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Comment by jthirkle | Hacker News Reader

What a fantastic waste of carbon emissions to fly some donuts across the country, rather than buying something locally

VCs seem to love supporting luxury services they themselves want to consume. Which is understandable, but in bad taste given how many of their portfolio companies are doing layoffs and hiring freezes. Rescinding offers. Etc.

This has been a business for a long time. Selling flash frozen NYC pizza on the west coast, overnight shipping of unpreserved caviar etc. If a restaraunt can prep a dish that lasts 24-48 hours, there isn't any hard reason they can't

Presumably they are traveling via standard freight routes and not paying someone to hold a single meal on a passenger flight...

There is a market for long distance food deliveries. Even more international. When a friend hears I'll be travelling nearby, its not uncommon for me to get special requests for food not available locally.

Bringing Central American fried chicken into the U.S in family trips was so common, that the fried chicken restaurant had to make special packaging so the smell wouldn't escape from the box to the airplane cabin.

They even ran an ad about that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFd3a4g8dNc

I think the increase in these services (GoldBelly, DoorDash National Favorites, etc...) also coincides with the COVID-driven increase of home food deliveries along with the modern restaurant/food social media lifecycle (think: Eater, Food Insider, Munchies, etc).

So, right after someone in SF watches a video describing in great detail how amazing a new NYC chicken sandwich pop-up is, they're almost certainly willing to pay a premium to try it.

I thought this was hyperbole but it's almost verbatim their 2nd sentence. What a waste of all kinds of resources.

Having worked in logistics and fulfillment for eCommerce, I am fairly certain this service will stop as soon as someone starts to look at actual profitability. Problem just might be that nobody does for quite some time.

You underestimate what Americans are willing to pay for convenience. People already pay nearly double to order from local restaurants now on these platforms.

Steep carbon pricing is the only way to fix this... Only when a good chunk of your salary is going into carbon taxes will you choose to do things that don't have hidden carbon costs.

This level of insane decadence being offered by a capitalistic company just might tell us how close we are to crash of current civilization.

I somehow understand factory made food, or even transporting items that last good while, but individual orders?

You could use “insane decadence” to describe a lot of modern services like commercial air travel and cordless phones.

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