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.
Sometimes you will get lucky and get a couple of orders from the same restaurant, but it’s usually stop at 2 or 3 different restaurants in the same area, then deliver. Occasionally I would take a single order if the money was good, but usually if I wasn’t taking 3 orders or more at once I wasn’t making enough money for it to be worth it.
It may have changed now, I fortunately got out of doing it a couple of yeas ago. It’s stressful and hard on your vehicle, and the companies you work for are shit. I’m not defending the gig companies as they are now, but in theory having one person deliver to multiple people isn’t a bad idea.
slightly more efficient that each person driving to the restaurant
Of course. But the correct solution here doesn’t require any individuals driving.
Are you implying a solution to delivery? Or that no one should eat (in or out) at restaurants?
Walkable cities
How does that fix food delivery? Are you only supposed to order from the restaurant around the corner?
Probably my personal bias, I have 5 different places I could get food from within 15 minutes walking. Closer to 20 when taking a bike.
When I visited the US I was gobsmacked by literally everything being a 30min walk at least, even in more densely populated areas
I have 5 different places I could get food from within 15 minutes walking.
Right, not exactly a lot of variation. It only really becomes viable once you add the bike back in.
So while a walk-able city is a great idea in general, it does nothing for this particular issue.
It’s quite telling that they didn’t think of walking or cycling
In most places I’ve lived for the past 40 years, I could just walk to the store. I have now four to choose from, all within 10 minutes of walking, and the city center is about an hour away. Ther are also bicycles.
By having groceries, you can make food yourself, at home. You can do this many times, for each time you actually have to get groceries.
As for eating at a restaurant, collective transport ranges from obvious to absolutely necessary, depending on the population density. When my family go out to eat, it’s a lot more convenient to hop on a bus or tram to the city center. It takes half the time, if you consider parking, it’s cheaper, and you can have a drink or two as well. You also get to engage with each other, during transit.
In the less car-retarded world, food delivery is also easier to do with non-car methods.
In any case, and because I know the kind of responses people reply with… Please don’t. I just gave you some examples and a different perspective. Americans are culturally dumb as shit when it comes to considering the obviously better alternatives, in so many different aspects, and I don’t really care all that much.
Thanks for the thought out answer!
You’re welcome. I want to apologize for my snarky tone. More often than not, questions on forums are not asked in good faith. Yours seems to have been.
Cheers man all good. I know a question like that can be charged, but my dumb brain just forgot people live in cities! Of course given the choice, you shouldn’t drive at all.
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.
It’s popular because the companies that run it are profiting enough to keep doing it. The actually drivers, however, don’t realize how much they’re being screwed over.
I doubt we’ll ever get data to support this but I suspect most drivers aren’t drivers for very long. A few, who are otherwise entirely unemployable, may stick it out. It sounds like a much better deal than it is, I think most people realize that after a relatively short time.
My experience with doing deliveries was the only people who had been doing it for a while were a: broke as fuck and 2, exactly the opposite of the type of person you might want handling your food.
I did delivery for long term at one point (doordash). Once you reach their highest rating and learn which orders to take/deny, it is actually quite profitable. Still massively exploitative, of course, but at the time I was making $18 an hour (high for my area), and that’s also factoring in breaks and commute. I had a very fuel efficient hybrid which added to the value proposition. I was broke as fuck at the time, but it wasn’t the job’s fault, more the fact that I only worked exactly the amount of hours I needed each month to pay for my basic necessities and rent, and spent the rest with my friends and fiancee.
How about factoring in vehicle wear, tear, insurance, and depreciation? You said “hybrid” so I’m thinking car, not bicycle. And cars are pretty damn pricy per (especially city) mile, hybrid or not. Also regular insurance policies often don’t allow doing such gigs for obvious reasons.
I also don’t know labor laws in the US, but here those companies got in major trouble because even ignoring the exploitative nature of the gig, they were misclassifying employment as “contract work” which allowed them to avoid paying employment taxes, days off, medical pay, insurance, etc. basically displacing all that burden on the State’s social systems. That’s the definition of unsustainable.
It isn’t sustainable. My car takes significantly less damage per mile than a gas only car, and the gas is nearly negligible compared to the pay when you get consistent 40+ mpg. Even then, it’s still not sustainable. I wouldn’t recommend the job to anyone, but if someone was desperate or really set on it, then it should really only be a temporary stop-gap to something more sustainable.
Yeah I think from the people I’ve talked to, it’s mostly people who do it part time as a way to make a bit of extra cash or like students who otherwise don’t have time for a full time job but still need some form of income.
There’s an episode on a Canadian show called Late Bloomer that tells the story of one of those bike food delivery drivers who is an international student and trying to basically survive. Good show, really fucking sad episode.
I drove down doordash for a while. Trust me, every driver knows how much they’re getting screwed. You’ll never be more class-conscious than having 30+ interactions with people as broke as you every day, and seeing every possible angle of fellow working class jobs. You do it for one of several reasons: you want some tiny modicum of control in your life through your schedule, you desperately need the money and it’s easy as fuck to get a delivery job, or you started it for one of those reasons or something similar, got good enough to be ahead of the curve, and it’s now more appealing than finding something else. The last one was where I was at.
I had done the job enough that I was making $18 an hour, well above the average in my area, and despite needing to pay for gas and taxes on a 1099a, it was still more appealing to keep control and flexibility over my life than to do something else. I could take days off whenever I wanted, see friends during the week, and coordinate my schedule with my fiancee easily. You’re very aware that you’re getting screwed, but you choose the devil you know, as they say.
you desperately need the money and it’s easy as fuck to get a delivery job
Ding ding ding.
I don’t hate myself enough to do Doordash (yet), but I’m too fucking autistic to keep any job other than rideshare.
If you don’t have a fuel efficient car, I wouldn’t even consider it. If you do, you need to devote a lot of time to it before it becomes at all worth it (100 orders in last 30 days, good ratings, and above 70% order acceptance rate). Once you’re there, it’s basically as profitable as any other service job, but with the caveat that it’s entirely on you and your executive function to work enough (very boring) hours to pay the bills.
Edit: also, wear and tear on your car is gonna be worth more than the job in any job where you use your personal car for 100% of the work. I would consider any of these jobs a temporary measure.
If you don’t have a fuel efficient car, I wouldn’t even consider it.
I encountered a guy doing DoorDash in a fucking RAM truck the other day. Just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
also, wear and tear on your car
And it should be mentioned that lots of short trips are hard on cars. EVs are probably much better for this, but I would guess that most delivery drivers (who are using their own personal vehicle) aren’t rolling around in EVs.
It’s popular because the companies that run it are profiting enough to keep doing it.
Is this even true? I thought most of these companies were still in the “chuck VC money into the furnace” phase.
I heard the same. But that was a few years ago. There was a popular DoorDash sub on Reddit that covered all of this stuff. So many drivers complaining about shit there.
The actually drivers, however, don’t realize how much they’re being screwed over.
Stop assuming stupidity because a lower monetary class.
Everyone realizes and knows this, you can’t do anything about it when you’re struggling to feed your family and you just need extra money.
I didn’t say anyone was stupid and I certainly didn’t imply class being an issue…
There’s a reason you assume everyone who’s a delivery driver doesn’t understand the cruelty of our monetary system.
I understand it might not be malicious but you should think on why that assumption is made.
When you’re disabled and cannot leave your home, this kind of stuff becomes a lifeline.
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
NYC actually used to have a citywide system like this. It was for mail but there’s no reason somebody couldn’t have snuck a burrito or a rolled-up pizza into one of those cannisters.
BRING IT BACK BRING IT BACK
Good news, everyone !
hsssss…thwooooop…KChUNK
I remember being a kid in the mid 90s, in a hospital that had such a system to send messages and pills around, the vast majority of their computers were not actually networked.
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.
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.
no. they are all delivered by car, even if they say it’s by bike.
bikes are too slow for be good for delivery
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Speed is measured differently in the US
yes, miles per hour instead of meters per second
Gridlocked traffic or having to deal with parking can change the math on this such that bikes make sense.
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.
Delivery is good option for people with limited mobility
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:
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.
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.
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
We pay other people to do the things we can’t or don’t want to do all the time, this isn’t different.
Did I stutter?
Make your own phone. Make your own toothpaste. Grow your own strawberries.
U OK, hon? You can take that shitty attitude back to reddit, mate.
Your gatekeeping sounds more like a Reddit attitude than what he said.
Wow what a great argument, “make your own phone” how about you make your own time instead of wageslaving for 13 hours a day
What is the point of shitting on someone for being working poor? Weird and gross.
You mean shitting on them for letting themselves be abused? No selfrespecting human would work for 13 hour shifts and be proud of it but hey, you do you if you’re so brainwashed to be a serf
No, you didn’t stutter, your argument was just nonsensical.
Making your own food is a very basic and fundamental skill, which is also much cheaper than any other option, and it has nothing in common with your disingenous examples.
But I guess that is also a very American thing, that homecooked food is seen some sort of exotic fantasy, instead of the default solution.
Nah dude, it’s not exotic. But sometimes the last fucken thing I wanna do after working a 13 hour shift is come home and cook a meal.
Agreed. I wish there were sensible healthy and affordable options. Like what catering provides to companies for lunch.
Why are you allowing yourself to be used in such a way? Sounds like you’re proud for working 13 hours in a shift. It’s not everyone else’s fault you don’t see yourself as a slave to your boss
It’s temporary while my wife completes her degree. Neither of us grew up very privileged, so I found something that supports us both. I’m not proud at all to be a wage slave. However, I am proud that I’m able to support both my wife and I on a single income while she’s in school. Sure it fucking sucks that I put in 50-70 hours every week. Either way, I beg fucken pardon if I decide to give myself a lil break every now and again and order delivery
Not an American. Also, able to cook and doing so most days. Am I allowed to have an opinion now? Good.
It’s just not for you to decide which tasks other people should perform themselves or outsource for money as long as somebody is willing to sell that service.
Making your own food is a very basic and fundamental skill, which is also much cheaper than any other option, and it has nothing in common with your disingenous examples.
I happen to think building and repairing computers or fixing my own bathroom sink are very basic, fundamental skills which are also cheaper than other options. Do I go around and gatekeep what people shouldn’t ask other people for help about?
Sometimes you just want to eat out without going out.
I guess cooking for many people at once should be more efficient in principle.
Consider you’re running a restaurant that serves warm food from 10am to 2pm. One cook prepares 100 warm dishes of 2 or 3 different categories in advance, by using big kettles and a large amount of ingredients.
It’s more efficient to buy many ingredients at once, then cook them in a big kettle, then serve them in a 100 plates,
instead of every one of these 100 people going grocery shopping, spending 30 - 90 minutes in the kitchen cooking, and then eating alone.
The argument isn’t about walking, biking or driving, it’s about delivery. A lot of take out is also delivered by bike.
Yeah i guess thats fine. Idk im just kinda sick and tired of ppls laziness.
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.
That sucks man. But atleast that motivates it a bit, if you would get delivered.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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)
Visa and Mastercard processing fee is slightly less than 2% of a total operation. Who takes the rest?
In the US it’s generally 2.5% - 3.5% (plus a bunch of BS fees and charges added on top).
I don’t know what payment service was used here. It is only around 2-3% on my invoices.
edit: Seems in the US a bunch of other stuff (like cost of running a website, insurance) can be included in the service fee.
2-3% is insane. It boggles my mind how it became accepted to pay almost everything with a credit card in america.
I’m not American but I got one with my bank account a few years back and I do use it a lot. It makes online payments super convenient. And with offline shopping it’s the vendors that eat the fee, so also no downside for the consumer (though I tend to use the debit card for that).
Which is the whole point. They chauferring you a burrito, and make you pay for their insurance.
Sure I guess.
But my point was that the delivery is not the service here. In fact the service fee is basically every BUT the delivery.
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
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.
…if you think delivery is too expensive, maybe don’t get your food delivered, then? Just a thought.
Can’t I do both though?
Both what?
Can’t I not order delivery but also think its absurdly expensive?
I’m sorry sir, we abhor nuance around here
I wasn’t disagreeing with you, I was just asking what two options you were talking about. It was just a normal question with no motive.
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.
Nicer in the winter to use a car. And depending on the type of service, these might otherwise be used as personal cars
Your personal car doesn’t make 50 deliveries in a day though, so that equation won’t work out.
?? I’m talking about the delivery people owning those cars and using them as personal cars after work, so they’re not being bought just for deliveries
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.
To be fair, most drivers have multiple ongoing deliveries (and space for them). So it’s not quite one car per burrito
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.
Should I have starved?
I mean I’d say you could’ve cooked yourself and saved many trips by car. But fair enough if we assume you must order food (which is quite uncommon to do on a very regular basis where I live), then sure.
And how do I get the ingredients to cook exactly?
We’re back where we were.
You don’t need 1 car trip for every single meal if you cook yourself. You obviously buy in bulk, usually for a whole week. That’s 6/7 car trips saved.
That’s kinda the whole point of having a car, so you can transport a lot of goods home. At least, that’s the point in my country.
In practice, sometimes you have to improvise, if something goes bad, or you realize you’re missing a key ingredient, or you’re too tired after a hard day etc
Sure. But none of those things happen on a daily basis. At least, they shouldn’t with a modicum of planning. It still saves probably at least half of the trips
Sure. But none of those things happen on a daily basis.
No, but in aggregate they do happen millions of times per day
Well yea but I meant for a single person. In aggregate, it still saves probably at least half of the trips.
You’re not really arguing that getting takeaway and buying food ingredients in bulk is just as bad when it comes to the amount of car trips, right? That seems ludicrous.
in history we learned how most civilizations starved to death until pizza hut started delivering food to people.
before then people would starve as there was no other way to get/prepare food at home.
So did you hunt for your dinner last night?
yes, because the optimal solution is clearly the most extreme counterexample you can imagine
An extreme counterexample is required in response to your extreme mischaracterization of the guy’s argument. I’m just continuing down your logic of exaggerating the argument to the point of being nonsensical. It turns out you only like it when you do it to other people, but not when its done to you.
my point is that a society optimise for an individual ends up being needlessly wasteful and miserable for an individual.
a society were time is so scarse that is in your best interest to have someone barely making a living so you can have overpriced cold meals, because having time to just exist and do groceries and cook is unfeasible.
however a more collectivist and less atomised society you would rarely be in such situation in the first place
You’re right, but that’s wanting something that the guy you’re replying to is powerless to change by himself. Simply arguing against using gig economy delivery services without fixing the underlying cause for why they need to use it doesn’t solve the problem.
he can change it, we all can,
participate in your community, find local mutual aids…
it’ll make you feel much better, less powerless, and make their neighbourhood a much better place to be.
Don’t expect problems to have neat, individually actionable solutions. Most don’t.
But cooking your own food is pretty damn near to being that.
Provided you have time, and the groceries available, and the…
Point is, taking every observation personally is missing the forest from the trees. Objecting to overuse of cars is an objection to a systemic issue (usually insufficientpublic transport), and it won’t be solved by individual action. Responding to it with “Well, I need a car, actually…” is missing the point. Same with delivery: getting into a “well, I can’t walk to food” “well, you should cook”, “well, I …” is missing the point of “there’s a whole mess of traffic that’s both expensive and has been managed without earlier - that’s weird, wonder what changed to cause it?”
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.
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.
