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[jshackles]

Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage

There is such a thing as a free lunch

themargins.substack.com

So the story goes that DoorDash had incorrectly priced this guy's pizzas on their website at just $16, when they actually cost $24. Owner puts in a series of crazy orders (and ends up handing over boxes of dough to reduce expenses haha) and DoorDash never caught on.

All these food delivery companies (especially now) seem like such a joke.

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

4D chess.

 

[EviLore]

Pizza arbitrage! Great exploit of an automated system that should probably have some human oversight.


Also:





DoorDash is a total trash-tier service. Lowest order accuracy and lowest successful delivery percentage out of all the delivery services, in my experiences.

 

[jshackles]

If I were a business owner that started getting bad reviews because another company was doing poor delivery service, I'd be pissed too. This was my favorite part of this article:

My mind, as a combination trader and startup person, instantly had the though - just run this arbitrage over and over. You could massively even grow your top-line revenue while netting riskless profit, and maybe even get acquired at an inflated valuation He told me to chill out. Maybe this is why he runs an "actual business" while I trade options while doing brand consulting and writing newsletters.

I like the idea of netting riskless profit and driving up your top-line revenue at another business's expense.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Pizza arbitrage! Great exploit of an automated system that should probably have some human oversight.


Also:





DoorDash is a total trash-tier service. Lowest order accuracy and lowest successful delivery percentage out of all the delivery services, in my experiences.

Could not agree more!

 

[J-Roderton]

Wow.
I haven’t had a single positive experience with any food delivery service yet.

 

[NecrosaroIII]

Wow.
I haven’t had a single positive experience with any food delivery service yet.

Really?

I use uber eats regularly. It's mostly fine. A few misfired but it's usually the restaurants fault

 

[infinitys_7th]

How the hell is Door Dash still in business like this?

 

[J-Roderton]

Really?

I use uber eats regularly. It's mostly fine. A few misfired but it's usually the restaurants fault

Yeah. Probably because I’m sorta on the outside of a larger city. Idk. It took several hours just get orders from places fairly close by. Neither time the orders were 100% correct either.

not sure if it was door dash or what. My wife did the ordering. I know I haven’t tried the Uber one, though.

 

[Sub_Level]

The Virgin Pyramid Scheme vs The Chad Pizza Arbitrage

 

[jshackles]

To me this feels a lot like how MoviePass utterly and completely failed to transform the movie industry.

I guess delivery drivers for services like this are just given a credit card from DoorDash to actually buy the food? I know with MoviePass it was branded, and a lot of theater chains famously started denying people's cards - I wonder if restaurant owners could do the same with these clowns?

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

I used to use DoorDash until I stopped and looked at how much money I was spending in single meals. With the inflated prices, service fee, tip, you could be looking at 40 bucks or more for an appetizer and meal. Haven’t used it in quite some time.

I do use instacart for grocery delivery, it’s kinda a hopefully temporary necessary evil for me

 

[Flying Toaster]

Door dash is an atrocity. All meal order services are now that I think about it.


You put the order in, you go to the place you put the order in and you have a beer while you wait for the order. Talk to the owners or talk mad shit with the wait staff about life in the surrounding community. People are forgetting how to freaking interact with one another.

Now with this covid crap we have to change it up a bit. Place the order, wait at home a few minutes longer (the amount of time it takes to consume the beer you usually consume when ordering out) and then head over and get the food. Don't forget your mask. This is not rocket science.

For years all I hear about is we are cogs in a machine and we are ruining peoples lives by making them servants. All of a sudden shit like Door Dash hits and OMG I have to be lazy and order my shit and have a servant that gets paid badly bring it to me.

 

[SurprisedPikachu]

Pizza arbitrage! Great exploit of an automated system that should probably have some human oversight.


Also:





DoorDash is a total trash-tier service. Lowest order accuracy and lowest successful delivery percentage out of all the delivery services, in my experiences.

We haven't had any issues with DoorDash, but where I'm at it's kind of hard to screw up.. can't say the same for Austin, TX.

 

[Rentahamster]

"pizza arbitrage" is the best phrase I've heard this month.

 

[Irobot82]

Wasn't this literally a plot line in Silicon Valley?

 

[Paulxo87]

People need to learn how to cook. This is the moral of the story. I have been locked down for over two months in NJ and I have ordered take out one single time. And it was a bunch of chinese food/sushi that I took to my parents house for mothers day because that's what she wanted. These doordash prices are absurd and you can't trust these people with your food.

 

[jshackles]

People need to learn how to cook. This is the moral of the story. I have been locked down for over two months in NJ and I have ordered take out one single time. And it was a bunch of chinese food/sushi that I took to my parents house for mothers day because that's what she wanted. These doordash prices are absurd and you can't trust these people with your food.

Seriously this. Speaking of pizza, my wife has started making pizza from scratch that is a) absolutely delicious and so much better than anything you can find in a restaurant (open or otherwise) and b) cheap as shit. Cheese / pepperoni / onion / bell pepper / sauce and we can make them for about $4 worth of ingredients for two of them. She makes the dough from scratch. A few times we've gotten super fucking fancy and made pizzas with hamburger and that bumped the price up to about $8 (for two pizzas).

Obviously it takes more time and effort, but pizzas these same size at Dominos would be $10 each or for a real comparison probably $20 each from the fancy pizza joint down the road that's been closed for a few months now.

 

[Papa]

This reminds me of the time I ripped off EB Games enough to buy a new PS3 from them. They had a trade in on a new release game for $90 and a competitor was selling it for $69. So I bought a bunch of copies and traded them in at the numerous EB Games stores in my city. I nearly fucked it by getting cocky and attempting to trade in two sealed copies at one store. The store manager got angry and kicked me out and I’m pretty sure he put out a warning about me on their system. I was nearly finished though so I traded in a few more and had enough store credit for the PS3. When I went to get the PS3, the store manager seemed a bit perplexed and went into the back to make a phone call. He ended up letting me redeem the store credit so all’s well that ends well. And that, kids, is how I met my PS3.

 

[Paulxo87]

Seriously this. Speaking of pizza, my wife has started making pizza from scratch that is a) absolutely delicious and so much better than anything you can find in a restaurant (open or otherwise) and b) cheap as shit. Cheese / pepperoni / onion / bell pepper / sauce and we can make them for about $4 worth of ingredients for two of them. She makes the dough from scratch. A few times we've gotten super fucking fancy and made pizzas with hamburger and that bumped the price up to about $8 (for two pizzas).

Obviously it takes more time and effort, but pizzas these same size at Dominos would be $10 each or for a real comparison probably $20 each from the fancy pizza joint down the road that's been closed for a few months now.

Pizza is the only thing I do not bother with. But that's because I live in central NJ which has the latest and greatest pizza of all time within a mile of any direction lol.. but if you live elsewhere I hear ya! Any homemade pizza will be leagues better than dominoes etc

 

[IntentionalPun]

DoorDash and Uber Eats mostly now have places that actually have signed up; they (and particularly DoorDash) were particularly awful for the first year or so.

 

[Grinchy]

The one thing I like about DoorDash is when a business just uses their own site to handle the order, but has DoorDash deliver it. There's no menu item markup, no service fee, no delivery fee, ect. Just a tip for the driver and the same prices I'd have paid if I went and got it myself.

Chipotle and Bob Evans both do it this way in my area. I have to imagine they are giving DoorDash 25% of the order cost or something, but what do I care? I'm saving a trip for a few bucks.