This is essentially the story of tech companies across nearly every industry where they have come to dominate.
This is one reason that I see most tech companies as essentially a net negative for society at large, as the goal is nearly always to control a large monopoly (and this is fully admitted by many tech leaders, e.g. Thiel) which the Internet makes possible. Pre-Internet you would see the same dynamics, but usually on a much smaller regional scale. I think that many of the growing problems in society today are fundamentally attributable to the extreme concentration of wealth and power that modern tech enables.
fasterik · 1h ago
There's a George Carlin bit about politicians. The punchline is "the problem isn't the politicians, it's the people." His point is that nothing emerges from a vaccuum.
Politicians are people just like everyone else, they're just responding to incentives created by a majority vote. Tech companies are just like any other company, except a lot more people are willing to pay for their goods and services. If Carlin were alive, he'd say that the problem isn't the tech companies, it's their customers.
I'm actually far from convinced that tech companies are a net negative for society. Amazon makes billions because everyone wants competitively priced goods delivered to their doorsteps. Google makes billions because they provide free access to a large portion of humanity's information.
My theory is that if you're extremely pessimistic about technology or politics, you probably won't like anything that happens when large groups of humans make collective decisions. There's an air of let's go back to the good old days when we were hunter gatherers to the whole thing. Personally, I've accepted that it's always going to be messy and chaotic, but a lot of good things are going to come out of it as well.
kylecazar · 33m ago
Lobbyists muddy the incentive waters a bit when it comes to politics.
But I agree with your conclusion. I don't think there are many truly net negative companies/sectors/ideas that aren't either dead or on their way out -- but I'm sure you'd agree we should still hold tech accountable and optimize for our own benefit.
Btw, as a lifelong Carlin fan, I find myself asking what he would think pretty often :)
fasterik · 21m ago
Carlin was a true philosopher. I find myself disagreeing with him more these days than when I was younger and angrier, but I still find him endlessly entertaining.
budududuroiu · 1h ago
We don’t have to go back to hunter gatherer societies, just do some antitrust. I dislike the commentary that any pushback against tech companies means you’re a Luddite
fasterik · 1h ago
Anti-trust for an industry where there are at least five companies doing well in any given space? That's not called a monopoly, it's called competition.
Edit: I wasn't accusing everyone who is critical of tech of being a Luddite. The attitude that nearly every tech company is a net negative for society goes quite a bit beyond criticism.
alisonatwork · 9m ago
Now imagine you live in one of the other 190 countries of the world who do not or no longer have significant players in the industry because they were crushed by those five foreign companies. It's not competition when the wealth and power is so disproportionately held by the same people in the same places.
rangestransform · 4m ago
As a software engineer in the US, I like that the US sucks up money from the rest of the world, that’s why my dollar goes so far when I travel and why I can retire in a non-reserve-currency country for cheap
budududuroiu · 1h ago
You read an article that talks about consolidation of food delivery and increasingly high barriers to new entrants and think that’s competition?
fasterik · 53m ago
Where does the article mention barriers to entry? My reading is that the main story is that venture capital has moved investment to other areas. Anyone who wants to start a new food delivery app is still free to do so, as long as they can find funding elsewhere.
This is the definition of competition according to Wikipedia: "Competition is a scenario where different economic firms are in contention to obtain goods that are limited by varying the elements of the marketing mix: price, product, promotion and place."
Yes, sounds like competition to me. Network effects are not anti-competitive.
loloquwowndueo · 23m ago
There’s such a thing as collusion - convenient way to claim “we’re not a monopoly, there’s at least 4 more competitors” when behind the scenes they’re all talking and agreeing in price fixing, limiting offer, blocking other competitors.
wenc · 19m ago
That is known as a "cartel," which is also prosecutable under the Sherman Act. It applies to not just monopolies. But that doesn't seem to be the case here.
speff · 1h ago
I generally agree with your point, but would like to mention in my opinion Amazon (not AWS) makes billions because they've captured the market and prevent any meaningful competition from arising due to their "Fair Pricing" policy rules. I'll be happy when there are meaningful alternatives to Amazon that don't have inflated prices due to price parity which have an excessive return cost built in...
fasterik · 27m ago
Amazon.com has 12% market share in global e-commerce and 38% in the United States. I think they have plenty of competition.
klabb3 · 23m ago
> My theory is that if you're extremely pessimistic about technology or politics, you probably won't like anything that happens when large groups of humans make collective decisions. There's an air of let's go back to the good old days when we were hunter gatherers to the whole thing.
Hunter gatherer is the only alternative to a society under total dominance by mega-corps? This reminds me of individual stories from life under communism and brutal dictatorships where the dystopia is so omnipresent you don’t even remember what was before, nor could imagine anything meaningfully different. Instead, you take joy in the little things, like (today) the scraps left over after another market war – ”at least now we have a search engine”, ”I can order a taxi from an app”. I understand it, because it has been such a dominant force in the kind of second reincarnation of neoliberalism since ~80s in the US in particular. This apathy is the perfect wet blanket to prevent systemic change and perpetuate the status quo – no suppression of dissent is needed if there is no imagination or expectation of a better society. A lot of powerful interests are spending a lot of effort trying to convince us that any meaningful change would make things even worse, not better.
In my opinion, the best way to break these cycles is to study the past, other countries and many times smaller local communities. There are countless examples of well functioning systems if you pay attention. And new ones being established all the time. I’ve seen local markets completely flourish in just a decade, because of good policy. Once you see these things, and know in your heart it’s possible, there’s no going back.
I’m intentionally a bit vague here, because what’s meaningful to one person can be inconsequential to another. Which is why it’s so important to discover these things on your own. That’s the way to turn complacency into hope, and hope into organized action.
fasterik · 13m ago
"Local communities" existed for millennia and didn't manage to reduce the child mortality rate and extreme poverty rate to effectively zero. I know neoliberalism is a dirty word, and there are plenty of problems with the modern world, but I would rather live in a neoliberal global society than the "local" world of 200 years ago.
This is the right conclusion, and I love sharing that video for that reason.
As of 2025 everyone globally has everything they need to make the world a great place for everyone. Instead, people continue to take the lowest energy route for their personal actions, which means they do not even think about the externalities of that purchase from Amazon, the Latte from Starbucks, continuing living in (insert your broken system here), working for some billionaire etc...They just shrug and think "its out of my control, besides I don't have any impact and why should I suffer unnecessarily"
There are millions of examples of individual people who had no education, being actively oppressed and violently attacked changing their situation by either moving or overthrowing their oppressors. Harriet Tubman comes to mind.
It's never been easier to do that, but people would rather not.
The entire "illegal immigrant" concept proves it, people literally spending their entire life savings ($5000) to pay coyotes to smuggle them in horrific conditions so they can be slaves picking strawberries. I know a Houston restaurant owner who did that trek twice from Guatemala, getting deported the first time and he just saved up and did it again. While speaking no english. Tell me again about how it's not possible to do something. Meanwhile the citizens can't be bothered to learn about their own history or you know, do anything.
I've tried to start multiple non-heirarchical anarchist cooperative organizations and the number one challenge is finding people who will put the group ahead of the individual. It just doesn't happen. There are no organizations where that's true. No church, no government, no state, no charity, nothing, nowhere actually meets the test of holistic globally aligned "good."
I read the Medicins Sans Frotiers book long ago, even they were terrible and continue to fight internally [1]. Unions now make most of their money from capital investments [2], which is directly in opposition to their anticapitalist philosophical roots. All of this is because the members don't care and don't have any desire to have less, they all want more forever.
At this point in history, everyone has access to the information they need to make globally holistic decisions. It's not possible to claim ignorance, ignorance is strictly a choice and ultimately a existential personal limitation.
There are no organizations that exist for the benefit of society and they cannot exist because humans fundamentally lack the cognitive ability to think beyond Dunbar's number but their actions have global consequences.
Self elimination is the only possible arc for humanity.
The job of a union in the non-sectoral-bargaining structure of the US is to shove more money into the pockets of their members, period, end of story, and that is exactly what their members pay them to do
gandalfian · 2h ago
And long before that Warren Buffet talking about only backing companies who have built a competitive moat.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
It’s the story of most mature industries. Food delivery also remains cutthroat enough that this is a strange place to launch this complaint from.
sroussey · 2h ago
It is also weird that there isn't a company with 2/3 of the market. Eventually it will happen i guess.
TylerE · 1h ago
Sysco is probably pretty close if you ignore the extremes of the market.
drivingmenuts · 50m ago
While Sysco is a monopoly, they apparently don't make anyone angry enough to get rid of them. My guess is that they are pretty even-handed across an entire industry and their customers are knowledgeable enough to not screw up a good thing when they see it.
wyldfire · 1h ago
> Pre-Internet you would see the same dynamics, but usually on a much smaller regional scale.
At least in the US we had national monopolies that took serious regulation to solve. That regulation, strangely enough, is still in place. Perhaps early on there's fear to regulate a nascent industry and by the time regulators realize the problem they're too afraid of the power wielded by the monopolists.
In any case, it's never too late to break up these monopolies. The problem is that the Robber Barons are too far in the past to serve as a lesson for current generations. And some folks might remember AT&T but not understand why it was such a big deal.
AndrewKemendo · 2h ago
>This is essentially the story of tech companies across nearly every industry where they have come to dominate.
It is the only possible result of consumptive transactional organizations.
Conquest in all forms is accretion and consumption based, until the organization gets to large to sustain a consistent direction, then it collapses and the people get pulled into many smaller companies.
Those companies get accreted into a new superset monopolist/duoploist etc... and the bubble grows again and then explodes.
Wash rinse repeat forever at different abstraction levels.
jonator · 48m ago
Capitalism does facilitate monopolies or industries with razor thin margins like airlines. However, the space of competition is a revolving door with constant opportunity to create something better (that people want) than the established players or to enter a new arena entirely. Ultimately, since consumers are the choosers, it works in their favor. It was the consumers that wanted these companies to exist, and the profits are a proof of that.
However, sometimes there are unpriced externalities like the competitive advantage of removing your own manufacturing waste by dumping it into a stream. That is where governance (whether self or the state) comes in.
nimbius · 1h ago
this is essentially the story of capitalism as it always results in monopoly concentration and the development of industry cartels. before tech it was oil, before oil it was rubber and tobbaco.
Modern capitalist liberal democracies have theoretically strong frameworks and powers for regulating and dismantling cartels though. The real story is that politicians and bureaucrats in government become corrupted by them and fail to act for the good of the people.
And that is the story of humanity, not any particular classification of society and governance.
tiahura · 2h ago
What tech companies? These are food delivery brokers that have an app.
bravesoul2 · 1h ago
Have an app is doing a lot of work there. Uber eats at least is fairly sophisticated back and front end and certainly not a weekend project or something say Domino's Pizza can outsource to a team to get it to that quality.
koakuma-chan · 2h ago
And why is a large monopoly a net negative? I read his book and he says that monopolies are 10x better products, and if monopolies are 10x better then why are they bad? Are you arguing that it would be better to keep using 10x worse products, for the sake of there not being any monopolies?
nomadygnt · 2h ago
Monopolies are anti-competitive. Without competition there is no incentive for innovation, lowering prices, not price-gouging etc. Is a 10x better product really 10x better if it is also 10x more expensive and there is no alternative?
terminalshort · 1h ago
Depends a lot on what the monopoly in question is.
1. How much room for innovation is there?
2. How hard is it to substitute the good / service provided by the monopoly?
In the case of food delivery apps there isn't much room for service improvement. A monopoly here probably isn't preventing much innovation. How much better can you get at delivering food from a restaurant?
And there is an easy substitute in terms of driving to the restaurant yourself, so if the monopoly tries to jack up prices too much they will steadily lose customers. The prices now are so high that they have already lost me. I use those apps < 5 times a year.
cjbgkagh · 2h ago
Not innovating, maintaining high prices, and price-gouging are unstable activities for a monopoly, as in it would open up a void for effective competition. The real anti-competitive actions is that it becomes cost effective to do regulatory capture / pay bribes to politicians. A monopoly can pay to play in a way that fledging competitors cannot. Once the industry has been captured then they can do rent seeking behaviors without worrying about competition.
A1kmm · 2h ago
If allowed, an incumbent monopoly will do the minimum innovation or tactical pricing necessary to keep out competitors - even if it means they suffer a temporary loss.
This can effectively create a barrier to entry high enough that no small company has a chance to beat them. Since insolvency before overcoming the barrier is foreseeable, no one even tries, and the monopoly gets to keep high prices (compared to a competitive market if they weren't there).
Herring · 1h ago
> Not innovating, maintaining high prices, and price-gouging are unstable activities for a monopoly
Depends how good their moat is. Or how deep their pockets are, because they can often bribe to keep their competitors out (Intel vs AMD). Or just buy their competitor outright.
vlovich123 · 1h ago
How many desktop OSes can you choose from walking into BestBuy? And this is decades after MS was convicted of being a monopoly and illegally paying computer manufacturers money to keep competitors off.
astrange · 1h ago
Five companies in an industry isn't a monopoly. That's very competitive actually.
folkrav · 59m ago
How? Do these 5 companies even operate in the same places? Around here we have DoorDash, Uber Eats, and that’s pretty much it. We have SkipTheDishes, which was present before the other two outside urban areas, but I don’t even bother talking about them, most restaurants in the area have switched away from them. The other alternatives just never existed outside highly urban areas or have simply been pushed out by the bigger players. Where are the effects of this highly competitive market, exactly?
pbh101 · 42m ago
Without more context this is silly to say. It isn’t as if we know the natural or correct construction of this market a priori and that 5 is clearly a distortion from that. Consolidation can sound bad in the abstract but in this relatively immature market you could still expect major shifts to get to a steady state. Just a little bit ago people were remarking on VC-subsidized delivery; as that goes away, consolidation is not unreasonable.
Edit: ‘this’ in the original parent comment was along the lines of ‘five out of potential thousands of actors’
dinfinity · 1h ago
Depends on the geographic distribution of the companies. Meituan is huge, but they don't do shit in Europe or the US.
There are probably areas where these companies operate as effective monopolies or two-company oligopolies.
bravesoul2 · 1h ago
Split the world us/china/other and ignore minor players and there are 1/3/1.
In a given are there is competition but the local competition is likely to be pushed out by Uber Eats who could undercut them out of business for a while. Or just have better tech / customer experience due to scale (looking at you Menulog)
coffeebeqn · 1h ago
It’s more of a cartel if anything. Each owns a certain geography
paulryanrogers · 2h ago
Large and dominant companies can be a net good, at least in theory. In practice they become corrupted because of incentives to maximize profit by any means possible, with few who can oppose them.
When well regulated one can have most of the benefits without many of the downsides. Sadly, even the regulators become captured.
teddyh · 2h ago
A monopoly could be 10 times as good, but what is their incentive to be 10 times as good?
miki123211 · 1h ago
We have to distinguish between monopolies that keep their status by being great versus monopolies that have something else going on.
Google (search) is an example of the former. Search is a very expensive business to be in, but most of the costs are in scraping, indexing and software development, not actual query execution. The more users you have, the more you can spend while still keeping margins constant, and the more you spend, the better your engine is, which gives you more users.
This leads to the situation where you only have two competing search engines[1], one of which sucks and only exists because it's propped up by Microsoft. However, this is only true as long as Google keeps their quality up. If Bing suddenly became significantly better than Google, people would gradually start switching.
20th century AT&T is an example of the latter phenomenon. It was a monopoly because of US regulations, which made the barriers to entry insanely high. This meant AT&T could set almost whatever prices they wanted, as consumers didn't have a choice anyway.
[1] Engines like Kagi or DDG don't count, as they still fundamentally rely on Google's or Bing's indexes.
teddyh · 1h ago
> monopolies that keep their status by being great
What I am asking is what incentive those monopolies have to continue being great. Even if Google did not use Chrome to steer people to Google Search, Google Search is an established habit for most people, and it would have to become significantly worse than any competitor in order for people to consider switching.
You pointing out that a competitor to Google can only exist because Microsoft is pumping huge amounts of money into it, is not the great argument you seem to think it is. If Microsoft does not have a good chance of making money with Bing, what chances does a startup search company have?
fabian2k · 2h ago
How can a company make delivery 10x better?
The expected result of a monopoly are rising prices and at best indifferent service and quality.
miki123211 · 1h ago
> How can a company make delivery 10x better?
By improving the consumer experience. Better optimizations of which couriers go where and by what routes, faster delivery times (and hence warmer food), menus and restaurant directories optimized to show you what you actually want, better delivery time estimation, no need to talk to a human or re-enter your details for each new restaurant, that sort of thing.
At Uber scale, you have people working on improving metrics, and those improvements translate across all the restaurants that exist across the world. "John's Chicken" won't hire their own guys to do A/B testing on which pictures of their food generate more sales.
yoyohello13 · 2h ago
Man who believes monopolies are good says they are 10x better? Color me shocked…
ro_bit · 3h ago
The title scared me a bit before I opened the article and realized it was talking about restaurant->consumer food delivery services. While that isn't great, I was initially thinking was that the companies that facilitate the food delivery supply chains around the world were massively consolidated (I sure hope they aren't)
ks2048 · 3h ago
I'm pretty sure the food supply sources are massively consolidated. I don't know about the delivery part or why that would matter more than the actual food production.
A quick search will lead to quotes like "Four companies now control more than half of the market in chicken processing (Tyson, JBS, Perdue, and Sanderson), close to 70 percent in pork (Smithfield, JBS, Tyson, and Hormel), and nearly three quarters in beef (JBS, Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef)"
khurs · 1h ago
Margins on food staples like Chicken are very low, which suggests that consolidation is inevitable.
Supermarket margins are also very low.
Tostino · 1h ago
I've worked in the industry for over a decade and food distributors can squeeze the manufacturers more than the other way around. That's a very silly statement if you read it with any knowledge of the space.
ks2048 · 24m ago
I certainly don't know anything about the space, but by "matters more", I was thinking about caring more about what I am eating as opposed to how it was distributed. I suppose both are important, though.
Reason077 · 2h ago
The food service industry certainly has some major global players too. Names like Bidfood, Sysco, PFG, etc. In some cases, these same companies cater/supply everything from prison, school, and hospital kitchens through to fancy airline lounges and high-end restaurants!
robocat · 1h ago
> Bidfood
Wow - I didn't realise bidfood.co.nz was a US chain bidfood.com (Bidcorp).
Food markets keep closing down.
The consolidation of restaurant suppliers really affects the quality of taste a restaurant can get. My ex was a cook and the worse restaurants wouldn't even make their own sauces like Hollandaise - she would tell me what brand it was (often a restaurant supplier brand). It is noticeable when the chef has hand-selected their supplies e.g. tomatoes that have flavour.
The root cause is that consumers tend to optimise for cost.
Quality is harder to give a number to.
We're not completely screwed yet - with time/effort (and moderate means) you can find some amazing places at normal prices.
And there are people willing-enough to spend time/effort plus wealthy-enough but that market is much smaller (more exclusive). And unfortunately there are a lot of expensive places that don't optimise for food quality (because people desire other things for their money e.g. obsequiousness, rent-a-vibe cuisine, gastroflex, mealfluencing, yadayada). Aside: Roget's gets spanked by AI when looking for modern words.
Tostino · 1h ago
As somebody that built a TPM product for the industry, I hate prison and school bids. It's so fucking dystopian.
hammock · 1h ago
restaurant food distribution is event more consolidated. For example in the Midwest there is really only 1-2 companies you can get your seafood from. It has its pros and cons. Source: I work in restaurants and I also supply these distributors
Tostino · 3h ago
I built one of the trade promotion management (TPM) tools used in that space and had to deal with these companies daily for the last decade.
There are absolutely a bunch of acquisitions/ consolidation in that food distribution space, but there are still hundreds of different distributors just in the US. However, most volume does flow through the largest distributors.
For example, I had to build a specific feature to merge distributors after an acquisition happens in the industry, to make the product work properly because that's such a common occurrence. Had the same type of feature for manufacturers (my customers) also, because they kept buying each other.
ro_bit · 3h ago
Thanks for your response! I love this forum for how many experts chime in in the comments section
daedrdev · 2h ago
I think the truth is restaurant food delivery is a luxgury good, literally “private taxi for your burrito” yet many people spend like it isnt.
bko · 7m ago
It didn't used to be. I delivered pizza in the early 2000s, and the fee was $1 and tip, which was usually $2-3. It was pretty normal people ordering the stuff.
And the funny thing is I made about $20 an hour (unadjusted for inflation, ~4 deliveries per hour + $5 an hour). Today the drivers still around that amount, the restaurants pay more and the companies operating are often operating at a loss.
Something very strange happened in the last 20 years.
Aurornis · 2h ago
Seeing how many Gen Z people use food delivery services on a weekly or even daily basis was mind blowing to me. I’ve had numerous conversations where I’ve had to bite my tongue when younger colleagues complained about finances after also explaining that they DoorDash dinner nearly every night. It’s bizarre.
Not all Gen Z, of course. Most of the younger people I’ve worked with have been generally smart about finances. It’s a subset who fall into the normalization of luxury services as a standard cost.
to11mtm · 2h ago
Restaurant delivery... I tend to agree.
'nonperishable food' or 'properly packed short travel' (i.e. dairy/frozen) IMO is a fairer niche of 'could be non-luxury with better societal outcomes', except for the 'as close to JIT as possible'. There's ways to optimize the process to where something on the scale of 10-20 homes could get their main groceries delivered two or 3 times a week and the overall cost would be lower than all of them doing so. Yeah you'd need a reefer van or an otherwise replenishable source of cold for dairy/frozen but at that scale the cost of such makes a lot more sense. Biggest problem is getting the right buy-in and mindset from consumers.
watwut · 2h ago
Difference is you can stock large quantity of frozen foods any time it is convenient to shop. As in, frozen food delivery is not all that useful.
When you work from home and cant cook, delivery can happen right now. Or if you are having a small gathering with friends, delivery makes your life easier exactly when you need it.
pico303 · 35m ago
I thought the headline was implying something else. When I read the article, I thought, “Is it a monopoly to worry about if you can just do it yourself?” Feels like complaining there is a monopoly on services to pour you a glass of water from the tap.
coffeebeqn · 1h ago
It wasn’t priced in for the first 5-10 years. There’s no way I would use an app like that (I even work for one) these days now that the VC subsidy is gone and the service costs 5x as much as a few years ago
esco27 · 2h ago
The food industry is due for a good old opensource disruption, where each restaurant can setup their private menu hub (like you would an instagram account), add their payment processing details, and start delivering their own orders. It's a win-win for the restaurant and their recurring customers.
Workaccount2 · 2h ago
Worked years ago at a restaurant that had its own website and app ordering...
Ubereats and the like still dominated the orders even with the 15% upcharge and even after notifying repeat customers that they can save money ordering direct
The convenience of having one centralized app with one account that can summon any food from any restaurant in a 10 mile area is just way too strong.
Yeul · 40m ago
Yeah I sometimes go to the restaurants own website but to be honest I'm often too lazy.
But I only order food once or twice a month- it's a little indulgence for me.
afavour · 2h ago
Stuff like this already exists (AFAIK not open source but cheap enough that restaurants would prefer to use it if they could). The problem is modifying user behaviour: people used to go directly to the restaurant to order food but are now very used to opening the food delivery app, browsing it, and ordering.
You could have the slickest ordering experience in the world and it won’t help you if no one sees it.s
racedude · 1h ago
This.
Aurornis · 2h ago
The target audience for consolidated food delivery apps isn’t the person who wants to manage the fine details of ordering from 10-20 different local restaurants.
The majority of people using these apps just want to scroll some restaurants and order something quickly. Saving 10% by going through extra steps, installing extra apps, going to a company’s website, and doing custom orders isn’t what most of their repeat customers want to do.
It’s a convenience thing.
Reason077 · 2h ago
These certainly exist. My local favourite Thai restaurant has its own ordering website and has its own staff deliver the order, with no markup over the in-restaurant menu prices.
The company that operates their ordering platform is mobihq.com (I have no affiliation with them)
redleader55 · 2h ago
What about users? Will they install one app for each restaurant they order from on their phone or will they prefer to do everything in the same app?
nickjj · 2h ago
There are middle man services for certain types of food in certain areas.
For example Slice is a popular one for pizza. I know a business owner who uses it.
They have an app and optionally an online menu on your custom domain to take online orders and physical hardware for taking orders in your store. Think POS system, register, terminal, printers, etc..
For a business owner that covers you for accepting online and offline orders, and you can deliver direct to your customers.
95% of his online delivery orders go through this system because DoorDash charges him (the business owner) 30% for each order so he raised his prices there to partially offset that. Slice on the other hand is 5% cheaper than his baseline price for online orders for customers so it's a no brainer most use that. With that said, way more people call in or come in person than using the app. Probably a 90% / 10% split.
Aeolun · 2h ago
Two companies now control 90% of the phone market. I think the restaurant food delivery market is quite healthy.
khurs · 1h ago
Do you mean the App Stores rather than the phone market? That is soon to be 3, as Harmony OS takes hold in China and other markets.
paxys · 1h ago
I can't think of a single industry or segment, whether consumer or enterprise, where 90%+ of the market isn't controlled by 1-5 companies. That's just how business works.
readthenotes1 · 1h ago
Chinese food restaurant?
Lawn service
If I spent more than 2 seconds I could probably think of others
andybak · 3h ago
I still tend to discover a takeaway or restaurant and then figure out how to get them to deliver.
I've never not ordered from somewhere I was keen on based on their choice of delivery service.
If the consolidation results in price hikes and poor service, what's the lock-in? Why can't the takeaways just go rogue and offer independent deliveries?
bawolff · 2h ago
> Why can't the takeaways just go rogue and offer independent deliveries?
Because delivery is really expensive. To do it well over a large area you have to have a lot of staff. You also want to keep them all busy, so it works better with a lot of resturants. Margins are thin, lots of risk in an area that is very different from the core activity of the resturant.
Its an almost textbook example of a situation where a specialist company makes sense.
spacephysics · 2h ago
Lots of their infrastructure for handling orders (iPads, software integration into their payment system) was done around Covid, and some have started to integrate in-person orders through the same “single unified system” creating a higher and higher cost to switch delivery systems.
AFAIK there’s no well-supported open source order/delivery management software. The companies that were ready during covid took all the extra, enormous demand for building delivery and order online systems built atop a typically antiquated order management system and have stuck around since
Sometimes i’ll get a cheaper delivery/food cost calling vs ordering online, but now some places are just raising their other prices to match online
bbarnett · 2h ago
And yet, why do you need software?
In the 80s, I delivered pizza with no software. The place had a normal cash register, for pickups.
People would call, order, and we'd write it down. They it'd go on a wire with a clothes pin, until made. Then it went with the driver.
Each delivery was written down before leaving with it.
This worked for decades for everyone in the industry, flawlessly, perfectly, without issue.
Why is software required? Any given reasons are an unneccessary complication.
And here's the thing. Even in Palo Alto I order from companies still doing it this way.
The above system, paperwork wise .. again, is perfect. It's been done forever. It is faster and far less expensive than any unified payment and order system.
Seems to me, they're the smart ones.
notatoad · 2h ago
as long as you've got enough order volume to keep a delivery driver consistently busy, that works fine and the apps are unnecessary. for a pizza restaurant, or anybody else focused on delivery orders, the apps aren't necessary
the utility of the apps is to distribute the load from multiple restaurants across a shared pool of delivery drivers, so a restaurant who otherwise wouldn't be able to offer delivery can tap into that labour pool for infrequent delivery orders. food delivery apps have greatly expanded the number of places that offer delivery. most restaurants simply didn't offer it before the apps.
bbarnett · 1h ago
Once you have multiple restaurants, you leave the mom and pop shop scenario, and move into realms of more sensible optimization.
But there are so many independents. And they make very good food. And they still do it without apps, and do very well.
asdf6969 · 2h ago
Everyone hates calling and apps give customers a list of restaurants with menus to browse. Restaurants also do all of their in-restaurant management with software (why not paper? ask them idk) which I assume has some integration with the app.
I can imagine some type of open protocol that lets them self-host an order service though, or at least an open solution that’s hosted by many providers and many separate apps. That would be nice for everyone
Yeul · 33m ago
I remember when McDonald's didn't have kiosks. Human interaction with a fast food worker is vastly overrated. Both sides hated it.
bbarnett · 2h ago
Maybe we should all make the world a better place, suck it up, and just call?
Maybe making the world a better place, means human interaction and less automation.
Dylan16807 · 30m ago
There's no reason this software has to be expensive. I'd rather fix the software in this case.
And phones in particular suck when you involve real-world connection quality and accents.
pizza · 1h ago
Say what you will but customers pay to not suck it up
asdf6969 · 1h ago
That would make my own world worse
to11mtm · 2h ago
> Why can't the takeaways just go rogue and offer independent deliveries?
Because many of these delivery 'ad-hoc contractors'[0], sometimes even eating cost [1].
Pre-covid, you were often best off as a business either doing something that was 'known' to be delivery offered (i.e. pizza) or your next best option was to aggressively advertise it and have an extra staffer on hand willing to do the deed.
Then, you've also got the other form of arbitrage (or perhaps a cost thereof), of smaller independent restaurants/chains being unwilling or unable to handle the costs of properly covering drivers [2] and their pay when not driving [3].
Some restaurants started doing delivery during covid and kept it going. However most around here dropped because the volume wasn't worth it to them, on top of the 'streamlined flow' (don't need to give a route, the app the person picking up the 'pick-up' order is handling, does that for them.)
I'm not saying I like it but I get how it got here.
[0] - Remember that in the early days some of these companies would do all sorts of weird things like just have someone order on behalf.
[2] - To be clear, both the startups as well as locals have a checkered history when it comes to proper coverage...
[3] - One can argue that such a person can be made 'useful' during the waiting time, however it becomes a complicated equation between 'what can this person be paid to do' vs 'are they willing to do it for that base'.
NaOH · 2h ago
Regarding your link to the article on pizza arbitrage,
I would care a lot more if this market had even existed as recently as 15 years ago, but most of what this article is making a case for is that the next 5 years in this space are almost completely unpredictable.
mattmaroon · 3h ago
And the alternative to restaurant delivery service is really the way we get the other 98% of our food. Anything I can ignore without being at some sort of disadvantage I don’t really get worked up about consolidation.
I wish we had more than 3 cell phone networks, this could all be one and I’ll just drive to the restaurant.
tptacek · 2h ago
There was a discourse prior to the last election about how cost of living was out of control based on people sharing delivery bills from their "burrito taxi". I do get that this article isn't "about" that discourse, it's about an investment thesis, but my real point is just: there is no reason to believe any part of this market has settled to the point where you could make reliable predictions. Everything is very new.
morsch · 2h ago
I don't understand, are you saying the market was so small that it might as well not have existed? I don't have the impression that it's gotten magnitudes bigger here in Germany, maybe in China it did (what hasn't), in the US...? People just use the web instead of using a phone. AT&T didn't charge a commission.
tpmoney · 2h ago
Realistically in the US before the various online delivery companies figured out how to make it work, most places just didn't do delivery at all. Traditionally pizza places and Chinese food were something you could order delivered. Almost everything else was either drive through or take-out.
asdff · 2h ago
What is sort of crazy is that these delivery services didn't even supplant pizza delivery. All the major chain pizza delivery places and most of the local spots all still run their own delivery service long into this app era.
It kind of makes sense. App delivery is notorious for being pretty terrible service quality and having the food end up worse with more time spent between kitchen and you eating it. Pizza delivery on the other hand has been seen as quick with drivers interested in earning their tip, pizza places being conservative with delivery radius to not overextend their drivers, etc. Customers don't like getting an inferior product or service one day.
to11mtm · 2h ago
> App delivery is notorious for being pretty terrible service quality and having the food end up worse with more time spent between kitchen and you eating it. Pizza delivery on the other hand has been seen as quick with drivers interested in earning their tip, pizza places being conservative with delivery radius to not overextend their drivers, etc. Customers don't like getting an inferior product or service one day.
Additionally, at least in my experience it's pretty easy to get to where just paying the delivery fee of a pizza place is cheaper than paying for inflated per-item rates.
TeaBrain · 2h ago
>are you saying the market was so small that it might as well not have existed?
They're saying that the space these companies are competing in literally did not exist. It didn't in the US, maybe not 15 years ago, but 20 years ago it was nonexistent.
toast0 · 2h ago
Waiters on Wheels was founded in 1987 and had cornered the market. But they really only did large orders as far as I'm aware; used more for a corporate lunch than a dinner for two at home.
zoky · 1h ago
B2B and B2C are so different from each other they are essentially entirely different market segments, even if they are providing roughly equivalent services.
v5v3 · 2h ago
My understanding is that the drivers are non-exclusive and can work for multiple companies at the same time.
So as their is a ready supply of drivers, anyone who can raise an amount of money, and find a niche can enter the fray?
The suppliers (restaurants) are not happy with 30% or so being taken by the giants.
bravesoul2 · 1h ago
> As long as food delivery is better than other ways of consuming food, like cooking, takeaways, or dining out, it will be able to keep customers in the network.
Made me laugh out loud. It's strictly the worst option. Only use it if my job wants to pay, or if very sick.
Cold food. Unpredictable delivery times. More expensive than eating out. Usually less nutritious than cooking yourself. And of course expensive as hell.
Reason077 · 3h ago
Less competition would certainly be bad for consumers and drivers. But has that actually happened here?
Doordash and Deliveroo do not operate in the same markets, so their merger would not reduce competition in any given market.
Prosus is a big conglomerate with its fingers in many different industries. But unless it starts buying multiple delivery companies that operate in the same markets, its acquisition of Just Eat also doesn’t appear to be reducing competition.
asdff · 2h ago
I think tech companies that are in sectors like this with a great deal of money moving around a few different entities tend to inadvertently operate as de facto cartels in a lot of ways. They tend to mirror business decisions due to poaching eachother for the same talent and consulting with the same agencies who are giving them the same information and findings. The way they set up their companies and operate is all pretty much the same and designed to be similar so as to be useful for investors looking to compare businesses in the sector. ux patterns are the same or similar enough. How they pay their drivers also the same or similar enough. When there is this much similarity of behavior in the sector one has to ask if there would even be a difference for the consumer between having all delivery under 1 company or 10000 companies all operating the same business model? No different than a small town restaurant scene lost to 15 different chain fast food restaurants all operating the same franchise model: customers have diversity of business on paper, but not really since it is all just more or less the same sort of business with marginally different offerings.
protocolture · 48m ago
It continues to be crazy to me that there isnt a delivery driver owned competitor that has just taken over 100% of the market.
faizshah · 2h ago
Meanwhile I have seen a lot of local restaurants advertising how ordering through their own delivery/pickup service can be 30% less than Uber Eats or DoorDash on their takeout boxes (and consequently in your uber/doordash order). It’s interesting that some of the POS companies are getting into the market: https://www.toasttab.com/local
There’s huge room for disruption in this model when a $12 chipotle order costs the consumer $30 after higher menu prices + delivery fees + tip.
Workaccount2 · 2h ago
When I worked at a restaurant that did Ubereats/door dash/GrubHub, we had a 15% upcharge on order through those platforms.
We would tell repeat customers they could use our website/app/phone to order directly and save the 15%. Almost no one converted. Convenience really is king.
Actually when I ordered through it I paid $45 instead of $60 via DoorDash/Uber Eats but the order was delivered by Uber.
The reason why I think this version will work is because it’s the same level of convenience in a centralized mobile app so single payment method, single portal to browse restaurants etc.
(I have no association with this company I just was looking into this last week on the train)
salomonk_mur · 3h ago
Rappi is missing. It's huge in all of Latin America.
thisisit · 2h ago
I think this will be even more consolidated in the future. Or mostly duopoly in many markets. Food delivery is capital intensive. It is unlikely that new players enter the market.
bawolff · 2h ago
5 companies dominate a market that 5-10 years ago didn't even exist. That doesn't exactly sound terrible.
afavour · 2h ago
Of course it did. People have been ordering delivery food for decades. They just called up the restaurant to do it.
bawolff · 2h ago
I dont know where you live, but that was absolutely not true where i lived.
The only exception was chinese and pizza. Nobody else offered delivery. The current delivery market is much more than that.
throwpoaster · 2h ago
Sounds like a fairly normal market structure.
kurofune · 2h ago
Is this surprising?
This is what our actual economic system is all about: a series of market oligopolies whose greed is unchecked by our political establishment and legal apparatus with the complicity of the voting masses. Any attempt to implement measures to palliate the social decay and corruption it breeds will be branded as chinese communism and opposed by the media and the public.
We have collectively decided that the economy shouldn't be in service of the people, canis canem edit.
Neywiny · 2h ago
I think 5 is a good number based on no data or experience. Feels like enough where you could reasonably tell one to pound sand if they start getting too greedy, while not being forced to just take the other 1.
thaumasiotes · 1h ago
This post doesn't appear to present any evidence that five companies control any significant share of the food delivery market. It looks at transaction volume of major deliverers, comparing them to each other.
But it's not at all clear that major deliverers are even a majority of the delivery market. There are no pizza chains on the list. There are certainly no individual restaurants on the list.
> Why is my $8 burger $23 after fees - An average reddit user
Delivery in China (through Alipay, which may or may not be backed by Meituan) is generally cheaper after fees than it would be if you just went and bought the food in person. This might explain why Meituan has so much more transaction value than Doordash and Uber Eats. But it's not something I'd imagine drives a lot of user complaints.
closewith · 3h ago
> total food delivery market worldwide
This is the article's claim, but I'm fairly certain it's of the food delivery aggregator market. There's still plenty of independents.
flymasterv · 3h ago
Yeah, there’s no way Domino’s doesn’t appear on that chart.
gonzo41 · 1h ago
Regardless of market position, are food delivery companies actually making money at the moment?
TheMagicHorsey · 2h ago
I know these are three sided marketplaces and difficult to coordinate demand and supply ... but why isn't there more locally hosted town and city level options that undercut the national/international conglomerates? Food delivery is ultimately a local thing.
mrweasel · 3h ago
One of those companies are available where I live, and I'll never use them, because they make my pick ups insufferable.
I have kids, and can see McDonalds from my bedroom window, so I have more McDonalds points than I care to admit. Wolt is pissing me off every time. The amount of time the McDonalds staff needs to dedicate to Wolt staff is insane. They could easily serve twice the customer in resturante/drive-through if they didn't have to help a borderline incompetent Wolt staffer on a moped. It's actually rude to priorities deliveries over in restaurant customers. For that alone I will never use Wolt. Fortunately every single good pizza place nearby have their own drivers, who are actually polite and competent.
blibble · 57m ago
I don't see the attraction of these apps either
the food arrives lukewarm, in a smaller portions and costs more
in addition their widespread use hurts the restaurants you like
and drives down wages for society, because the only people who can live on what they pay out to the drivers are illegal immigrants paying zero tax (with the state paying for room and board)
it's all negatives
mupuff1234 · 1h ago
I honestly just can't comprehend how people so easily just throw away money on these apps - The fees are ridiculous on top of already expensive restaurant prices.
This is one reason that I see most tech companies as essentially a net negative for society at large, as the goal is nearly always to control a large monopoly (and this is fully admitted by many tech leaders, e.g. Thiel) which the Internet makes possible. Pre-Internet you would see the same dynamics, but usually on a much smaller regional scale. I think that many of the growing problems in society today are fundamentally attributable to the extreme concentration of wealth and power that modern tech enables.
Politicians are people just like everyone else, they're just responding to incentives created by a majority vote. Tech companies are just like any other company, except a lot more people are willing to pay for their goods and services. If Carlin were alive, he'd say that the problem isn't the tech companies, it's their customers.
I'm actually far from convinced that tech companies are a net negative for society. Amazon makes billions because everyone wants competitively priced goods delivered to their doorsteps. Google makes billions because they provide free access to a large portion of humanity's information.
My theory is that if you're extremely pessimistic about technology or politics, you probably won't like anything that happens when large groups of humans make collective decisions. There's an air of let's go back to the good old days when we were hunter gatherers to the whole thing. Personally, I've accepted that it's always going to be messy and chaotic, but a lot of good things are going to come out of it as well.
But I agree with your conclusion. I don't think there are many truly net negative companies/sectors/ideas that aren't either dead or on their way out -- but I'm sure you'd agree we should still hold tech accountable and optimize for our own benefit.
Btw, as a lifelong Carlin fan, I find myself asking what he would think pretty often :)
Edit: I wasn't accusing everyone who is critical of tech of being a Luddite. The attitude that nearly every tech company is a net negative for society goes quite a bit beyond criticism.
This is the definition of competition according to Wikipedia: "Competition is a scenario where different economic firms are in contention to obtain goods that are limited by varying the elements of the marketing mix: price, product, promotion and place."
Yes, sounds like competition to me. Network effects are not anti-competitive.
Hunter gatherer is the only alternative to a society under total dominance by mega-corps? This reminds me of individual stories from life under communism and brutal dictatorships where the dystopia is so omnipresent you don’t even remember what was before, nor could imagine anything meaningfully different. Instead, you take joy in the little things, like (today) the scraps left over after another market war – ”at least now we have a search engine”, ”I can order a taxi from an app”. I understand it, because it has been such a dominant force in the kind of second reincarnation of neoliberalism since ~80s in the US in particular. This apathy is the perfect wet blanket to prevent systemic change and perpetuate the status quo – no suppression of dissent is needed if there is no imagination or expectation of a better society. A lot of powerful interests are spending a lot of effort trying to convince us that any meaningful change would make things even worse, not better.
In my opinion, the best way to break these cycles is to study the past, other countries and many times smaller local communities. There are countless examples of well functioning systems if you pay attention. And new ones being established all the time. I’ve seen local markets completely flourish in just a decade, because of good policy. Once you see these things, and know in your heart it’s possible, there’s no going back.
I’m intentionally a bit vague here, because what’s meaningful to one person can be inconsequential to another. Which is why it’s so important to discover these things on your own. That’s the way to turn complacency into hope, and hope into organized action.
This is the right conclusion, and I love sharing that video for that reason.
As of 2025 everyone globally has everything they need to make the world a great place for everyone. Instead, people continue to take the lowest energy route for their personal actions, which means they do not even think about the externalities of that purchase from Amazon, the Latte from Starbucks, continuing living in (insert your broken system here), working for some billionaire etc...They just shrug and think "its out of my control, besides I don't have any impact and why should I suffer unnecessarily"
There are millions of examples of individual people who had no education, being actively oppressed and violently attacked changing their situation by either moving or overthrowing their oppressors. Harriet Tubman comes to mind.
It's never been easier to do that, but people would rather not.
The entire "illegal immigrant" concept proves it, people literally spending their entire life savings ($5000) to pay coyotes to smuggle them in horrific conditions so they can be slaves picking strawberries. I know a Houston restaurant owner who did that trek twice from Guatemala, getting deported the first time and he just saved up and did it again. While speaking no english. Tell me again about how it's not possible to do something. Meanwhile the citizens can't be bothered to learn about their own history or you know, do anything.
I've tried to start multiple non-heirarchical anarchist cooperative organizations and the number one challenge is finding people who will put the group ahead of the individual. It just doesn't happen. There are no organizations where that's true. No church, no government, no state, no charity, nothing, nowhere actually meets the test of holistic globally aligned "good."
I read the Medicins Sans Frotiers book long ago, even they were terrible and continue to fight internally [1]. Unions now make most of their money from capital investments [2], which is directly in opposition to their anticapitalist philosophical roots. All of this is because the members don't care and don't have any desire to have less, they all want more forever.
At this point in history, everyone has access to the information they need to make globally holistic decisions. It's not possible to claim ignorance, ignorance is strictly a choice and ultimately a existential personal limitation.
There are no organizations that exist for the benefit of society and they cannot exist because humans fundamentally lack the cognitive ability to think beyond Dunbar's number but their actions have global consequences.
Self elimination is the only possible arc for humanity.
[1] https://healthpolicy-watch.news/inward-technocratic-msf-lead...
[2] https://jacobin.com/2023/02/finance-unionism-union-density-d...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-livin...
https://www.givewell.org/
At least in the US we had national monopolies that took serious regulation to solve. That regulation, strangely enough, is still in place. Perhaps early on there's fear to regulate a nascent industry and by the time regulators realize the problem they're too afraid of the power wielded by the monopolists.
In any case, it's never too late to break up these monopolies. The problem is that the Robber Barons are too far in the past to serve as a lesson for current generations. And some folks might remember AT&T but not understand why it was such a big deal.
It is the only possible result of consumptive transactional organizations.
Conquest in all forms is accretion and consumption based, until the organization gets to large to sustain a consistent direction, then it collapses and the people get pulled into many smaller companies.
Those companies get accreted into a new superset monopolist/duoploist etc... and the bubble grows again and then explodes.
Wash rinse repeat forever at different abstraction levels.
However, sometimes there are unpriced externalities like the competitive advantage of removing your own manufacturing waste by dumping it into a stream. That is where governance (whether self or the state) comes in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_monopoly_capitalism
And that is the story of humanity, not any particular classification of society and governance.
1. How much room for innovation is there?
2. How hard is it to substitute the good / service provided by the monopoly?
In the case of food delivery apps there isn't much room for service improvement. A monopoly here probably isn't preventing much innovation. How much better can you get at delivering food from a restaurant?
And there is an easy substitute in terms of driving to the restaurant yourself, so if the monopoly tries to jack up prices too much they will steadily lose customers. The prices now are so high that they have already lost me. I use those apps < 5 times a year.
This can effectively create a barrier to entry high enough that no small company has a chance to beat them. Since insolvency before overcoming the barrier is foreseeable, no one even tries, and the monopoly gets to keep high prices (compared to a competitive market if they weren't there).
Depends how good their moat is. Or how deep their pockets are, because they can often bribe to keep their competitors out (Intel vs AMD). Or just buy their competitor outright.
Edit: ‘this’ in the original parent comment was along the lines of ‘five out of potential thousands of actors’
There are probably areas where these companies operate as effective monopolies or two-company oligopolies.
In a given are there is competition but the local competition is likely to be pushed out by Uber Eats who could undercut them out of business for a while. Or just have better tech / customer experience due to scale (looking at you Menulog)
When well regulated one can have most of the benefits without many of the downsides. Sadly, even the regulators become captured.
Google (search) is an example of the former. Search is a very expensive business to be in, but most of the costs are in scraping, indexing and software development, not actual query execution. The more users you have, the more you can spend while still keeping margins constant, and the more you spend, the better your engine is, which gives you more users.
This leads to the situation where you only have two competing search engines[1], one of which sucks and only exists because it's propped up by Microsoft. However, this is only true as long as Google keeps their quality up. If Bing suddenly became significantly better than Google, people would gradually start switching.
20th century AT&T is an example of the latter phenomenon. It was a monopoly because of US regulations, which made the barriers to entry insanely high. This meant AT&T could set almost whatever prices they wanted, as consumers didn't have a choice anyway.
[1] Engines like Kagi or DDG don't count, as they still fundamentally rely on Google's or Bing's indexes.
What I am asking is what incentive those monopolies have to continue being great. Even if Google did not use Chrome to steer people to Google Search, Google Search is an established habit for most people, and it would have to become significantly worse than any competitor in order for people to consider switching.
You pointing out that a competitor to Google can only exist because Microsoft is pumping huge amounts of money into it, is not the great argument you seem to think it is. If Microsoft does not have a good chance of making money with Bing, what chances does a startup search company have?
The expected result of a monopoly are rising prices and at best indifferent service and quality.
By improving the consumer experience. Better optimizations of which couriers go where and by what routes, faster delivery times (and hence warmer food), menus and restaurant directories optimized to show you what you actually want, better delivery time estimation, no need to talk to a human or re-enter your details for each new restaurant, that sort of thing.
At Uber scale, you have people working on improving metrics, and those improvements translate across all the restaurants that exist across the world. "John's Chicken" won't hire their own guys to do A/B testing on which pictures of their food generate more sales.
A quick search will lead to quotes like "Four companies now control more than half of the market in chicken processing (Tyson, JBS, Perdue, and Sanderson), close to 70 percent in pork (Smithfield, JBS, Tyson, and Hormel), and nearly three quarters in beef (JBS, Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef)"
Supermarket margins are also very low.
Wow - I didn't realise bidfood.co.nz was a US chain bidfood.com (Bidcorp).
Food markets keep closing down.
The consolidation of restaurant suppliers really affects the quality of taste a restaurant can get. My ex was a cook and the worse restaurants wouldn't even make their own sauces like Hollandaise - she would tell me what brand it was (often a restaurant supplier brand). It is noticeable when the chef has hand-selected their supplies e.g. tomatoes that have flavour.
The root cause is that consumers tend to optimise for cost.
Quality is harder to give a number to.
We're not completely screwed yet - with time/effort (and moderate means) you can find some amazing places at normal prices.
And there are people willing-enough to spend time/effort plus wealthy-enough but that market is much smaller (more exclusive). And unfortunately there are a lot of expensive places that don't optimise for food quality (because people desire other things for their money e.g. obsequiousness, rent-a-vibe cuisine, gastroflex, mealfluencing, yadayada). Aside: Roget's gets spanked by AI when looking for modern words.
There are absolutely a bunch of acquisitions/ consolidation in that food distribution space, but there are still hundreds of different distributors just in the US. However, most volume does flow through the largest distributors.
For example, I had to build a specific feature to merge distributors after an acquisition happens in the industry, to make the product work properly because that's such a common occurrence. Had the same type of feature for manufacturers (my customers) also, because they kept buying each other.
And the funny thing is I made about $20 an hour (unadjusted for inflation, ~4 deliveries per hour + $5 an hour). Today the drivers still around that amount, the restaurants pay more and the companies operating are often operating at a loss.
Something very strange happened in the last 20 years.
Not all Gen Z, of course. Most of the younger people I’ve worked with have been generally smart about finances. It’s a subset who fall into the normalization of luxury services as a standard cost.
'nonperishable food' or 'properly packed short travel' (i.e. dairy/frozen) IMO is a fairer niche of 'could be non-luxury with better societal outcomes', except for the 'as close to JIT as possible'. There's ways to optimize the process to where something on the scale of 10-20 homes could get their main groceries delivered two or 3 times a week and the overall cost would be lower than all of them doing so. Yeah you'd need a reefer van or an otherwise replenishable source of cold for dairy/frozen but at that scale the cost of such makes a lot more sense. Biggest problem is getting the right buy-in and mindset from consumers.
When you work from home and cant cook, delivery can happen right now. Or if you are having a small gathering with friends, delivery makes your life easier exactly when you need it.
Ubereats and the like still dominated the orders even with the 15% upcharge and even after notifying repeat customers that they can save money ordering direct
The convenience of having one centralized app with one account that can summon any food from any restaurant in a 10 mile area is just way too strong.
But I only order food once or twice a month- it's a little indulgence for me.
You could have the slickest ordering experience in the world and it won’t help you if no one sees it.s
The majority of people using these apps just want to scroll some restaurants and order something quickly. Saving 10% by going through extra steps, installing extra apps, going to a company’s website, and doing custom orders isn’t what most of their repeat customers want to do.
It’s a convenience thing.
The company that operates their ordering platform is mobihq.com (I have no affiliation with them)
For example Slice is a popular one for pizza. I know a business owner who uses it.
They have an app and optionally an online menu on your custom domain to take online orders and physical hardware for taking orders in your store. Think POS system, register, terminal, printers, etc..
For a business owner that covers you for accepting online and offline orders, and you can deliver direct to your customers.
95% of his online delivery orders go through this system because DoorDash charges him (the business owner) 30% for each order so he raised his prices there to partially offset that. Slice on the other hand is 5% cheaper than his baseline price for online orders for customers so it's a no brainer most use that. With that said, way more people call in or come in person than using the app. Probably a 90% / 10% split.
If I spent more than 2 seconds I could probably think of others
I've never not ordered from somewhere I was keen on based on their choice of delivery service.
If the consolidation results in price hikes and poor service, what's the lock-in? Why can't the takeaways just go rogue and offer independent deliveries?
Because delivery is really expensive. To do it well over a large area you have to have a lot of staff. You also want to keep them all busy, so it works better with a lot of resturants. Margins are thin, lots of risk in an area that is very different from the core activity of the resturant.
Its an almost textbook example of a situation where a specialist company makes sense.
AFAIK there’s no well-supported open source order/delivery management software. The companies that were ready during covid took all the extra, enormous demand for building delivery and order online systems built atop a typically antiquated order management system and have stuck around since
Sometimes i’ll get a cheaper delivery/food cost calling vs ordering online, but now some places are just raising their other prices to match online
In the 80s, I delivered pizza with no software. The place had a normal cash register, for pickups.
People would call, order, and we'd write it down. They it'd go on a wire with a clothes pin, until made. Then it went with the driver.
Each delivery was written down before leaving with it.
This worked for decades for everyone in the industry, flawlessly, perfectly, without issue.
Why is software required? Any given reasons are an unneccessary complication.
And here's the thing. Even in Palo Alto I order from companies still doing it this way.
The above system, paperwork wise .. again, is perfect. It's been done forever. It is faster and far less expensive than any unified payment and order system.
Seems to me, they're the smart ones.
the utility of the apps is to distribute the load from multiple restaurants across a shared pool of delivery drivers, so a restaurant who otherwise wouldn't be able to offer delivery can tap into that labour pool for infrequent delivery orders. food delivery apps have greatly expanded the number of places that offer delivery. most restaurants simply didn't offer it before the apps.
But there are so many independents. And they make very good food. And they still do it without apps, and do very well.
I can imagine some type of open protocol that lets them self-host an order service though, or at least an open solution that’s hosted by many providers and many separate apps. That would be nice for everyone
Maybe making the world a better place, means human interaction and less automation.
And phones in particular suck when you involve real-world connection quality and accents.
Because many of these delivery 'ad-hoc contractors'[0], sometimes even eating cost [1].
Pre-covid, you were often best off as a business either doing something that was 'known' to be delivery offered (i.e. pizza) or your next best option was to aggressively advertise it and have an extra staffer on hand willing to do the deed.
Then, you've also got the other form of arbitrage (or perhaps a cost thereof), of smaller independent restaurants/chains being unwilling or unable to handle the costs of properly covering drivers [2] and their pay when not driving [3].
Some restaurants started doing delivery during covid and kept it going. However most around here dropped because the volume wasn't worth it to them, on top of the 'streamlined flow' (don't need to give a route, the app the person picking up the 'pick-up' order is handling, does that for them.)
I'm not saying I like it but I get how it got here.
[0] - Remember that in the early days some of these companies would do all sorts of weird things like just have someone order on behalf.
[1] - There's an article about this involving 'pizza arbitrage' here https://www.readmargins.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitrage
[2] - To be clear, both the startups as well as locals have a checkered history when it comes to proper coverage...
[3] - One can argue that such a person can be made 'useful' during the waiting time, however it becomes a complicated equation between 'what can this person be paid to do' vs 'are they willing to do it for that base'.
DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40806356 - June 2024 (147 comments)
DoorDash and pizza arbitrage (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32086170 - July 2022 (230 comments)
Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852 - May 2020 (518 comments)
I wish we had more than 3 cell phone networks, this could all be one and I’ll just drive to the restaurant.
It kind of makes sense. App delivery is notorious for being pretty terrible service quality and having the food end up worse with more time spent between kitchen and you eating it. Pizza delivery on the other hand has been seen as quick with drivers interested in earning their tip, pizza places being conservative with delivery radius to not overextend their drivers, etc. Customers don't like getting an inferior product or service one day.
Additionally, at least in my experience it's pretty easy to get to where just paying the delivery fee of a pizza place is cheaper than paying for inflated per-item rates.
They're saying that the space these companies are competing in literally did not exist. It didn't in the US, maybe not 15 years ago, but 20 years ago it was nonexistent.
So as their is a ready supply of drivers, anyone who can raise an amount of money, and find a niche can enter the fray?
The suppliers (restaurants) are not happy with 30% or so being taken by the giants.
Made me laugh out loud. It's strictly the worst option. Only use it if my job wants to pay, or if very sick.
Cold food. Unpredictable delivery times. More expensive than eating out. Usually less nutritious than cooking yourself. And of course expensive as hell.
Doordash and Deliveroo do not operate in the same markets, so their merger would not reduce competition in any given market.
Prosus is a big conglomerate with its fingers in many different industries. But unless it starts buying multiple delivery companies that operate in the same markets, its acquisition of Just Eat also doesn’t appear to be reducing competition.
There’s huge room for disruption in this model when a $12 chipotle order costs the consumer $30 after higher menu prices + delivery fees + tip.
We would tell repeat customers they could use our website/app/phone to order directly and save the 15%. Almost no one converted. Convenience really is king.
Actually when I ordered through it I paid $45 instead of $60 via DoorDash/Uber Eats but the order was delivered by Uber.
The reason why I think this version will work is because it’s the same level of convenience in a centralized mobile app so single payment method, single portal to browse restaurants etc.
(I have no association with this company I just was looking into this last week on the train)
The only exception was chinese and pizza. Nobody else offered delivery. The current delivery market is much more than that.
This is what our actual economic system is all about: a series of market oligopolies whose greed is unchecked by our political establishment and legal apparatus with the complicity of the voting masses. Any attempt to implement measures to palliate the social decay and corruption it breeds will be branded as chinese communism and opposed by the media and the public.
We have collectively decided that the economy shouldn't be in service of the people, canis canem edit.
But it's not at all clear that major deliverers are even a majority of the delivery market. There are no pizza chains on the list. There are certainly no individual restaurants on the list.
> Why is my $8 burger $23 after fees - An average reddit user
Delivery in China (through Alipay, which may or may not be backed by Meituan) is generally cheaper after fees than it would be if you just went and bought the food in person. This might explain why Meituan has so much more transaction value than Doordash and Uber Eats. But it's not something I'd imagine drives a lot of user complaints.
This is the article's claim, but I'm fairly certain it's of the food delivery aggregator market. There's still plenty of independents.
I have kids, and can see McDonalds from my bedroom window, so I have more McDonalds points than I care to admit. Wolt is pissing me off every time. The amount of time the McDonalds staff needs to dedicate to Wolt staff is insane. They could easily serve twice the customer in resturante/drive-through if they didn't have to help a borderline incompetent Wolt staffer on a moped. It's actually rude to priorities deliveries over in restaurant customers. For that alone I will never use Wolt. Fortunately every single good pizza place nearby have their own drivers, who are actually polite and competent.
the food arrives lukewarm, in a smaller portions and costs more
in addition their widespread use hurts the restaurants you like
and drives down wages for society, because the only people who can live on what they pay out to the drivers are illegal immigrants paying zero tax (with the state paying for room and board)
it's all negatives