care who's burning the gas.
That almost makes it a steal, $20 for delivery or $20k + fees (tag, insurance, license, etc) + the cost of the food.
I do get your point though, the shit we have in the US terrible, the are only really walkable places are only in a few overly-expensive areas.
Delivery is good option for people with limited mobility
been disabled since 2017. pays half my salary. gave up driving last year. not good at those prices. wife grows vegetables in summer.
agreed. Just because something is unsustainable if everyone were to have limited mobility doesn't mean it's unsustainable.
What's more ridiculous? 10 people each driving to the fast food joint individually or one delivery driver making a round trip to 10 people?
We pay other people to do the things we can't or don't want to do all the time, this isn't different.
Why are u driving? Walk or bike
Or just make and eat your own food
The argument isn't about walking, biking or driving, it's about delivery. A lot of take out is also delivered by bike.
Highly depends on local infrastructure. Unfortunately the most common city planning philosophy in the US (from what I have seen) is pedestrian hostile. And really it's not great for driving either. It just sucks to go anywhere.
I don't get delivery, but it's 15 minutes drive from my house to the nearest area with restaurants / stores. There are no bike lanes, shoulders, or sidewalks between here and there.
practical if you live in a major city but if you live in a commuter city, the burbs, or BFE walking or biking reallying isn't an option.
I used to live in a small to medium sized city that was literally cut in half by the high way and it was 100% impossible to get from one part of the city to the other if you weren't in a car or taking the bus.
Not everyone can walk or bike to the store.
Why does OP think every delivery is made by car? Often times they are made by bike.
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.
In high density urban settings this is absolutely true. 99% of my orders are delivered by bicycle.
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.
I see you've never been to the Midwest. Or the south. Or anywhere that isn't Boston/new York/San Francisco.
I see you think only america exists
I mean the post clearly says $30 in fees in New York city
It was always obvious that the shared delivery model would result in massive delivery fees. Store employees doing deliveries were always at least partially subsidized by sales. Going third party means another company needs to suck more profit out of each delivery.
Do delivery drivers in NYC really use cars? 🤨
No, or at least not the majority of the time. Big city deliveries are mostly bike, NYC or not
no, most are probably motorbikes, or bicycles. in the west they have the same too. Only instore shopping is all cars.
I don't disagree that it's stupid but my problem is the stacking - Delivery fee and Service fee? The service is delivery! Why are they two fees? Either the cost of the delivery is being itemized in real time ($1.99 for gas, the rest for the human) or the delivery isn't $1.99! If the cost to deliver an item is $20 and I make $50/hr working a project, maybe having food delivered makes sense.
But also, I know the delivery guy isn't making all that and he's delivering five orders so don't charge me a service fee when I'm already subsidizing you paying him a shit wage.
Everything is shitty either way.
It's so they can give "free delivery" and still charge a butt load of fees.
The service is delivery!
I read this and thought, "no, the service is that they were able to put pants on and leave their house today, unlike you."
Please dont take that as a personal attack, I'm just sharing intrusive thoughts when they make me giggle
I use them fairly often because I'm just too fucking busy during the week. I have to get up at 5am to get ready for work, am too busy to take a real lunch break, and get home around 8-9 most nights. And that's on nights I don't have meetings (I work in municipal government, and public meetings like Council, P&Z, BOA, etc all meet at nights). We could hire more people, but that would require more income, and that requires council members to vote on raising their own property taxes, not to mention state law regarding tax increases.
Yeah, I could meal prep on the weekend, but that's essentially allowing work to intrude on my weekends, and fuck that.
I'm essentially buying more time to relax in the very little relaxation time I have available.
How else can they get people to sign up for a $15/month subscription that gives "free delivery " while charging a fuckton for a delivery service?
Delivery fee and Service fee? The service is delivery!
No, the service fee is either charged by the payment provider (or at least to offset the fee the payment provider charges). Has nothing to do with delivery (you also have to pay it when you pre-pay for takeout online)
Isn’t most delivery in NYC done by bicycle?
Hiring a whole middleman to chauffer your burrito (if you would be able to do it yourself) is unsustainable even if they walked.
Having one person deliver multiple meals to different people in a single trip sounds more sustainable than each individual person making the round trip...
If you "think" enough about it everything but living in cave fucking a rock is unsustainable and a result of you being too dumb to do everything yourself.
Bet you lazy bastards don't even sew your own leathers. You'd rather "trade your surplus income for goods and services."
Goddamn millennials.
How so? Do ingredients for home cooking just apperate? Should everyone live on a farm with public transit nearby?
bringing people food is ableist
I don't get it either. That shit is so much more expensive. Not only are they charging you delivery fees and "convenience" fees, the base prices of what you're ordering at are also inflated through apps like Doordash and Uber Eats. Something that is only $5 if you went and got it yourself is now $8, plus a delivery fee, plus other fees. And then there is also a chance that the person delivering it is a piece of shit who just steals your food.
And even if your food does show up ... it's cold. Do people just not know that food tastes worse the longer it's been out of the oven?
Agreed 100%. It takes longer, costs more, and it's worse. My credit card gives me a premium membership and monthly vouchers and I still don't order that shit because it still costs more and stuff from the freezer tastes better.
Wife and I can also make better food, which may contribute to my distaste for delivery apps.
Sometimes you need the convenience.
If I have to work late and don't have time to cook, and my kids need to be in bed in an hour and a half, then I'm going to pay a little extra, and that's fine.
Not everyone has a wide open schedule every night.
Price is inflated because the platform is charging those fees to the restaurant, so the restaurant just pass these fees off to the customer by setting their prices higher for the apps.
It's kind of wild how the standard fare of pizza and chinese food delivery was absorbed by gig work. They used to be employees of the restaurant.
Technology should have made restaurant deliverer's lives easier and increased their efficiency. They should have made more money and worked less.
Instead we got gig workers who are basically impoverished wage slaves. They get no rights and no benefits. What is worse is whatever temporary profits they made have been sucked up by corporations by now.
This is a great case study for how to not use technology and how Tech Bros are not disrupters, they are destructors who profiteer, choke out, and then destroy markets.
that's what capitalism does to technology.
it isn't there to improve lives, it's there to funnel as much capital to shareholders as possible
Not sure about other places but here when you order pizza, it is MUCH cheaper to call the restaurant directly and have them deliver it. It's usually faster too.
Same, local Chinese places near me still deliver as far as I know.
One chinese restaurant out here still does it I since they had a fleet of cars. But the local pizza joints and all the chains just contract through a delivery service app. It isn't usually doordash or ubereats, but the driver almost always is anyway.
So these days even the delivery apps are middlemen between the restaurant and the drivers. (They provide the menus and the transaction service and coordinate with all available driver delivery apps.)
Obviously we can't pretend that VC funded services like Uber are sustainable nor are the environmental and economic costs. But this aren't new concepts. Pizza delivery has been a thing my entire life (I'm in my 40s) and services for the elderly, disabled, and needy like Meals on Wheels have also existed for a long time.
We should be having a lot of discussions about support for services like meals on wheels, or on sustainable means of making small courier businesses viable (via bikes or scooters maybe). Instead we constantly get sidelined into this "only the Treatler Youth use Uber Eats to feed your hamburger addictions, why can't you just cook healthfully for yourself for every meal?!" version of discourse that doesn't help anyone and doesn't advance the needle on any actual solutions.
Pizza delivery sure, but meals on wheels it's for the disabled and elderly. It's not just food delivery, it's a social call, a check in on those who might not have anyone else to check on them. Meals on Wheels also doesn't deliver one meal. It delivers many in one vehicle.
I'm sure there are things to criticize about the program but most of that is probably a lack of funding not delivering meals and food to those who need it.
Sure, that's kind of my point though. I was discussing with a friend recently what role restaurants would have in the glorious anarchic communist utopia. We hit on the notion that what we call "hot bars" would probably become much more common.
It doesn't make sense for everyone to cook for themselves or be deeply concerned with the logistics of food. It would be efficient for larger kitchens to make regular group meals and you go pick one up when you're ready to eat. Something like Meals on Wheels would still exist for all the reasons you say, probably sourcing from their own kitchen or from one of the larger group ones.
I could even see a case for group meal delivery to save time on everyone having to leave job sites to go get food.
I guess my main point here is that I find it more productive and hopeful to imagine these kinds of futures: where everyone is working together systematically to provide convenience and support for everyone. I also find it much more believable as a possible future than rather some cottage core vision of everyone become subsistence smallhold farmers.
(Happy cake day BTW! I hope that cake wasn't delivered!)
We should be having a lot of discussions about support for services like meals on wheels,
My (admittedly limited) understanding of Meals on Wheels is that they would have a bulk load of meals that they delivery to individual homes. This would be more similar to how, for example, a package delivery service would work in contrast to an individual trip for one meal.
Properly organized services that are willing to sacrifice some flexibility can operate with vastly greater efficiency.
Of all the modern capitalistic irritations (to put it mildly), this one I really detest. And not least because of how ridiculously popular it is, wtf people? I watch folks I know, who can barely afford the food itself in the first place, then inflate the price by like 40%, just to eat the already (very!) mediocre food...cold. Solely so that they don't have to leave the house. Just completely unhinged from my POV, and honestly produces almost a sense of alienation in me, I find it so bizarre.
Disclaimer though - I will acknowledge both that I happily enjoy various different foolish things myself, so the point about glass houses is worth my keeping in mind, and also there are some great reasons to use it (limited mobility for one, as another user pointed out).
But sheesh folks. Restaurants largely hate it from my understanding, the drivers doing it hate it (cuz the job - oh excuse me, the preferred exploitation-hiding euphemism is "gig" - is utter shit, a literal minor improvement over straight up homelessness), the environment hates it, the wear-and-tear on a likely broke person's vehicle and the wear-and-tear on already struggling infrastructure...I mean what the fuckity fuck, seriously. How is this so popular, we're all insane and just conveniencing our way to oblivion. SMgoddamnH.
Aside from the aforementioned reasonable uses (largely edge cases, let's be honest), there is precisely one group of people who truly benefit in any serious way from this amazingly destructive nonsense - and wouldn't you know it, it's the exact same group fucking us in every other way! Weird!
Sorry. This one really gets me.
My friends definitely think I’m weird cause I don’t use food delivery, but I see it from a germ perspective too. None of those drivers are certified food handler and their car is likely not a safe environment. I keep my cars spotless, but based on everyone’s car I’ve ever been in I’m the minority in that.
Every other point you made I agree with too, but man I just don’t see how people don’t also recognize that your food is travelling in someone else’s potential garbage. Just to save you from what? Getting up and grabbing some food yourself?
Yet another "wtf, y'all?", good point. I can't personally say that grosses me out, but I tend to be in the minority on that sort of topic myself, so I totally see what you're saying. Aint no health inspector checking these vehicles (true of traditional delivery too I suppose).
And I mean...sometimes the drivers straight up eat some food, which is awful from the standpoint of your POV, but also just... truly hilarious to me.
The need this came out of COVID and a lack of people wanting to go out. It's was a decent way to keep business open who would otherwise have to lay off all their staff. Once COVID ended, I assumed it would go away. However, money talks.
My wife was just saying how she thiks GPS is soon going to have a VIP tier to give you the best routes and the longer routes go to the people who don't pay (but still have their data harvested).
That is a good point (re: COVID) that I had lost along the way, thanks. Those services did do good during that time, you're right. I'm not so sure about the GPS thing, but hey, I never thought we'd see half the ugly shit we're seeing these days, so why not?
I have a ton of people around me that do it, and yep, they're mostly renters who talk about wanting to own but it being unaffordable (we're in a LCOL state), can't do things with their friends because they're broke. I'm not cheap by nature but paying delivery fees to avoid a 10 minute round trip, that would do me good because I'd be out and active for a second - just no. Then I start thinking about how much I really don't need to drive to severely overpay for low quality food that'll harm most parts of my body, and I usually cook something instead out of relatively whole foods which costs 3/4 as much and won't leave me feeling guilt.
I can't confess to being quite as wholesome as you (well, at least your food decision-making lol) but you're on top of it, ya love to see it. I have, though, been making much more thoughtful choices about how much factory farmed meat I consume. Getting it down pretty low these days, but it helps that I have an Indian spot nearby with vegetarian food at least as satisfying as any meat-based dish. Malai kofta, unnnnfff.
Side note - since parts of this thread run the risk of shaming poor folks for "bad" financial decisions - I'm not going there (and I don't think you were either, you sound compassionate to me). It's a problem to a degree of course, but also being super (often hopelessly?) poor really screws up the brain. Speaking from experience. Scarcity, even self-imposed, can sometimes take me to some dark places, most notably back to personality traits that I developed in those days that I have done tremendous work to repair. Our systems are deranged and nonsensical, not our poor.
"I have to order Doordash because I live in a food desert"
"Can you taxi to the grocery store and back for about the same as the delivery fee?"
"No"
Taking a taxi 20 minutes away can be like $50 each way and involve an hour-long wait. Taxi service has changed a lot in some areas.
not sure what point you're making -- it seems like you're criticizing anyone who engages in this ? regardless of context, circumstance, ability, or reason???
Afaict it's 22$, you tipped 8$. That's a pretty wide margin.
Regardless, still too much, I just pick stuff up with my bicycle when I can.
Also, $8 is tax and not part of getting it chauffeured to you, also the point still stands I never get food delivered it’s always worse than collecting it yourself.
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 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.
I do a lot of DD, and I'd bet that 75%+ of my restaurant orders are a single order going to a single house. I prefer grocery delivery, and it's probably closer to 50% for those, as we often get a couple of orders at once.
Occasionally we get a single drop off with 2 stops (pick up food from a restaurant and something from a drug or grocery store, and drop them both off together).
I've never gotten more than 3 orders at once, and those are pretty rare.
At best it's 2-3...
That comment is a cope
Americans are too lazy to travel to their lunch. However, for the vast majority of the people, you’re not 15 minutes of walk away from a healthy assortment of food. Even in NYC, depending on where you are, it may not be possible to always go to your food. The idea of your lunch being paid is also not common, and you’re expected to be back to working (not done eating) within 30 minutes or less. In many cases, your lunchtime is timed and unpaid. Nurses and hospital staff? Eat the shit downstairs in the cafeteria or nothing; if you’re late coming back from lunch, it’s almost as bad as being late to work itself.
It's not ridiculous. Time is the most precious resource.
I only demand the raw ingredients to be grown halfway around the world, shipped by climate-controlled container in giant cargo boats, trucked from the port to the backstore, kept in refrigerated display cases, and sold in disposable containers.
But it's the last mile that's going to change the world, you see.
It actually is the last mile that matters. When shipped half way around the world it's in bulk. The amount of fuel per unit of food is surprisingly low.
For the last mile you're not getting 100 meals delivered even though they would fit in the car. The fuel to food ratio is insane for 1 meal.
Of course buying local is better when you have the option, but it doesn't make nearly as much of a difference as last mile delivery.
Not only fuel to food ratio, but also the amount of labor. If it takes someone 20 minutes to deliver your food, including their return trip), that is 1/3 of an hour of labor.
I know this sub is focused on the vehicle use and ridiculous inefficiency of this in terms of fuel, but the labor to have someone do this is what really runs up the bill. I suppose that's a good thing, because it limits demand.
Are you trying to say food delivery could be efficient? I'm not sure if I'm reading this correctly, because even as someone who isn't involved in shipping logistics but is involved in some conceptually adjacent logistics, it's absolutely clear to me why the last mile is harder/more expensive than the "other miles". Especially in takeout food delivery because of the additional constraints.
Or is this sort of like, pro super-independence and we should avoid shipping in general and prefer local resources?
Back in the day they’d have free delivery and a free pizza if it took more than 30 minutes.
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.
I just set the tip to zero and put "Will tip cash" in the delivery instructions on the rare occasions I do something like DoorDash.
Unless I order from a.local Chinese place that will deliver. I tip them generously, basically giving the older Chinese guy who usually runs the deliveries an amount akin to what all the fees from DoorDash would have been because at least then it's the restaurant getting the money.
Isn't NYC one of the most walkable cities in the US?
NYC encompasses 5 boroughs with varying levels of walkability and transit even within the same borough. Especially in winter, when not all property/business owners de-ice sidewalks like they’re supposed to.
Yes, though that's faint praise considering how car-centric most of the US is. I've lived here without a car for most of my adult life, and it's been fine.
When you build infrastructure that requires you take cars everywhere you minimize people going to get things for themselves
Do Americans really get their shit delivered by car?over here it's motorcycles 99% of the time (and bicycles the other 1%)
Seems rather.... Sluggish and inefficient for delivery drivers to go by car.
I'm in a small city, with a lot of rural / suburban areas. I'm often delivering 15+ minutes away from the city center by car. A bicycle wouldn't be able to get to any of these places in any reasonable amount of time, and there's also no shoulders or bike lanes on most of these roads so it would be seriously dangerous.
We also do a lot of large grocery delivery orders (50 - 100+ items) so there's no way those can be done via bike or motorcycle.
WELL for a big grocery delivery -- Yeah. That makes sense. A lot of sense.
I was imagining like. A couple take-out boxes on the shotgun seat and someone driving a whole-ass car for those lil' boxes.
And it sounded like whatever the driver would get from this haul wouldn't even cover gas. To say nothing of the environmental angle.
There's not an option to pick what they deliver it on, it's whatever the driver chooses to use. In more densely populated areas some people use bikes.
I know there isn't
It's just that delivery cars aren't really a thing in my country. It's all motorbikes all the way.
In NYC, 99% chance it's gonna be a deliverista on an e-bike. So the screenshot is literally wrong. Elsewhere in the country - yeah...
Am in Europe and we have a delivery service which provides everything by bike. And we make sure we don't order when it's raining even though the bikers don't seem to care.
Yeah, I don't think I've ever had anything delivered by motorcycle. Wouldn't be much less sluggish though, except in very dense cities with grid-locked traffic. I've heard motorcycle costs are about the same as a car, due to more maintenance being needed (frequent tire replacement, gear replacement, etc). Some cars approach about the same MPG as motorcycles too (and EVs surpass motorcycles with MPGe). Many US cities are very spread out and a lot of travel is done on highways, requiring 700cc+ motorcycles, and stuff like lane-splitting is illegal in a lot of places.
Just walk and buy the stuff. In a way, I miss how before apps, places just had two or three delivery guys
Related video; "Why Convenience is Killing Us" Levi Hildebrand - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpe8te3PdkA
Just walk? Okay, I can do that if I want... Subway. 22 minutes. That's fine. The next closest place to eat is FOUR HOURS there and back just walking. That is not a universal solution in the US.
You're 100% correct and it's very appropiate that we are discussing this in c/fuckcars .
If you live in midtown high-rise shit, you will pay $20, and waste 4 hrs of time and energy, now your kids crying and fiance fighting with you to not why just pay $30 and order delivery instead. It's 200% not worth it but also means this shitty urban planning that priorities corporal revenues on its residents expense should change. Look it up btw even local restaurants suffer; The only winner here is Uber eats.
consequences of having human living spaces designed to prioritize non human entities,
Agreed, I miss delivery being associated with a restaurant. There was better accountability.
But I also live in a walkable area, so it's easy for me to say 'just walk'.
Some people have food delivered because they have disabilities. Some have deliveries because they are under influence of alcohol or medications.
First time I ever had Burger King delivered was in Bahrain. That was in 2005. The U.S. didn’t start across the board deliveries through apps until about 2015ish. If I recall correctly. It is expensive no doubt.
Some people have food delivered because they have disabilities
These people with disabilities must be made of money and didn't exist prior to delivery services
I mean, yeah, some disabled people do make a lot of money or have upper middle class family who won’t miss the ordering out money. And if you’re disabled and on SNAP you can be eligible for them to go towards hot meals (ie, restaurant meals and hot prepared foods) rather than only groceries.
They still existed before you thought about them, they just either used local delivery through the restaurant instead of Doordash or relied on someone else to prepare food for them.
Ok, but like if I pick it up, then I'm driving both to the restaurant and from the restaurant. Is it not more efficient to have 1 person that drives between all houses to drop off food from a single collection point as opposed to all houses using their vehicles to drive both to and from the restaurant?
I mean if it isn't more efficient, then why doesn't everyone pick up their own mail from the post office?
I'm with you here. Delivery this way is unsustainable, but so is going to pick it up yourself. The real answer is bringing the restaurants and housing closer so that there is no need for a vehicle at all
Yes but any place that is walkable now charges premium rent.
And this level of analysis is how we got here folks lol
Short answer mail is Daisy chained from a central location
NYC tipped worker minimum wage is like 13 an hour. Not that The food delivery services are paying minimum wage ...
In one of the most expensive cities in the world, an on-demand courier is not going to be cheap. Even if they're on a bike.
What we're actually suffering from is that the cost of business and minimum wage has increased but the middle and upper wages have not. That, and the delivery services are a bit out of control. They're taking $10 out of every transaction to connect a web page to a mobile app.
It's not just delivery services, basically everything has been co-opted by tech bros that take a huge cut for transactions that are between two parties that have nothing to do with them, just for providing a "shiny" platform. Hotel bookings, AirBnB, marketplaces, Uber, and so on and so forth. All platforms that could be managed by 3 Devs in a basement, or public and managed by the government, but somehow they require 10k employees and vacuum up billions?
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Platform+Capitalism-p-9781509504862
You might be interested in this book
Well, sometimes youve had a few beers, then really want some Taco Bell. Better to door dash it than to go driving while tipsy. The service charge is really a 'failed to plan ahead' charge.
The notion that the burito has to be driven by a personal vehicle is what's laughable here, not that sometimes you want to order food
Generations of bad investments into shiti infrastructure got us here so that some people can make money
DUI is another externality
this is some quality ragebait right here
The cost of eating out alone is ridiculous now. There's no way I'm paying an additional $30 to have it delivered, and risk the delivery guy eating half the order, having it arrive late and cold, or not showing up at all.
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.
What do you want to me to do instead? Cook myself all the time? Go outside? No thank you.
I wonder if there's a human version of "pet food" but for humans, so people don't have to cook anymore.
Like frozen food? I can deal with shoving a pizza in the oven for 12 minutes and taking it out. I wouldn't call that cooking. But you can live off it.
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.
Funny how Chinese and pizza places could do this all day everyday and it cost 5% of the cost of the food. Not double it. Delivery food has been hit with inflation and market 'innovation' just like everything else. But let's pretend working people wanting convenience services is somehow the problem...the avocado toast on wheels argument.
Well, we have to support the "tech innovator" middlemen who deserve their 20% cut of everything. Think of those poor souls. How else are they supposed to get rich?
Sorry how exactly is tax part of the delivery fee? You pay that either way right? And the service fee?
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.
It's a natural consequence of decoupling value from productivity; and instead relying on data harvesting for predictive analytics as an alternative for anything truly valuable.
We're living in a world in which the wealthy keep coming up with ways to hand money back and forth, while creatinf new schemes to cut out the working class from any resulting 'value' creation.
AI will fuck over workers just like every other technological marvel that preceded it.
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.
Why was the subtotal of the actual food being ordered omitted?
Likely because it would give meaningful context to the amounts of the fees, and the ragebaiting OOP wants to avoid that.
$92 assuming they’re being honest about it being New York and it’s for food delivery. Since their tax rate is 8.75% for prepared food.
The $30 in fees don’t seem unreasonable when you think about it.
A chunk is taxes and well, they’d have been there anyway so I’m not counting them.
A chunk is tip, which was voluntary so I’m not including it.
That leaves about $15 for a delivery fee, in New York. Not sure what the driver makes but a portion of that $15 is going to them.
The real question is about how this person values their opportunity cost, because they actively decided that the time they would save was worth paying the extra delivery fees and tip. They made that decision and THEN complained about the injustice of…. Their own behavior and choices?
Damn, I think I'll be in the ground before I've ever paid that much for a meal, delivery or not, lol.
Obligatory
youre assuming the deliveryer man (or woman!) drove the burrito
I fucking hate paying delivery fees, or getting food delivered. I have a car, and feet. I'll gladly just pick the food up myself
I have feet and a car. I'd rather pay an extra $5 and save myself 30-45m of time.
I personally find delivered food worse as it’s often sat around due to maybe not being the first drop. I’ll collect all day.
I haven't ordered delivery food in literal years (think last time was 2021?). If I want to eat something that I didn't make myself, I'm just going out to eat. Saves me from a bunch of trash plus I prefer not having the smell of some food at home. And the kebab place close to me where eating is uncomfortable doesn't deliver anyways, I'm just getting it there and eat at home. Walking those five minutes isn't really an issue…
It absolutely baffles me that people are willing to spend that kind of money on low-quality takeout food that often arrives cold. I live just five minutes away from several five-star restaurants. If I wanted to, I could call ahead and pick up a fresh, high-quality meal in half the time it takes for a soggy, lukewarm fast food burger to show up at my doorstep—and I’d pay only a third of the price.
I genuinely don’t understand the appeal.
Most people don't live so close to good restaurants. And driving is so miserable that they'll pay others to do the driving for them.
Was going to say i and most cant afford even a single star restaurant but then i Realised those only go up to three and you’re talking about fake internet points.
One of the best restaurants (zero stars) i have regularly been too has no website and most people don't even know what its called because its not on the storefront or the menu. People refer to it using the chef/owners name.
I have something I call the Styrofoam Plate Theory.
Gourmet French cuisine is based on peasant foods. I.E. making cheap ingredients taste good. Coq au Vin was a way to cook a tough old rooster and it tastes amazing.
So, gourmet is often based on poor people food.
Soul food/Southern home, Mexican, Indian: all poor people food.
So, if you go to a restaurant or gas station and the food comes on a styrofoam plate, it is strongly correleated with good food. A language barrier, menu with pictures and numbers, rundown dining room, and a clean bathroom all increase the likelihood of truly wonderful cuisine.
People really, really need to learn to cook for themselves. Nothing wrong with the odd takeout, or even delivery but I sense a lot of people live on deliveries all the time and waste a fortune
The thing is that these types of services eat away at money anyway. It's better to go get the food yourself just to save yourself the money. If you must eat out rather than cook. Although, I understand that this may be more difficult for those who live in major cities such as NYC or LA, as examples. Food delivery has always been a thing for a lot of major U.S. cities. In my opinion, food delivery apps such as Uber Eats and Door Dash are not worth it or smart for many, if not most people.
This is dumb, hating for the sake of hating just shows a low level of thinking. Cars are very useful tools that have practical applications that aren't going away any time soon, and delivery services are an example of that.
The issue with cars is that we decided to designed our cities and towns around them at the expense of pedestrians, culture, and the environment. This has spawned societies that are plagued with long commutes, inactive lifestyles, dangerous infrastructure, smog, and an arms race to get comically huge cars. Criticizing the car industry, the car lobby, specific aspects of cars, or our urban layouts is perfectly valid. Blindly hating on cars just because they're cars is counterproductive.
NYC primarily does not use cars for food delivery, there's a 99.8% chance they will deliver it via bicycle.
I was talking to a T-Mobile rep about something, and she gave me a head's up that this week's T-Mobile Tuesday included a Door Dash subscription for a year. It even said that it can be cancelled in a year, but they'd be doing the same promotion on July 2026, so the customer can just resign up for free again!
I've already used it, and the place I ordered from had a free item for ordering over $25. After the discount and free delivery, the $55 bill was down to $30.
And this was in NYC.
Yeah, I use delivery services when they offer discounts. And you can often get 2 meals for the price of 1.
It's not that expensive if you are smart about it and your use is limited. I spend less than $100/mo for delivery once a week or so.
The issue is way too many people get addicted to these services and are paying $25 for a $10 single burrito
It essentially 100% of the time comes delivered by 2 wheeled vehicle, with the vast majority being e bikes
I have never ordered via delivery service for my food except the traditional pizza delivery. I can’t see spending that much to drop off a meal for myself. I go pick it up if they don’t deliver, or I just don’t order in.
A lot of people are bad with money and are way too ready to pay too much for convenience. This service has uses, but if you aren’t tied by need to use it, it’s pretty wasteful expenditure.
need to use it, it’s pretty wasteful expenditure.
At home, when we moved, we ordered a few times. The food ended up cold, late, wrong, AND 75% more expensive.
We used to order GH and DD at work a lot, they just priced themselves out of the market. on WFW days, we just either go there together or order form a place that has their own app and one person picks up for everyone.
We have a pizza place in the neighborhood that delivers to us for free, they're expensive but end up being the same price as ordering other places through GH/DD. When we want something outside the hood, I just go and get it. We get it faster, hotter, it's right and it's cheaper.
A lot of people are bad with money and are way too ready to
paygo into debt too much for convenience.
FTFY. Credit card debt has hit a new peak at $.121 Trillion Dollars.
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.
In my area, I'm going to have to drive 15 minutes one way to the nearest place to pick anything up, so it's not much different than having it delivered. We have never gotten delivery out here, since no one delivers but the third party ones (DD/UE), but someone delivering out here could possibly waste less fuel than I would to pick it up if they end up bring multiple orders out here.
The expectation comes from SoftBank investing billions into Uber to kickstart the ride share industry.
If it were easier to walk or bike to get food it would be different. Sometimes I don't want to spend 30 minutes in a metal death box for a burrito. We cook most of our meals at home but occasional delivery is nice.
Is the purpose of DoorDash to get food that normally doesn’t have a delivery option? I always call and pick my food up. It’s a reason to get out of the house and exercise.
a sustainable approach would be something like ice cream trucks
Food trucks do exist, and they're pretty great - taco truck, halal truck, etc. but they're usually stationary most of the time because it'd be expensive to drive the entire kitchen around frequently, and they're only permitted to be in certain areas, etc
hear me out: hybrid ice cream and food truck
I'm certainly skipping down the road with all the neighborhood dads toward the burrito truck.
Hope they have churros.
hear tequila played on a synthesizer
"MOM! THE BURRITO TRUCK IS HERE!"
Never really thought of getting food delivered, with prices like that I shall continue not to.
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.
We looked at GrubHub and said no when the delivery fee and tip would've been more than our meal cost.
I mean its a thing useful for disabled people and even currently in NYC if the time limit to delivery was more variable a personal vehicle would be far from necessary given public transportation.
They don’t deliver on e-bikes in NYC? That’s 90% of deliveries here in dense-ish urban environments.
The vast majority of delivery workers in New York City use ebikes, motorbikes, scooters, or plain-ass pedal bikes. Very few NYC delivery workers want to have to find parking for a car when they can just roll a bike up onto the sidewalk.
I've honestly never quite realized up until now how utterly ridiculous it is that people regularly demand that their food be cooked for them.
I've honestly never quite realized up until now how utterly ridiculous it is that people regularly demand that their food items be prepared and packaged for them.
I've honestly never quite realized up until now how utterly ridiculous it is that people regularly demand that that the animals they eat are slaughtered for them.
I've honestly never quite realized up until now how utterly ridiculous it is that people regularly demand that their grain be milled for them.
Society evolves buddy. I don't churn my own butter, but my grandmas did, and would find it ridiculous I have 247 access to a supermarket selling some. And it's even being kept at an exact temperature, all the time? Packaged without any sweat on it? Ridiculous!
Rodney Cheng did a comedy skit on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGEAiUeiaKs
who's out there driving a deuce and a half as their daily driver?
I've never understood why you would trust some rando contract worker to carry it in their personal car for you. Are you insane? In America? Land of mental illness and poverty? It's disgusting.
Is this about cars or society and industry? Because what if they're really efficient and have wheels and run on passive energy collected from the power of the sun and processed through rare minerals dug from the earth?
In NYC this would just as likely be an ebike courier. Though the lines on bikes vs cars themselves are starting to get blurry we plug them in, charge them on coal in most places, barely use the pedals. Still way more efficient and less dangerous.
Sustainably, in the ecological sense, has little to do with the energy source. Wheter its wood, coal, oil, hydro or solar, they can all be unsustainable. Cars have an ecological footprnt upon the earth that can't be sustainable (urban sprawl, etc). A good target would be an 80-90% reduction
Clean energy might help deal with emissions, but it does nothing to reverse deforestation, overfishing, soil depletion and mass extinction. A growth-obsessed economy powered by clean energy will still tip us into ecological disaster.” - Jason Hickel
Nuance is everything, exactly.
I think when it comes down to it though (and I do often think about this), is what the goal for the future is. Like do we want to just freeze everything as it is? Or live in some techno-futurism "utopia"? Or something else?
How far do we want to take "understanding our world and our risks" before enacting our vision?
I think one of the main problems in society, right now, is that philosophically, not only are we not aligned in our deeply detailed goals, not only do we not know each other's goals, but we hardly know our own goals.
It's something I think we as people living in society need to refocus on and discuss, openly. It's a hell of a time in history to bring up this sort of idealistic conflict, but if not now, then when? There are so many things pulling at our needs for resources and individual attentions, it's a marvel we've even gotten this far.
Honestly, the biggest problems in the world right now are attaining power to even enact said goals of focused discussion of philosophy, because the powers that be seem hell bent on society at large avoiding that at all costs.
Isn’t the cost of living so high in NYC that these fees would be negligible?
A "Driver tip" isn't a "fee". It's a tip.
But on top of everything else, I'd like to point out that nobody is making big bucks on this. Last time I checked, food delivery services mean the consumer is paying more, the restaurant is making less, and the delivery service itself would be lucky to break even. The drivers are making money, but it's not a lot of money.
What does it all mean, though? Let's look at it another way. What if, instead of hiring somebody to do that, you go out and eat at a restaurant? Basically, you're doing all of this work of driving for free. It's a hidden cost of the meal. It's about $22 of work in this example. Just lost time. No physical benefit to driving a car.
You'd be much better off taking public transit or cycling.
The thing about all these delivery service is, i feel like they're all using venture capitalist money to make the business seems lucrative, grow their userbase and business as much as possible, and then sell it off. Doesn't even need to make big profit the time they run the businesses, just have to sustain enough to reach the point where they sell off. All venture capitalist funded business works that way.
Isn't that obvious? If you don't start with that assumption, then you're not paying attention.
The reason I brought that up is that, if nobody else is making money, then the fees are not inflated and reflect the actual cost of the driving.
Anyone who refers to delivery as “chauffeuring” should be forced to listen to unrecognizable music at volume level 1.
A lot of these are delivered by bike nowadays, no?
Edit: since people keep asking without reading below, I mean specifically in NYC.
there's no way to make delivery worth it for small items like this, be it by foot / bike / electric scooter / carrier pigeon
Well apparently there is considering it’s a popular service. I’m not sure what you mean by this.
With the tax being $8.04, the order is not that small.
Pizza delivery has been popular for several decades. Pizza is cheap but they made the numbers work. It's actually weird that it was just pizza until recently.
The cost is middlemen needing to get their cut. Half the cost here is them getting their cut. $15 to use an app one time is what is unsustainable here.
Pneumatic tubes!
An instant burrito in every home!
rofl
These things for college campuses are great. They take up no more space than a person and can be a huge help when one is busy or sick.
When you’re disabled and cannot leave your home, this kind of stuff becomes a lifeline.
exactly why airport pizza has such an amazing business model, because pizza can be delivered efficiently by aircraft to places up to a couple hundred miles away without relying on non-existant roads or rail
I will order 4 or 5 meals at once and then put them in my fridge to eat over the next week.
Varies. In Oslo Foodora started as bike deliveries; the cyclists unionised and got better pay and working conditions, and nooow it seems to be a lot of Romanians in beaters that don't look like they'd pass their next EU inspections, don't pay tolls or for parking, and apparently there seems to be something like trafficking going on.
Well I meant in NYC specifically but that’s interesting.
In a large metropolis, yes. Unfortunately most cities in the USA are spread out so much that you almost need a car to go to the bathroom.
In the EU maybe, where there's a lot of protected bike lanes and where most drivers are relatively competent (and don't carry guns).
In SF it's definitely done by electric moped
I mean in NYC specifically.
no. they are all delivered by car, even if they say it's by bike.
bikes are too slow for be good for delivery
Gridlocked traffic or having to deal with parking can change the math on this such that bikes make sense.