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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
In a large metropolis, yes. Unfortunately most cities in the USA are spread out so much that you almost need a car to go to the bathroom.
In the EU maybe, where there’s a lot of protected bike lanes and where most drivers are relatively competent (and don’t carry guns).
In SF it’s definitely done by electric moped
no. they are all delivered by car, even if they say it’s by bike.
bikes are too slow for be good for delivery
Gridlocked traffic or having to deal with parking can change the math on this such that bikes make sense.
It’s kind of wild how the standard fare of pizza and chinese food delivery was absorbed by gig work. They used to be employees of the restaurant.
Technology should have made restaurant deliverer’s lives easier and increased their efficiency. They should have made more money and worked less.
Instead we got gig workers who are basically impoverished wage slaves. They get no rights and no benefits. What is worse is whatever temporary profits they made have been sucked up by corporations by now.
This is a great case study for how to not use technology and how Tech Bros are not disrupters, they are destructors who profiteer, choke out, and then destroy markets.
Not sure about other places but here when you order pizza, it is MUCH cheaper to call the restaurant directly and have them deliver it. It’s usually faster too.
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.
Don’t expect problems to have neat, individually actionable solutions. Most don’t.
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.
…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
The cost of eating out alone is ridiculous now. There’s no way I’m paying an additional $30 to have it delivered, and risk the delivery guy eating half the order, having it arrive late and cold, or not showing up at all.
What do you want to me to do instead? Cook myself all the time? Go outside? No thank you.
Americans are too lazy to travel to their lunch. However, for the vast majority of the people, you’re not 15 minutes of walk away from a healthy assortment of food. Even in NYC, depending on where you are, it may not be possible to always go to your food. The idea of your lunch being paid is also not common, and you’re expected to be back to working (not done eating) within 30 minutes or less. In many cases, your lunchtime is timed and unpaid. Nurses and hospital staff? Eat the shit downstairs in the cafeteria or nothing; if you’re late coming back from lunch, it’s almost as bad as being late to work itself.
It absolutely baffles me that people are willing to spend that kind of money on low-quality takeout food that often arrives cold. I live just five minutes away from several five-star restaurants. If I wanted to, I could call ahead and pick up a fresh, high-quality meal in half the time it takes for a soggy, lukewarm fast food burger to show up at my doorstep—and I’d pay only a third of the price.
I genuinely don’t understand the appeal.
Most people don’t live so close to good restaurants. And driving is so miserable that they’ll pay others to do the driving for them.
Was going to say i and most cant afford even a single star restaurant but then i Realised those only go up to three and you’re talking about fake internet points.
One of the best restaurants (zero stars) i have regularly been too has no website and most people don’t even know what its called because its not on the storefront or the menu. People refer to it using the chef/owners name.
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
NYC tipped worker minimum wage is like 13 an hour. Not that The food delivery services are paying minimum wage …
In one of the most expensive cities in the world, an on-demand courier is not going to be cheap. Even if they’re on a bike.
What we’re actually suffering from is that the cost of business and minimum wage has increased but the middle and upper wages have not. That, and the delivery services are a bit out of control. They’re taking $10 out of every transaction to connect a web page to a mobile app.
It’s not just delivery services, basically everything has been co-opted by tech bros that take a huge cut for transactions that are between two parties that have nothing to do with them, just for providing a “shiny” platform. Hotel bookings, AirBnB, marketplaces, Uber, and so on and so forth. All platforms that could be managed by 3 Devs in a basement, or public and managed by the government, but somehow they require 10k employees and vacuum up billions?
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I don’t get it either. That shit is so much more expensive. Not only are they charging you delivery fees and “convenience” fees, the base prices of what you’re ordering at are also inflated through apps like Doordash and Uber Eats. Something that is only $5 if you went and got it yourself is now $8, plus a delivery fee, plus other fees. And then there is also a chance that the person delivering it is a piece of shit who just steals your food.
Sometimes you need the convenience.
If I have to work late and don’t have time to cook, and my kids need to be in bed in an hour and a half, then I’m going to pay a little extra, and that’s fine.
Not everyone has a wide open schedule every night.
And even if your food does show up … it’s cold. Do people just not know that food tastes worse the longer it’s been out of the oven?
Agreed 100%. It takes longer, costs more, and it’s worse. My credit card gives me a premium membership and monthly vouchers and I still don’t order that shit because it still costs more and stuff from the freezer tastes better.
Wife and I can also make better food, which may contribute to my distaste for delivery apps.
Funny how Chinese and pizza places could do this all day everyday and it cost 5% of the cost of the food. Not double it. Delivery food has been hit with inflation and market ‘innovation’ just like everything else. But let’s pretend working people wanting convenience services is somehow the problem…the avocado toast on wheels argument.
Well, we have to support the “tech innovator” middlemen who deserve their 20% cut of everything. Think of those poor souls. How else are they supposed to get rich?
Isn’t most delivery in NYC done by bicycle?
Hiring a whole middleman to chauffer your burrito (if you would be able to do it yourself) is unsustainable even if they walked.
Having one person deliver multiple meals to different people in a single trip sounds more sustainable than each individual person making the round trip…
The big cities in India have this thing (tiffin) where the husbands ride the trains in to work and the wives stay at home and make their lunches, which they pack into metal containers and take to the train station later in the morning. Workers gather up all the tinned meals and pack them into giant racks which then ride the trains into the cities, and other workers deliver them. It’s actually pretty efficient and makes use of rail capacity which would be otherwise unused.
And despite the scale of this operation, they never - like never - make a delivery mistake.
How so? Do ingredients for home cooking just apperate? Should everyone live on a farm with public transit nearby?
