[HN Gopher] 'It's Parasitic': Little Star Pizza Owner Lambasts D...
___________________________________________________________________
'It's Parasitic': Little Star Pizza Owner Lambasts DoorDash, Uber
Eats
Author : sharemywin
Score : 36 points
Date : 2023-06-09 18:38 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfgate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfgate.com)
| joshu wrote:
| the landlord probably extracts the vast majority of money from
| them. why do we give them a pass?
| jasonlaramburu wrote:
| Little Star Pizza is one, if not the best, pie in the Bay Area.
| It's very well known and loved. It is surprising that customers
| wouldn't be willing to order delivery directly from the
| restaurant, especially if they could pass along some savings.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The idea that people would rather pay unknown extra dollars to
| middlemen to avoid picking up a phone and talking to someone
| for 2 minutes is so bizarre to me.
| AuthError wrote:
| It saves you the trouble when your order goes wrong and way
| easier to argue/negotiate, it's the same reason airbnb works
| (else why wouldnt you just exchange number with the host and
| rent it directly)
| mercutio2 wrote:
| Little Star does not hold a candle to Zachary's. IMHO :)
| sharemywin wrote:
| what if doordash and the other apps go the way of groupon?
| gumby wrote:
| A post on HN within the past couple of weeks analyzed the take:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36146111
|
| Order directly from the restaurant (same reason I order mac apps
| from the developer even when I could use the mac app store).
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| The place I go to for takeout sushi uses a site on Chownow for
| online ordering. This SaaS platform charger the restaurant a
| monthly fee, rather than taking a cut.
|
| I just Googled Chownow, and apparently you can browse local
| restaurants as well: https://www.chownow.com/
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I'm sympathetic to the plight of long-standing restaurant owners,
| who signed up for a different role in a different environment and
| didn't get a say in how the ecosystem evolved. But "parasitic"
| doesn't seem like a reasonable analysis. Food delivery apps offer
| a wide selection of choices that consumers find valuable.
| Valuable enough that, as the article describes, they're often
| willing to pay more than they would if they had ordered directly.
| Why is it parasitic for delivery apps to satisfy this demand at
| prevailing market prices?
|
| An argument that this is _socially_ bad would be another thing. I
| could imagine a convincing article describing how restaurants are
| in a more precarious state than they used to be, and this has
| non-obvious second order effects on the quality of food or the
| general quality of life in a city. I don 't understand the idea
| that there's a general moral obligation for delivery apps to
| charge their business partners less money.
| Zanfa wrote:
| Not sure if parasitic is the correct term, but there's little
| to do with market prices when it comes to food delivery apps.
| They're all basically dumping with VC money, burning billions,
| driving out legitimate competitors.
| wwweston wrote:
| I think you just made the argument, more or less -- there's an
| implicit moral obligation in noting that there are negative
| social impacts.
|
| As for whether the term parasite applies:
|
| - They move in and take over the channel for demand, often
| burning VC cash to do it
|
| - But they can't meet that demand for the product themselves,
| and therefore can't survive on their own
|
| - Once they sit in between those who can meet demand and the
| market, they mess with the cost structure without apparent
| consideration for whether or not they kill any given host
|
| One can imagine a more symbiotic relationship but if the
| restaurant owners are basically tell us that it's already
| reaching the point where they die if they go off the apps and
| they die if they stay on, it's pretty clear that something is
| wrong.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Any restaurant that finds itself in financial trouble can
| point to delivery apps and say, well, if they charged me less
| money I'd have more money. What's not obvious to me that this
| is any different from saying that they'd have more money if
| their landlord charged less money or their suppliers charged
| less money.
|
| It'd be one thing if delivery apps were "taking over" the
| demand channel in the sense that they're _preventing_
| customers from ordering directly. But that doesn 't generally
| seem to be the case. As the article covers, it's not like
| delivery apps are even cheaper. (There was a story a while
| back where Grubhub was creating websites which looked like
| direct orders but weren't - I have no qualms about calling
| that parasitic.)
| namaria wrote:
| Makes me think of the pizza app in Silicon Valley. I just
| realized they were likely satirizing this very model. Who
| knew it could become so entrenched...
| sharemywin wrote:
| One problem is they aren't very transparent on fees. They
| charge both the business and the consumer. Probably offer the
| driver the minimum amount possible to entice them to do the
| delivery. And the business fees eat up much of the profit in
| the transaction. Also, this whole thing was built on free
| investor money in a wildly growling economy.
|
| What happens if demand sinks because consumers have to be more
| diligent with their money and 20% business fee + >$10 consumer
| fees + 20% tip isn't a good value anymore.
|
| it also drive up the prices on the rest customers because the
| business needs to raise prices across the board to survive.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| For most consumer products there's no fee transparency at
| all. When I buy a cabbage, I just get a price, not a detailed
| breakdown of how much money goes to the farmer, delivery
| truck driver, and grocery store. It might be higher or lower
| depending on where I shop, and I might be willing to pay more
| if the store is nicer or more convenient or I think they're
| more socially responsible. But I don't get the idea that
| transparency as such is an imperative here.
|
| If market conditions change and consumers have to be more
| diligent with their money, or funding conditions change and
| the delivery apps all discover that their business models are
| unsustainable, presumably customers can simply start ordering
| directly from restaurants again if that's the best way to get
| the food they want. It doesn't seem like there are any
| structural barriers to that.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-06-09 23:02 UTC)