I say good for him. Doordash can bleed all of the money it wants.
That’s your takeaway? It’s like Walmart moving into a town and undercutting indie business prices until the indie businesses close, then raising prices.
What doordash is doing is scraping restaurants’ websites for prices, taking a temporary loss, then going to the restaurants saying, “We got all these orders, it’s a win for both of us!” to sell the contact, then raising prices and tacking on extra fees, making money off the restaurants and the customers
I’m not sure the comparison is quite apt, I’m not familiar with any independent food delivery services beyond just asking your buddy to grab some snacks on the way over for a hangout or something.
But I am vaguely familiar with the idea of loss-leading and think its despicable. If no regulation is ever going stand in the way of practices, then knowing they’re being exploited by folks like pizza dude makes me feel a bit better, at least.
In some ways, loss leading can be done in more or less ethical ways. For instance, a small mom n pop hardware loss leading on lumbar or hammers and taking a reasonable profit on ten penny nails. Or something, maybe a better example is the Costco 1.50 all beef foot-long dog and soda but their memberships are reasonable profit for those who would go often enough and buy enough to make it worth it. It’s late and I’m tired, I hope you get the general gist. But yes, doordash is just double-dipping on the sleazy. And maybe loss leading isn’t ever acceptable, but I’m simply unaware/haven’t thought of reasons that make it so. I’m willing to hear any argument against any of it, though.
DoorDash is backed by investment giant Softbank, which this week posted a record-breaking loss of nearly $13bn.
Defending the loss, chief executive Masayoshi Son reportedly compared himself to Jesus.
Holy fuck, imagine the ego.
I mean, Jesus famously overcharged on delivery and transaction fees when feeding the masses with all that miraculously created bread and fish while also losing 13 billion dollars in the process, somehow, right?
No, wait, I’m thinking of a different guy…
This comment reminded me of Supply Side Jesus: https://www.beliefnet.com/news/2003/09/the-gospel-of-supply-side-jesus.aspx
Masayoshi Son’s business acumen is only matched by Elon Musk.
That’s funny but I think Son is easily the dumbest billionaire. He’s also the bag-holder for the whole WeWork grift. Got more dollars than brain cells.
Our nearest Pizza Hut delivers via Doordash whether you order direct or through DD, but if you order direct its 30% cheaper. I’m not sure who’s eating the markup.
The customer who’s paying the higher price is eating it
Doordash charges restaurants a percentage of the gross from the sale. Rather than eat this cost, restaurants are encouraged but not forced to add a markup on the prices they give Doordash (or insert your favorite third party delivery app here). They all do it.
If you order from a store’s own website though, Doordash (I don’t know if other third parties do this) did not “find” or create the business/order… they are really only handling the delivery portion.
In this instance, they still have some fees but do not take the large percentage, as that is a finder or broker fee. They aren’t bringing the restaurant the business, it’s the other way around.
Thus, restaurants can use their normal pricing. If you can find the places near you doing this, it’s a much better deal than using Doordash normally.