With so many startups doing things similar to this (do local tasks, fetch food, deliver stuff, clean home, do laundry) -- I am wondering where and how they will all be able to hire local runners (lets not forget ebay, google and amazon also trying to get into this 'get it now' mania).<p>It might actually be a killer idea to employ these local runners -- and then get jobs from all these varied companies/startups. So, doordash, instacart, prim etc. could all contact you and use your workforce -- you essentially remove the headache of hiring, scheduling and logistics for these startups. But then -- what would be the point of all these startups -- you could just offer these services yourself if you owned the runners :)
When I was at RIT in '02-'03 there were two companies doing this. Both of them shut down a couple of months after launching. After I graduated and moved back to Connecticut I found two services in the area that did this. They too both eventually shut down. This model seems to have a problem making enough to pay drivers.
I missed a beat when I read South Bay, because very few of the 'cool' apps like instacart, lift, uber, taskrabbit, or any apps having real-life tangible outcomes ever work in San Jose.
I thought finally something is going to work in San Jose and then I read the list of cities. Well, hopefully doordash do well enough in Palo Alto and Mountain View and expand to San Jose soon :-)
Just ordered (from Oren's Hummus). We've used Seamless and others in the past and suffered the sometime two-hour wait. If DoorDash can get the delivery time down to closer to 'impulse' (as quick as going to the grocery store and back?), these guys will kill the competition.
Been dying for this in MV since GrubHub and Seamless have terrible selection / high delivery costs on a per restaurant basis.<p>Only junk food is available on a regular basis.<p>No kids in my case, just lots of side projects to shepherd, rather not spend time to cook or go out.
Can't help thinking that this service is providing something like the cafes in that article "The Locust Economy". <a href="http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/04/03/the-locust-economy/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/04/03/the-locust-economy/</a><p>> To take coffee shops as an example, an unending supply of idealistic wannabe cafe owners enters the sector every year, operates at a loss for a few years, and exits. The result is that even under normal business conditions, without swarming locust consumers, this is a loss-making business with an extinction rate of around 90% at the 5 year point in the US.
I know one of the developers there and Peter's always struck me as incredibly smart. I wish door dash the absolute best (and hope they expand to the East Bay) as soon as feasible :) ).
In Miami I know of at least 5 companies doing this, none are really tech companies, or even logistics companies. One example is <a href="https://www.deliverywow.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.deliverywow.com/</a>
I can't wait until we have driverless delivery as that will significantly change the economics. I suspect that delivery charges will be close to zero, and in principle they can serve every producer in an area.
There's a company called Mosis (<a href="https://www.mosi.ch/" rel="nofollow">https://www.mosi.ch/</a>) that has been doing this since 1998 in Zurich, Switzerland. I just checked their history. The best thing, they were apparently inspired by American and Australian companies that had already been offering the same service for a number of years. So, this is really nothing new.
I think 3rd party restaurant delivery could be disrupted in just about every metropolitan or college town. If your town is host of awesome restaurants but no unified delivery service, then make it happen! (Disrupted might be the wrong word here unless you're trying to do this in the Bay Area; most cities don't have any 3rd party delivery services so you'd be starting something new)
Pfsh.<p>Over here in the Netherlands - and I think it originated in the UK - we have JustEat (<a href="http://www.just-eat.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">http://www.just-eat.co.uk/</a>), a company that connects local food restaurants behind a single web interface. If I'm correct, the restaurants still do their own deliveries; they just get orders in from another single source. It also seems that JustEat sponsors the restaurants with things like insulating delivery bags, scooters, etcetera.<p>I for one don't see how this startup offers anything better than that structure. Maybe a shared 'delivery guy' pool, since some restaurants / takeaway places will be more popular than others, where the others have such a low volume they couldn't support a delivery guy of their own.
For company lunches/dinners, YC also has invested in ZeroCater: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3297522" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3297522</a>
Back in Bulgaria someone got the idea to use the taxi fleet for food delivery - the delivery charge is still fixed, it's just that the car is a taxi. I always thought this was very clever.