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alx_the_new_guytoday at 7:54 AM2 repliesview on HN

If you care about your food being warm enough to eat, why not just pick it up yourself?

I got a glimpse of this "delivery economy" myself last week, so

Self pick-up was:

>2x faster (20min vs ~40min estimate, probably more in the end), could be better if I actually knew the area and picked a better parking spot

>1/3 cheaper (total dropped from 30$ to 20$. I'm not from the US, and make roughly 6$/hr, so the sum is more significant than it seems)

>food was probably generally more fresh, but I don't eat sushi much, so can't tell the difference

>also, food was probably less banged up, because I'm not on the clock and don't drive like a madman

some counterpoints:

> we were already driving home from somewhere, the place was the opposite way though

> we live in a dense city, but not too dense, so owning a car and driving it around is possible even on a not so large income, but everything is pretty close

Generally, my family never stopped doing things "the old way", we barely use any delivery services, taxi, and everything the gig economy is involved in. Likely saves us good amount of money in subtle ways. Also, specifically not giving money to those platfoms is a minor benifit in my book.

I get there are people who are disabled, busy (parents with small children, ...), and so on, but it seems to me that for most people the barrier is psychological, and is about task/mode switching more than actual time and effort.


Replies

xboxnolifestoday at 9:01 AM

All of these are trade offs people who get food delivered are aware of, its not new information.

The only one I disagree with is the "2x faster". Yes, the time from when you start thinking about food to eating food might be halved, but food delivery is basically zero time. I dont need to do the getting the food portion. So, 0 minutes vs 20 minutes.