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I still can't fathom why so many customers voluntarily subject themselves to abuse by food delivery services. Overpay for cold, late food (which the driver might have already sampled). I mean I can sort of understand the use case for customers who are stuck at home due to illness or something. But I've seen plenty of young people in good health waste scarce funds on UberEats and similar services. Why?

When I want take-out food I just call the restaurant to order, then get in my car (or on my bike) and pick it up myself.




The last part is the answer for your question: they just don't want to get in their car if they can pay someone else to do that job for them. It's the same reason people pay for cleaning services.


Ordering my go-to meal at this restaurant down the block with Grubhub+ has $0 delivery fee and $1 "service fee". It takes roughly 4 minutes to go get it myself, assuming there's no line. $1 for 4 minutes is $15 an hour -- I value my time more than that.

It's always here within 10-15 minutes. It's never been cold, and the bags are stapled shut, so I don't think the meals have ever been sampled.

Plus it feels nice to be able to stay in sometimes.


At least where I live the prices when ordering through any of the apps are around 20% higher than when ordering from the restaurant directly.


grubhub raises the prices for a lot of restaurants by like $1 on every item even if youre ordering takeout here in Chicago. Calling the order in yourself can save more than you expect


These apps make the majority of their revenue from dense urban areas where people don't own cars. No one is driving across New York or San Francisco or to pick up their dinner.


If you live in NY or SF then you have multiple restaurants within easy walking / cycling / subway distance.


Umm, no, there are 4.6 million people living in the SF metro area and twice that in New York. I can assure you very few of them are within walking/easy transit distance of good restaurants. And most have responsibilities that don't let them get out of the house for dinner. If an hour of your time is more valuable to you than $5 then why wouldn't you order food delivery?


Every single person in NYC either has a car or lives walking distance to a good restaurants.


Umm, no. If you're not living in the SF city limits then you almost certainly have a car. And the tiny fraction of Bay Area residents without a car aren't the ones keeping UberEats in business.


The last time I checked I just had to pay 1,50€ extra compared to ordering directly with the restaurant. The delivery itself is free with Uber One. Getting your food delivered for 1,50€ seems pretty cheap to me.


I've tried a few times (whenever somebody sent that sort of gift card my way), and it was always >$10 in explicit fees, plus all the menu items being silently marked up 20%.

Mind you, that's still not exactly "expensive" for delivery [0], but I can make better food both faster and cheaper than waiting, I can pick it up and actually use an insulated bag faster than waiting for delivery, and pretty much any other food strategy at least guarantees I'll actually have the expected meal and not have to waste my time with customer support (or money if I decide it's not worth the hassle).

[0] Imagine you're a driver, you incur $3 in actual expenses, the delivery takes 15min, and they have to wait 15min for the food to be ready (this is the thing that makes pizza delivery more efficient -- as soon as you get to the store there's another pizza waiting). Suddenly that's a $14/hr gig without any benefits and where you need to purchase a special insurance on top of things, assuming the only part Uber keeps is the 20% fee they're scamming you out of. Beyond that, you're at a much higher risk of bodily harm than doing something like construction, and if those aren't good drivers I don't really want to be encouraging more of them to be on the street, especially with time pressures (and if they are skilled ... that's less than McDonald's pays even before you factor in benefits).


Right it’s expensive since, as a comedian describes it - you ordered a taxi for your hamburger.


that seems to be so cheap that at least one of {customer, delivery driver, restaurant} must be getting shafted for the business model to be profitable


I'm not sure how it's working. Maybe Uber is currently eating a part of the costs to gain market share. They handed out very generous 4x 15€ coupons last year for new users. That was when I signed up for Uber Eats.


I actually worked as a delivery driver for a local competitor for Uber eats back in college. In that case, it was pretty much all parties that were getting screwed. Restaurants gave up some of their profit margin, delivery personnel worked for poor wages and paid for their own equipment, and the customer paid a hidden markup on all items.

I started before they cranked up the exploitation and quit as the terms got increasingly bad.

I don't even think they ran a profit at that point, so I guess everyone was getting screwed




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