alt Hacker NewsI don't really understand how the personal economics for this work out for the majority of the population.
You'll always get some people who argue that time is money and that the saved time that people have from ordering from these services is an opportunity cost. But the reality is I'd wager that for probably 99% of the population, this is actually not true and the economics doesn't work out favorably after accounting for all the fees.
So then, all that is really left is convenience. And personally, I don't really find it that convenient at all. Often times the time it takes for an order to land on your doorstep is meaningfully longer than it would have taken for you to drive to the store and pick it up yourself.
In other words - these services really just profit off of laziness. And the sad part is I think we're just promoting a lazy society overall with lots of the newer services being offered.
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The majority of the population isn't using Doordash. A small portion of the population uses Doordash a lot. Think of all the college students who lack a kitchen and can't drive anywhere because they are drunk.
> I don't really understand how the personal economics for this work out for the majority of the population.
8.5% of American households have no car[1]. That isn't a strict majority, but if you can be charitably informal: paying for grocery deliveries is orders of magnitude cheaper than loan+insurance+maintenance for a car.
If you want to become car-less then the like of Instacart make that a realistic prospective (but Instacart specifically makes no sense because stores usually do it for free if you can tolerate next-day).
if you look at instacart's business model...they make barely any money on delivery. Vast majority of their profit is from advertising that they sell to brands. They create an audience of buyers with really good data and then monetize through advertising...so for the consumer you get very low cost delivery at the expense of seeing promoted products in the app.
I'll give an example of when I used a grocery delivery service two weeks ago.
I was landing from a flight and traveling home late on a Sunday. I also needed to go grocery shopping that night. I did not have a car at the airport, so my choices were either rideshare home for $70, or take the train for $10. The train takes about 30-40 minutes longer, but saves me $60.
If I did the rideshare, I could probably do the grocery shopping myself and get home a little bit later than when the train would get me home. Or I could take the train, order the grocery delivery, and then get home, unpack, and go to sleep. I chose to take the train and do grocery delivery. When I got home from the train, the delivery driver was walking up to my door with bags in hand. It worked out perfectly.
I could have taken the train and also done the grocery shopping myself, but it would have been very late by then and I had to be up early for work the next day.
> But the reality is I'd wager that for probably 99% of the population, this is actually not true and the economics doesn't work out favorably after accounting for all the fees.
> So then, all that is really left is convenience.
But nearly all technology and services you pay for arguably boil down to “convenience,” in the sense that people in the past either did the thing themselves or survived without it.
>Sometimes the time it takes for an order to land on your doorstep is longer than it would have taken for you to drive to the store and pick it up yourself.
This misses the point. One is you devoting your own time and attention to doing the task, the other is delegating it so you can use your time for other things. Some people are going to burn the extra time scrolling (not great), others are going to help their kids with homework or get a workout in.
I'm all for people getting time back even with the downside that not everybody will choose to use it well. If people are choosing brainrot over living well, there's a bigger issue than delivery services.
"Often times the time it takes for an order to land on your doorstep is meaningfully longer than it would have taken for you to drive to the store and pick it up yourself."
I don't think there are many people using this because they think they get it faster.
One man's laziness is another man's leisure time. I'd much rather have an extra hour to spend with my kids, read a book, exercise, or really do just about anything else, versus get in my car and fight traffic and parking to go retrieve a bag of food.
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No way.
Here's how it works out rationally: I just got home from work, the kids are a mess, the house needs cleaning, and my spouse is having a work crisis. The kids favorite treat is chipotle. Of all the options for "use money to make this go away so I can focus on the problem" paying $10 surcharge for doordash is by far the cheapest.
"Hey kids chipotle treats are on the way - but you have to go get your room tidied and leave mom alone" actually does work.
6 million smart, rational engineers, mathematicians, actuaries, professors in the country, each doing this analysis, four times a year, yields 240 million dollars in surcharges without an ounce of laziness.
Then add laziness on top.