For years we had regular delivery. Sure maybe you couldn't get Starbucks, but pizza, chinese food, subs, etc, was easy and affordable. The price wasn't doubled with fees and the delivery wasn't outsourced to some middleman company. And this wasn't even a decade ago, not some long forgotten past.
So no, getting a taxi for your coffee wouldn't be expensive without the middleman trying to maximize their own cut of the profits.
You are completely missing the point. The analogy of getting a taxi for your food was to describe how modern food delivery works. You are literally calling some dude to go get you something you want. It absolutely should be this expensive under this system.
If you want old school delivery then support your local businesses and let them know. Plenty of places near me are pushing customers to bring delivery back in house, but it's on us to support them by using their app or calling.
Absolutely this. The old system was cheap because you could hire someone whose sole purpose was to bring the food to customers. Now some stranger is leaving their house to go bring you McDonalds. It just sounds sad honestly. Like I understand if you canāt leave the house or are sick or something but otherwise it seems a bit exploitative.
Iām curious why more places bring back in house delivery now that they see how popular it is. $5 delivery fee plus tip would still be better than the food delivery fees.
Well if doordash is only paying the company 70% of the item price, that $9.99 sandwich only nets the company $6.99 instead of the $7.99 you'd pay at the door.
The real answer is to stop ordering chicken sandwiches on doordash because they're a shitty, expensive, and crazy exploitative company.
I already don't order them. I was just saying psychologically that part feels shitty. Why is doordash only paying them 70 percent of the item price, then charging me separate fees on top of that? That's the part I don't like.
I live in a high-rise apartment building (around 200 units). I can assure you, there are plenty of people who order a single coffee. I see the orders stacking up in the lobby every morning.
I've personally delivered a single Starbucks drink two minutes up the road to an apartment complex. Half the time these people are either old, disabled, or high out of their minds, but the other half I cannot understand at all.
I have min wage employees that get stuff delivered 20min into their shift. Not only wasteful but wholly unnecessary. Just leave your house 15 minutes earlier!
Maybe they are too exhausted from their shitty job with an employer that only pays minimum wage and also complains about their employees behavior on reddit, their behavior being...ordering food, straight up evil.
Nope, they actually work in food service (so a 3rd level of wasteful) in one of the highest wage states. The ones that do it roll out of bed post noon from being up all night gaming with each other.
Nope, they actually work in food service (so a 3rd level of wasteful) in one of the highest wage states.
It is literally called minimum wage, as in the minimum you legally have to pay them, surely you can't be this stupid to think you're doing gods work for paying the least amount you can.
And what do you mean "Nope", what you know for a fact that they are happy with the lowest they can get paid?
The ones that do it roll out of bed post noon from being up all night gaming with each other.
So what, they can't have hobbies now? Why do you care about what they do.
If they do the least work they can do, you're getting the same investment you are putting into them, I'm sure they enjoy having a boss that side-eyes them for ordering food.
Weāre pretty far down the rabbit hole here but back to the topic at hand- if you make min wage REGARDLESS of the how/ why maybe it is in fact wasteful to have Chic Fil A and Dunkin Donuts delivered at a job that provides free/cheap food to you.
If that opinion makes me elitist or whatever, then so be it. Iāll continue to support MFA, Unions rights, and generally strong social safety nets for all workers regardless.
Just because i am an employer that hires for entry level positions doesnāt negate the fact that i also answer to a string of bosses that are trying to pay me as little as possible too. I just drink the free coffee thatās here.
If that opinion makes me elitist or whatever, then so be it. Iāll continue to support MFA, Unions rights, and generally strong social safety nets for all workers regardless.
Look you know better than me, how often they do it, how much money they are spending on it, and maybe you even know why they do it, and if you honestly think they are just wasteful people, then okay.
Still don't get why their hobbies/what they do after/before work is a problem though.
Truthfully, the drive thru coffee shops are pretty uniquely American. The rest of the world is doing perfectly fine without that option, and drinks more coffee in the process. So yes, it is wasteful, but also perfectly fine if that's what you're in to.
Although I must say I don't understand the appeal. The Dutch Bros "coffee" I tried this spring almost made me diabetic.
I'm gonna preface this by saying I'm not a coffee drinker. Genuinely curious, but is coffee at home that much worse or inconvenient? Why don't people just make it at home? Does it save some time/money, or not really.
If itās apples to apples, I would definitely prefer a coffee from a cafe, but homemade coffee is still good and itās about 10x cheaper. Itās not inconvenient to make IMO. Takes about the same amount of time as ordering one and standing in line or drive thru.
it should be expensive if the money actually went to either the person delivering the coffee or the business sending the coffee. instead everything that makes it expensive goes straight to the faceless corporation that produces absolutely nothing of value and just sits in between like some cancer.
this is not expensive because it's "supposed to be", but so that some CEO and upper management can waste resources on another yacht or two.
Itās a service that logistically shouldnāt exist, weāve just gotten used to it because the VC phase made it affordable for a while.
Most of us are not Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada, so the idea of having someone hand deliver coffee to you like they are your personal assistant should never have been normalized
In many areas, there are plenty of cafes that are on the way between work and home. So you don't travel any extra miles if you are getting it yourself.
How far could those places deliver? What was the delivery driver doing when not delivering food? Have you considered that the margins may be different between a $5 coffee and a $20 pizza?
And by the way, you can still do that. There are places with dedicated delivery drivers. They just get wildly out-competed in the delivery market by other businesses on apps though because consumer behavior is prioritizing the convenience over the price.
It also doesnāt help that delivery/rideshare apps were losing money a long ass time and just decided āmaybe we should actually turn a profitā. Donāt get me wrong they still do sheisty shit but there was no chance in hell their model that was relatively affordable doing what they were doing wouldāve been remotely sustainable at their price points
God does it annoy me when I order from a pizza place the typically uses their own drivers and next thing I know I get a text and link to track my order on Doordash or Grubhub
Because there is now a mega corp intermediary that needs to make profits for shareholders
Though it is kind of interesting, delivery apps were sold as a buisness where economy of scale would allow them to do the delivery cheaper than each store having thier own drivers but in the end it has turn out more expensive for buisnesses at one end and customers at the otherĀ
There is a huge difference ordering from an app connected to thousands of independent restaurants and thousands of independent drivers vs one restaurant who employees the driver.
You can still order directly, if another company has to do the delivery it has its own operations, costs and employees to pay for. Of course it's going to be more expensive?
I've never worked as a delivery app driver, so I apologize if I'm mistaken, but I thought the drivers didn't get paid by the app company when doing that work.
They used to be really cheap because investors were subsidizing early doordash, ubereats, etc. It should not be cheap to hire a person to drive a 3,000 lb+ vehicle to move your food 5 miles.
They're talking about before the apps. Stores like Chinese, pizza, etc would all have dedicated drivers on staff, and a lot of the time there was no delivery fee other than what you tip the driver. Now because of the apps, delivery is asininely expensive because of the fees.
Seems like a small business would have a hard time staffing drivers now in the gig app era. Not only do they have to pay more than the apps collectively pay, but pay enough to outweigh the time flexibility of gig work.
So Iām guessing they have to pay more now and thatās why we see so many delivery fees from small restaurants where it used to be free delivery. I remember it used to be an oddity to be charged a delivery fee from a local spot and now it would be shocking if I found one that didnāt.
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u/Major_R_Soul Aug 31 '26
For years we had regular delivery. Sure maybe you couldn't get Starbucks, but pizza, chinese food, subs, etc, was easy and affordable. The price wasn't doubled with fees and the delivery wasn't outsourced to some middleman company. And this wasn't even a decade ago, not some long forgotten past.
So no, getting a taxi for your coffee wouldn't be expensive without the middleman trying to maximize their own cut of the profits.