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Comment by amyboyd | Hacker News Reader

What makes you think Just-Eat ran out of steam "years ago"?

Stock price is higher than ever: http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/prices-and-marke...

They are reporting good growth: http://www.cityam.com/256734/just-eat-reported-order-growth-...

I see lots of Deliveroo bikes around where I live in the centre of London, but they are basically non-existant when I go to other towns and cities.

Also, Deliveroo started up-scale -- they can't go down to selling cheap Chinese takeaway food, because it will hurt their image.

Just-Eat started at the low-end and are now moving up-scale without hurting their image. And even then, plenty of people prefer low-end Chinese food (I sure do).

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Entirely anecdotal, but my perception of Just Eat, Hungry House, etc. is of consistently crap takeaway food. I do not, and will not, order from them. Their reviews are completely untrustworthy - you literally never know what you’re going to get. There is no image to hurt - they’re the lowest of the low.

In the UK, Deliveroo originally differentiated primarily by only accepting high quality restaurants, rather than takeaways.

Just Eat, etc. may try to improve their image, offer remotely usable interfaces, clean up their offerings in terms of food quality, but I don’t think their reputation will ever recover to the point that anyone in London etc. would consider them above Deliveroo/Uber Eats.

Not sure how closely these views tally with others, but they are representative of my friends/peers.

As someone who's just moved from Sydney to London, I've found the overall quality of 'restaurants' on Deliveroo and Uber Eats to be much much lower in the UK. A lot more scrappy takeaway chicken places, for example.

It seems to be quite dependent on the location. In places with fewer restaurants, they do seem to have dropped the barrier a little and allowed on more takeaway style places. In places like Shoreditch though, it’s just hundreds of top notch restaurants.

I guess it’s just down to Deliveroo’s (sometimes quite annoying) strict rule of not delivering further than 2km, so depends on the density of restaurants.

> Their reviews are completely untrustworthy - you literally never know what you’re going to get. There is no image to hurt - they’re the lowest of the low.

I guess you're using it wrong. Most I know use it for a takeaway place they're already familiar with and use it as a convenient way to order rather than a way to discover new restaurants.

> In the UK, Deliveroo originally differentiated primarily by only accepting high quality restaurants, rather than takeaways.

Did it? Here in Nottingham Deliveroo are showing high quality restaurants like Five Guys, Burger King, Subway and Hooters.

I don’t think it’s super fair to say that attempting to use features for one of its intended use-cases is using it wrong.

I have also noticed that restaurants will almost always include their own menu with direct ordering information, so I’m not sure restaurants are super into the idea of shifting existing customers to another platform - not that this invalidates the use case at all, to be fair.

Yes it was like that originally. In densely populated, high-end parts of major cities, it generally still is like that (as mentioned in another comment of mine).

There has also been a recent major push by both Deliveroo and Uber Eats to onboard major nationwide chains, which don’t tend to maintain particularly good quality standards via delivery unfortunately. Some exceptions to this, but generally fast food translates to delivery services very poorly.

Get off your high horse for few minutes.

High quality restaurants? Around Edinburgh the 'highest quality' restaurant offered is Pizza Express.

Which serves higher quality food than the 200 generic chicken and kebab houses on Just Eat.

Anyway, in London there are a lot better quality places on Deliveroo than pizza express.

I was living in Edinburgh when Deliveroo launched there. It’s a city full of superb restaurants, many of which are on Deliveroo.

Agree. And I stopped using just eat when they required me to solve a captcha every time I wanted to order something.

But the real problem was deliveries. With just eat, the restaurant was in charge of the delivery. I found myself countless times wandering the streets around my block looking for the car of a delivery driver who didn't speak a word of english and was either too dumb or too lazy to get to the right place. Sort of defeats the purpose of a delivery.

Deliveroo did two things right: they took the burden of the delivery away from the restaurant and do it well, and they enlist quality restaurants, as opposed to the local kebab shop.

By ran out of steam I mean:

1. Their website is really quite poor, and has been for years. Why the hell is the navigation so crap, and why can't I search for a specific food item?

2. They still haven't done anything about the prevalent and pervasive fake reviews.

Also, they cannot "move up-scale", their logo is associated with cheap food. Upscale restaurants don't want to put themselves on just-eat, next to the cheap low end places, nor do they want the just eat logo in their windows.

IMO it's the opposite of what you describe - it's way harder to go low-end to high-end. Just eat has to somehow convince people their brand isn't for bad food.and cheap takeaways, then market themselves at high-end places.

Deliveroo just needs to keep their high-end image, and then all the cheap places would throw themselves at Deliveroo to up their own image. No convincing required.

1) Maybe mobile has a higher conversion rate and higher order value? Having a bad website would force people to mobile. Here are some screenshots of Just-Eat and Deliveroo's websites: https://imgur.com/a/9dWna -- Deliveroo hides search filters away, and has 2 wine shops first. Do you really think that Deliveroo's website is better, looking at these screenshots side-by-side? :)

2) I can't comment on reviews -- don't know if that's true or if it's the same with Deliveroo.

3) I just opened Deliveroo in Angel. First is a donut shop... second is Pret A Manger... third is a wine store... then LEON and then Itsu. First on HungryHouse (owned by Just-Eat) is YouMe Sushi, followed by a bunch of independents (none very special but still independent and better than Pret/LEON/Itsu!). First on Just-Eat is Burger King to be fair, but that is then followed by indepdenents. McDonalds is first on Uber Eats. So I think Just-Eat is already equaling Deliveroo/Uber. Also I do see their logo everywhere.

> I see lots of Deliveroo bikes around where I live in the centre of London, but they are basically non-existent when I go to other towns and cities.

Whenever I visit Oxford I always see lots of Deliveroo bikes driving around the city centre.

Yes. Same in the (little, Midlands) city of Worcester, and some decent enough restaurants too. If they've cracked Worcester then they're very far from being London-only.

> they can't go down to selling cheap Chinese takeaway food, because it will hurt their image

Oh, they totally can if the margins work. Just look at Uber which started as a black car service.

Deliveroo in Brighton has KFC and McDonalds alongside their “high-end” restaurants. This, along with not having user ratings for outlets, has really made me question how good the other outlets really are.

While I've never heard of either of these companies (maybe because I'm american?), it seems like wider selection is better than "up-scale" food. Delivery on top of expensive food is a once a month prospect; cheap food delivered cheaply is a daily prospect. To put this another way, I've spent the vast majority of money on uber on uner x, not uber black cars.

Low margins are harder to pull off but are much more stable and easier to scale.

Why don't they just offer all restaurants, sort of like postmates did (does?).

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