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.
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
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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.
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
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
In my case, since I get DashPass through my CC (not directly paying for it), I've seen it discounted to below the price some restaurants list on their websites. I pick up all my orders myself though.
I wouldn't pay for DashPass directly, personally speaking at least. I don't use DD nearly enough to justify investing more into it vs. just ordering on the restaurant's website or calling in the order. The only reason I even use DD is because I get that as a benefit through my CC and it usually pushes the prices to same or lower as ordering directly.
You're not wrong
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.
Good to know. Thanks for the breakdown.
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.
Plebs could stop using that cancer too tho
Especially at the prices the bill comes out to be. I had a day years ago where my car was in the shop, so I used one of them to get lunch. A $10 sandwich ended up costing me $30, and some people do this every day. Fuck avocado toast (which is delicious), this is why people are broke.
Price is surely fucked but alright, fuck it, i got the cash and i need this food NOW
then I find out that "independent contractor" barely breaks even on the transaction.
THAT'S A HELL FUCKING NOW... i aint feeding corpo trash with my hard earned money. fuk 'em
Making money by facilitating deals and delivery. Sounds to me like everybody wins.
That's on you
This article is from May 2020; I wonder if DoorDash still does this.
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The owner of a pizza restaurant in the US has discovered the DoorDash delivery app has been selling his food cheaper than he does - while still paying him full price for orders.
Content strategist Ranjan Roy blogged about the anonymous restaurateur, who is his friend - he later named the business, which has outlets in Manhattan and Topeka, Kansas, US.
Mr Roy said he first heard about the situation in March 2019, when his friend started receiving complaints about deliveries, even though his outlets did not deliver.
At that point , he discovered he had been added to DoorDash - and noticed it was charging a lower price for one of his premium pizzas.
The next time, the restaurant prepared his friend's order by boxing up the pizza base without any toppings, maximising the "profit" from the mismatched prices.
"Third-party delivery platforms, as they've been built, just seem like the wrong model, but instead of testing, failing, and evolving, they've been subsidised into market dominance.
Saved 58% of original text.
I feel like schemes like this warrant a law that you're failing your fiduciary duty as a company owner and can be sued by any of the stakeholders for it if you can't prove failure to at least break even is due to genuine misfortune. Not even gross incompetence, that should just get you sacked with a dunce cap on top of having the company broken off and sold to a bidder that isn't hellbent on stripping it for parts.
That or company owners are only allowed to draw funds from the company's profits and funds coming from anywhere else, including from layoffs and corner cutting, are seized at 150% the value stolen and the company owners involved get treated as though they had committed embezzling so long as the books can indicate that the executives and owners drew more in compensation than was recorded as profit.
So basically, any time a company lets people go that’s stealing, and you want there to be a court thing that judges whether any particular loss was due to mismanagement or “genuine misfortune”?
That seems like a pretty extreme response to high delivery fees don’t you think?
If the executives could have just had less pay, yes, cutting someone off from their entire livelihood is theft. Especially if there wasn't even cause like criminal behavior or inexcusable misconduct.
And I think it's perfectly fair to just assume executives are lying about everything they say since *gestures wildly at all the everything since as far back as Smedly Butler.
I thought this sounded familiar. Turns out the article is from 2020.