You were able to get sushi, dim sum, boba, bagels, or even steaks promptly delivered in a few clicks before 2013? DoorDash is an easy example of a startup that has made my life better, especially during a pandemic.
I was able to get many things delivered for free by the restaurant pre 2015. I can’t even get pizza delivered anymore unless I want BigCo pizza, or pay doordash’s overheads.
Most of the pizza joints by me in LA are on Slice or Chownow. I'm surprised more restaurants aren't on Chownow, really, with the flat monthly fee structure and no commissions. Is it hard to get enough order volume to make that worth it?
Grubbhub, Seamless, Eat24, Foodler, DiningIn. They were all around and fairly large by then. But they didn't go big on spending VC money, so over time DoorDash wins. Pretty interesting, however it turns out.
Until on-demand delivery companies like Doordash/Postmates came onto the scene, the vast majority of places I could have ordered delivery from were the standard fare of pizza, Chinese, Indian, and Thai food within a half mile radius from my home.
What this generation unlocked was the ability to pay someone to grab you House of Prime Rib on Van Ness and deliver it halfway across the city. The value add here was "quality from halfway across the city, not just restaurants within a tiny radius who had large enough margins to afford to keep a driver on payroll".
This also resulted in what we now see as the normalization of national fast food brands having a coordinated delivery offering.
I think the problem is that this achievement is unlocked mostly by subsidy. Without subsidy, many would just go back to the standard fare of pizza, Chinese, Indian, and Thai food within a half mile radius.
We will first have to wait and see whether the on-demand delivery business model will work out in a cheaper country, e.g. GrabFood in Indonesia. Even in such country, my sense is that the restaurants are still getting charged too much to cover for the subsidy given the customers, while the delivery riders are still being paid too little and have to rely on infrequent big tips.
