John Oliver discusses food delivery apps, how they are both helping and harming restaurants and workers, and why starting an orphanage definitely should not ...
I’ll cook as part of a date night, but for general sustenance it’s a huge hassle for me. I’ve done meal prep but shopping for groceries and keeping track of inventory (to see if I have enough, or to if something is expired) is a huge hassle too. So when I cooked it was basically to do the same keto recipe which only had like two ingredients and made enough to last five or so days. I don’t mind eating the same food every day, and in fact that kind of discipline was useful for losing weight.
Now I exclusively use DoorDash. My credit card gives me free delivery, and while I’m sure door dash increases the prices of the menu item, I actually compared total cost of DoorDash vs the restaurant’s in house delivery and the in house delivery is less than a dollar cheaper. And that price is only valid at the restaurant for a first time order. On the DoorDash side I can trigger door dash discount (a flat dollar amount not a percentage) by hitting a certain dollar amount, which I just barely hit it using the items I order, getting maximum (percentage) discount. The items I order are also pretty filling (meat and fat not carbs), so it all works out very nicely.
For that extra dollar I get to use the door dash app which is really convenient not just for easily re ordering food (or getting a double dash) but also so I can track eta, and text the driver one-time-use elevator codes so they drop it off right at my door.
Grand total for two burritos? 26.36 and they’re big enough that usually I only eat the second one on the same day if I exercise.
That one guy who said millennial subsidy is right. At least for me, I am getting a huge value of the service.
I order basically every day and I never tip, and you could flame me however you want and I’ll never care.
My old place was difficult to deliver to and I left detailed instructions. Anyone who can’t read it got one star. I don’t understand the whining about ratings. They are there for a reason. The app also separates food rating from driver rating so that concern mentioned by that one lady is a non issue.
If you are too dumb to read delivery instructions on a DoorDash you absolutely deserve to get fired. That is not some evil algorithm, it’s simply a performance review.
Yes. I have some very, very helpful feedback. Feedback that would fundamentally change your whole life. It would transform your world-view and make you a better person. Not just interpersonally, but also within your true self, helping to transcend your own ego, soaring, TRULY SOARING beyond the bounds of what you once thought possible.
Take my hand. If you dare… to embark on this journey with me. DM me for further instructions.
You somehow completely missed the point of these companies being abusive to their drivers. You’re also an asshole, but that is a different issue to be discussed, I guess.
The argument isn’t that the services aren’t convenient. They are absolutely convenient. Moreover, I would argue that convenience hits pretty hard when you consider most households under the babyboomer generation are working more, and can’t afford to have one adult at home doing meal prep while their spouse is paying the rent / mortgage.
The point of the piece is that these services fuck over workers and restaurants.
The workers aren’t fucked because of DoorDash. The workers are fucked because we don’t have universal health care, so being a contractor means you don’t get health care. But that’s not DoorDash’s fault.
Restaurants aren’t fucked either. They can choose to not hit the “accept order” button if they are swamped or don’t think it is profitable.
I worked for one of these companies in HQ, and was very closely tied to a lot of pay and compensation stuff. We, and our competitors, lobbied VERY hard to prevent government fair pay.
Even if all “contractors” had universal healthcare, I guarantee you, they’ve be trying to remove barriers that protect workers rights and pay.
These companies lobby to intentionally fuck over people, and they do it because the business model is not profitable. They all assumed they would have unlocked large automation and logistics efficiency by now, but bundling 2 or 3 orders is as far as they’ve gotten.
That’s not true. I worked for a restaurant that was unwillingly put on the DoorDash site/app. Consumers put their order in through DD and DD would put it into our online ordering system. We had customers calling about delivery times and cold food, but we didn’t do delivery. This is even in the video - Chipotle sent them a Cease & Desist.
There’s more to the business than just placing an order and cooking food. The restaurants reputations are in the hands of these services because the consumer is interacting with the service, not the restaurant.
And what did the “customers” say after you told em it’s a DoorDash problem? (I argue your customer is DoorDash since they ordered the food, but I recognize that user might mistakenly rate your restaurant poorly on an app outside of DoorDash - who cares if they rate you poorly on DoorDash, you don’t want this non censensual business anyway right?)
Do we really need to design a system that takes into account the fact that users blame the wrong thing? How is this any different than dealing with people of average intelligence who Karen about other random stuff that isn’t your fault? They’re dumb. Put on your customer voice and tell them kindly to fuck off. Even if you did have a partnership with DoorDash, the delivery is still not your fault so they were still wrong to call you. It is your fault if you finished making the food too early though. In-person customers, not just DoorDash, rely on your pickup time to be accurate. If I’m on time and my food is cold cuz you finished early, imma be pissed.
DoorDash lets you rate the driver separate from the food, and a reasonable person knows that the driver doesn’t work for the restaurant and therefore the only way it’s the restaurant’s fault is if the food isn’t placed on the pickup counter while it’s hot or wasn’t decently packaged to stay decently hot for fifteen minutes for someone to get home and eat it. Everything else: anticipating cook times so that a driver accepts the job and arrived at the restaurant on time, is on DoorDash.
Lots of assumptions in this comment, the biggest one is that hungry people are reasonable. They’re not.
The main issue is that we never opted into this experience that we didn’t control from beginning to end. That’s kind of an important piece of service delivery. Yes, when Karen is mad about something that’s not our fault, we could just put on our customer voice disarm the situation. But there are other things we could do when we owns the entire process.
What happens when you’re sitting at a restaurant and your server accidentally rang in the wrong dish? They can bring you a new one, offer something complimentary, take it off the bill, apologize in person, buy you a drink… I realize I’m comparing an in person experience to a delivery order, but it applies there too. DoorDash had used an out of date menu for our restaurant for their website, so people had ordered one of our most popular seasonal dishes out of season. Their orders get to their house and it’s not there. They’re upset so they try and call DoorDash (good luck). That doesn’t go anywhere fast (timing is important now because some of the party has hot food they ordered and some does not). It was never communicated to them that it wasn’t actually an option, even though it was (incorrectly) listed on the website/app. So they call the restaurant, who has no idea what the customer is talking about because they don’t know anything about DoorDash being a partner and they also know for a fact that the dish in question is not on the menu. So now the manager has to get involved, unravel the entire situation because there is an upset customer on the phone during peak dinner shift and they are pulled away from their other duties (taking care of guests they know about). The restaurant is in the community (very important) and DoorDash is not. When people talk about that restaurant in conversation (or on yelp, trip advisor etc) that experience is going to come up as a reflection of the restaurant, not DoorDash because the person posting the review is posting a review of the restaurant (NOT DOORDASH).
The video said that if you get bad ratings you get pushed out of the system by getting fewer deliveries etc. How do you know that ratings mean nothing?
I drove for doordash about ~2 years ago. Everyone knew the ratings had no say in your orders. You could see all the threads and Reddit posts of new drivers asking, and nothing but replies along the lines of the only metric that matters is failed deliveries. Fail to complete too many (IIRC it was something like you needed 80% success), then you essentially get fired in the form of you won’t receive any more orders.
To be fair, that might have changed since, but IMO those platforms are fragmented and they need all the drivers they can exploit. So unless a driver fails too many times, what do they care? From personal experience though, it can easily be the customers fault and they get pissy and leave a bad review, which makes ratings that much more irrelevant.
Example/old rant: Had a guy order a single Popeyes sandwich, with like $1 tip. I took it because it SHOULD have only been like 7 mins total, as I was right there, for a quick ~$5. They gave 0 instructions for what must have been an apartment complex designed by a mouth breather who failed Elementary School. 1/2 the buildings where numbered/lettered the same. They didn’t use any kind of order for building nor door numbering, and on top of that the entrances were under construction. So every door had its number missing except for a little piece of painters tape with a sharpied number on it. After 10 minutes of looking for his apartment, and 0 response from the customer, I left it at a random apartment whose number matched and took the photo, and left a comment it was impossible to find their apartment. Of course within minutes of completing the order they start blowing up my phone, to which I just finally blocked their number.
I’ll cook as part of a date night, but for general sustenance it’s a huge hassle for me. I’ve done meal prep but shopping for groceries and keeping track of inventory (to see if I have enough, or to if something is expired) is a huge hassle too. So when I cooked it was basically to do the same keto recipe which only had like two ingredients and made enough to last five or so days. I don’t mind eating the same food every day, and in fact that kind of discipline was useful for losing weight.
Now I exclusively use DoorDash. My credit card gives me free delivery, and while I’m sure door dash increases the prices of the menu item, I actually compared total cost of DoorDash vs the restaurant’s in house delivery and the in house delivery is less than a dollar cheaper. And that price is only valid at the restaurant for a first time order. On the DoorDash side I can trigger door dash discount (a flat dollar amount not a percentage) by hitting a certain dollar amount, which I just barely hit it using the items I order, getting maximum (percentage) discount. The items I order are also pretty filling (meat and fat not carbs), so it all works out very nicely.
For that extra dollar I get to use the door dash app which is really convenient not just for easily re ordering food (or getting a double dash) but also so I can track eta, and text the driver one-time-use elevator codes so they drop it off right at my door.
Grand total for two burritos? 26.36 and they’re big enough that usually I only eat the second one on the same day if I exercise.
That one guy who said millennial subsidy is right. At least for me, I am getting a huge value of the service.
I order basically every day and I never tip, and you could flame me however you want and I’ll never care.
My old place was difficult to deliver to and I left detailed instructions. Anyone who can’t read it got one star. I don’t understand the whining about ratings. They are there for a reason. The app also separates food rating from driver rating so that concern mentioned by that one lady is a non issue.
If you are too dumb to read delivery instructions on a DoorDash you absolutely deserve to get fired. That is not some evil algorithm, it’s simply a performance review.
You’ve managed to pack such a dense amount of bad takes, self-delusion, and misinformation into a single post that I’m actually impressed.
Thanks for the buzzwords. Do you have any actual feedback?
Yes. I have some very, very helpful feedback. Feedback that would fundamentally change your whole life. It would transform your world-view and make you a better person. Not just interpersonally, but also within your true self, helping to transcend your own ego, soaring, TRULY SOARING beyond the bounds of what you once thought possible.
Take my hand. If you dare… to embark on this journey with me. DM me for further instructions.
You somehow completely missed the point of these companies being abusive to their drivers. You’re also an asshole, but that is a different issue to be discussed, I guess.
Rewatched the whole video just for you. What abuse? Rewarding drivers for being quick? Why is it DoorDash’s fault if you run a red light?
The argument isn’t that the services aren’t convenient. They are absolutely convenient. Moreover, I would argue that convenience hits pretty hard when you consider most households under the babyboomer generation are working more, and can’t afford to have one adult at home doing meal prep while their spouse is paying the rent / mortgage.
The point of the piece is that these services fuck over workers and restaurants.
The workers aren’t fucked because of DoorDash. The workers are fucked because we don’t have universal health care, so being a contractor means you don’t get health care. But that’s not DoorDash’s fault.
Restaurants aren’t fucked either. They can choose to not hit the “accept order” button if they are swamped or don’t think it is profitable.
I worked for one of these companies in HQ, and was very closely tied to a lot of pay and compensation stuff. We, and our competitors, lobbied VERY hard to prevent government fair pay.
Even if all “contractors” had universal healthcare, I guarantee you, they’ve be trying to remove barriers that protect workers rights and pay.
These companies lobby to intentionally fuck over people, and they do it because the business model is not profitable. They all assumed they would have unlocked large automation and logistics efficiency by now, but bundling 2 or 3 orders is as far as they’ve gotten.
This isn’t DoorDash specific tho. This is every publicly traded company. You’re complaining about lobbying, not DoorDash
That’s not true. I worked for a restaurant that was unwillingly put on the DoorDash site/app. Consumers put their order in through DD and DD would put it into our online ordering system. We had customers calling about delivery times and cold food, but we didn’t do delivery. This is even in the video - Chipotle sent them a Cease & Desist.
There’s more to the business than just placing an order and cooking food. The restaurants reputations are in the hands of these services because the consumer is interacting with the service, not the restaurant.
And what did the “customers” say after you told em it’s a DoorDash problem? (I argue your customer is DoorDash since they ordered the food, but I recognize that user might mistakenly rate your restaurant poorly on an app outside of DoorDash - who cares if they rate you poorly on DoorDash, you don’t want this non censensual business anyway right?)
Do we really need to design a system that takes into account the fact that users blame the wrong thing? How is this any different than dealing with people of average intelligence who Karen about other random stuff that isn’t your fault? They’re dumb. Put on your customer voice and tell them kindly to fuck off. Even if you did have a partnership with DoorDash, the delivery is still not your fault so they were still wrong to call you. It is your fault if you finished making the food too early though. In-person customers, not just DoorDash, rely on your pickup time to be accurate. If I’m on time and my food is cold cuz you finished early, imma be pissed.
DoorDash lets you rate the driver separate from the food, and a reasonable person knows that the driver doesn’t work for the restaurant and therefore the only way it’s the restaurant’s fault is if the food isn’t placed on the pickup counter while it’s hot or wasn’t decently packaged to stay decently hot for fifteen minutes for someone to get home and eat it. Everything else: anticipating cook times so that a driver accepts the job and arrived at the restaurant on time, is on DoorDash.
Lots of assumptions in this comment, the biggest one is that hungry people are reasonable. They’re not. The main issue is that we never opted into this experience that we didn’t control from beginning to end. That’s kind of an important piece of service delivery. Yes, when Karen is mad about something that’s not our fault, we could just put on our customer voice disarm the situation. But there are other things we could do when we owns the entire process.
What happens when you’re sitting at a restaurant and your server accidentally rang in the wrong dish? They can bring you a new one, offer something complimentary, take it off the bill, apologize in person, buy you a drink… I realize I’m comparing an in person experience to a delivery order, but it applies there too. DoorDash had used an out of date menu for our restaurant for their website, so people had ordered one of our most popular seasonal dishes out of season. Their orders get to their house and it’s not there. They’re upset so they try and call DoorDash (good luck). That doesn’t go anywhere fast (timing is important now because some of the party has hot food they ordered and some does not). It was never communicated to them that it wasn’t actually an option, even though it was (incorrectly) listed on the website/app. So they call the restaurant, who has no idea what the customer is talking about because they don’t know anything about DoorDash being a partner and they also know for a fact that the dish in question is not on the menu. So now the manager has to get involved, unravel the entire situation because there is an upset customer on the phone during peak dinner shift and they are pulled away from their other duties (taking care of guests they know about). The restaurant is in the community (very important) and DoorDash is not. When people talk about that restaurant in conversation (or on yelp, trip advisor etc) that experience is going to come up as a reflection of the restaurant, not DoorDash because the person posting the review is posting a review of the restaurant (NOT DOORDASH).
Those driver ratings mean literally nothing, the ONLY metric that counted as a driver was incomplete deliveries.
The video said that if you get bad ratings you get pushed out of the system by getting fewer deliveries etc. How do you know that ratings mean nothing?
I drove for doordash about ~2 years ago. Everyone knew the ratings had no say in your orders. You could see all the threads and Reddit posts of new drivers asking, and nothing but replies along the lines of the only metric that matters is failed deliveries. Fail to complete too many (IIRC it was something like you needed 80% success), then you essentially get fired in the form of you won’t receive any more orders.
To be fair, that might have changed since, but IMO those platforms are fragmented and they need all the drivers they can exploit. So unless a driver fails too many times, what do they care? From personal experience though, it can easily be the customers fault and they get pissy and leave a bad review, which makes ratings that much more irrelevant.
Example/old rant: Had a guy order a single Popeyes sandwich, with like $1 tip. I took it because it SHOULD have only been like 7 mins total, as I was right there, for a quick ~$5. They gave 0 instructions for what must have been an apartment complex designed by a mouth breather who failed Elementary School. 1/2 the buildings where numbered/lettered the same. They didn’t use any kind of order for building nor door numbering, and on top of that the entrances were under construction. So every door had its number missing except for a little piece of painters tape with a sharpied number on it. After 10 minutes of looking for his apartment, and 0 response from the customer, I left it at a random apartment whose number matched and took the photo, and left a comment it was impossible to find their apartment. Of course within minutes of completing the order they start blowing up my phone, to which I just finally blocked their number.