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Comment by knuthsat | Hacker News Reader

Why isn't Deliveroo innovating so much on the technical side that the gas/delivery time savings aren't making everyone satisfied?

By now, they should have enough data to know who's going to order from where and using these predictions they can route the drivers/riders accordingly and price the delivery.

By now, they should have algorithmic innovations related to vehicle routing problem, pickup & delivery and traveling salesman so that they can reward the drivers/riders more.

Image that a single rider has a no-wait route where he's just picking up food and delivering but doing that in an efficient (not zig-zag across the city) way.

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They do do all this. From my understanding it’s just a very hard problem.

Sounds like they just aren't innovating. The degree to which they have solved the issue obviously isn't enough.

You’re underestimating the complexity of the problem.

Google Maps ETA’s are a simple problem compared to this because of the park and embark times & handoff variability.

- Parking is different at every restaurant, some days you may get lucky and find a spot, others you have to park far away and walk.

- A restaurant may be down staff on an given day and are late cooking the order.

- Customer may live in a high-rise or gated community that requires security identification before entering.

- Customer may not have a house number clearly visible making the house hard to find

The actual driving route/ traveling time is the easy part. It’s the other variables that make this incredibly complex.

The drivers also figure out what behaviour will maximise their business. Changes to the algo can have unintended consequences.

> Why isn't Deliveroo innovating so much on the technical side that the gas/delivery time savings aren't making everyone satisfied?

I'm not convinced it's tractable to satisfy everybody.

1. Customers (broadly speaking), want to minimize time between order and delivery, and between pickup and delivery (fresh, hot food).

2. Drivers want to maximize number of jobs and minimize down time.

These utilities seem in obvious tension -- if a driver goes to restaurant A, B, C and delivers to customer X, Y before Z, then Z is getting a worse product than A -> Z.

Deliveroo, itself, presumably wants to find a blend between customer satisfaction (1) and reducing marginal costs (2).

> Why isn't Deliveroo innovating so much on the technical side that the gas/delivery time savings aren't making everyone satisfied?

I'm sure they are. But why would their share these gains with anyone, when they could pocket them?

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