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Comment by pertymcpert | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand how these apps get away with such high commissions. Some of these are 30% of the total order. For someone to deliver the food.

And they already charge a service fee and a delivery fee to the customer. Double dipping bastards all of them. Their platform can't cost that much to run either, no need for such high margins.

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I agree. You should start a competing business with lower prices and and drive them out.

Guess what? It costs more than $3 to drive a $10 order to your apartment.

Surely the delivery cost is independent of the order cost?

I think the order cost increases the variability of the delivery cost. Anecdata, but I have noticed for larger orders, the driver often spends more time at the restaurant waiting for the order to be ready. Ideally the delivery company would know when it will be ready; but that comes with a certain risk that they are late, which means cold food. And to add on to that, if customers complain about cold food, the larger the order means the larger the refund (hopefully).

I was thinking the same thing. I used Doordash a while back and figured they were making good money based on the fees they were adding in, such as delivery fee, service fee, tips to the driver, maybe a markup on menu items. But then I discovered they are also charging commission to the restaurant for up to 30%! I've been driving to restaurants for takeout more often because the apps seem shady to me.

The restaurants could just offer delivery (in the US I've seen some Chinese and Thai restaurants do this). Where I live a lot of restaurants don't care enough about the commision to save by hiring a delivery driver (as in I've called because my friend was going to swing by to pick some up, and we got told to just order delivery off an app). On the other hand the more expensive western restaurants are more sensitive to delivery apps and offer their own delivery. It makes sense that they're sensitive to 20% or even 30%. English teacher asistants get paid around 25k/hr, and western places charge 100k-140k per dish. On the other hand you can get a meal for 40k at more local restaurants.

Strangely enough, a lot of milk tea stores are cheaper through delivery... A drink might be 50k or 60k in store or pick up, but through delivery apps they offer them for 20k-30k.

You can make a milk tea in a rat infested hellhole if it’s being delivered.

as long as its on a rapid boil then it sounds like every trip to India I’ve ever taken. This comment has no substance. Just a random thought.

Although in this case the locations are the same. Just like in the US, the delivery drivers go inside to pick up the orders. Ghost restaurants aren't really a thing yet here.

All the prices are marked up, there's a service fee, a delivery fee, and oh yeah, you're definitely expected to tip lol.

I admit though, it's pretty sweet and I've been using it for a few places while there's free delivery!

For other places, haha. Pizza hut's $10 pizza costs $20 + tip when you order it for delivery, with all the fees. o_O

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