WEBVTT - How Food Delivery Apps Don’t Work 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:12.560 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:16.040 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonavan Strickland. 0:00:16.000 --> 0:00:19.680 I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the 0:00:19.720 --> 0:00:22.400 Tech are Ye and Hey Tari, this one's for you. 0:00:22.840 --> 0:00:26.560 I love all things tech. How's that? 0:00:27.000 --> 0:00:29.160 You know? Tari's been bugging me about doing my old 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:32.280 lead in. Today we have a very special episode with 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:36.640 a very special guest co host. This co host is 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:39.400 one of the co hosts of the Saverer podcast. She 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:44.440 hosts the brain Stuff podcast, and ten years ago she 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:47.400 was co host of this very ding dang show. Welcome 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:50.160 back to tech Stuff. Lauren Vogelbaum. 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:53.400 Oh, thank you, Hi, it is good to be back. 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:55.480 And that I didn't need to know that number ten 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:57.520 years That's fine, that's I'm fine with that. 0:00:57.880 --> 0:00:58.600 Yeah. Yeah. 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:01.280 Do you remember how ten years ago you would often 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:04.039 punctuate episodes with but Jonathan, you're so old. 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:08.520 It was important to remind you someone's got to keep 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:08.920 you in line. 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:12.360 I mean, this will be the sobering fact of the episode. 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:16.720 Next June, I turned fifty. So yeah, you were telling 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:18.360 me I was sold when I was on the verge 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:21.760 of forty. It turns out during the pasting of time, 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:24.759 I've only gotten older and more cantankers. 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:28.320 I mean, I'm an entire like seven years younger, which 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:30.160 means that I'm a heck in spring chickens. 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:33.319 Yeah yeah, seven years younger, as in she means she's 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:36.080 actually de aged seven years over the course of ten. 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:39.640 We don't know how she does it. And Lauren, when 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:41.959 I invited you to come on to the show, I 0:01:42.000 --> 0:01:44.600 asked you if you had any suggestions for topics, and 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:47.000 you came up with one that I had never really 0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:50.120 covered before, and I think is very important. And it's 0:01:50.160 --> 0:01:53.680 all about food delivery app companies. You know, your your 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:57.360 door dashes, your Uber Eats, your grub hubs and what not. 0:01:57.840 --> 0:01:59.880 And you had talked about how you wanted to talk 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:02.080 not just about how these things work, not really even 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:04.360 about how they work. We're going to leave that stuff aside. 0:02:04.440 --> 0:02:08.000 We're going to talk about the impact these companies have 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:13.480 had not just on customers, but restaurants and their own businesses. 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:16.000 Because in the old house stuff works days, we might 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:18.000 have called this how they don't work. 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:21.760 Yeah, well, so it's super fascinating to me as a 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:25.040 human person who a you know, well, I mean, I 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:26.880 think about food all the time because I'm sort of 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:31.560 continually hungry, but also it's just in a hypoglycemic way. 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:34.960 Don't worry, I'm doing fine. But also someone who talks 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:38.200 about food for my podcast, if you couldn't tell from 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:41.360 the namesaver, it's a food history, science and culture podcast. 0:02:41.520 --> 0:02:44.960 And we did an episode about delivery and takeout in 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:49.840 general back in twenty eighteen, and it is wild to 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:53.200 me how wrong those numbers were when I pulled up 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:56.920 those notes to start taking notes for this episode, because like, 0:02:57.080 --> 0:03:01.000 there's been just a wild boom all of those delivery 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:02.440 apps since the pandemic. 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:05.200 Of course, yeah yeah, yeah, you all might not remember this, 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:07.440 but just a few years ago we had this global 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:13.120 COVID nineteen outbreak where many of us were forced to 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:17.640 work from home, and in fact, it completely transformed the 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:21.200 way we do podcasts. Back in the old days, we 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:25.280 would come into the house Stuff Works offices over at 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:27.840 the old Pon City Market location, and we would record 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:29.920 in one of the whisper rooms or one of the 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:32.200 two podcast rooms. Well not one of the two, because 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:34.359 Stuff you should know, pretty much had that one on lockdown, 0:03:35.000 --> 0:03:38.200 but the other one. And that's how it worked and 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:39.880 we would come in. But then, of course the pandemic 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:42.360 forced all of us to create kind of at home 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:44.680 ad hoc podcast spaces. 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:48.080 Oh yeah, March thirteenth, like a Friday. I think they 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:50.280 just emailed all of us. They were like, Okay, there's 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:53.000 a pandemic, don't come back. We're mailing you on microphone. 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:56.520 Yeah, and we all got like overnight deliveries of like 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:59.000 the bare basics we would need. And they're like, you 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:01.280 got to have some sort of software to record into 0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:03.120 and then figure it out. 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:06.400 Yeah, and like also, oh, you needed a studio. I 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:08.280 didn't have a walk in closet, which is kind of 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:11.400 the best thing to do. So I just like opened 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:14.040 the door to my closet and hung like my biggest 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:17.200 gothist dresses on the back of the door and just 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:20.080 talked into my clothes. And that was about a year. 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:22.280 That was about a year of recording that was. 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:25.360 That was also very much like the way the original 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:28.120 House Stuff Works podcast room was because all we had 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:28.440 was a. 0:04:28.400 --> 0:04:31.240 Giant Kirk closet. It was it was an alcove. 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:34.520 Yeah, way back in the day when we were back 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:37.080 in Buckhead, even before the Pont City Market days. 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:39.120 Yeah, that's where we were recording originally. 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:42.800 Yeah. Yeah, and so during all that time where we're 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:48.280 all locked down, Like obviously, food delivery services flourished, right 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:53.039 because people wants their foods and they couldn't always go 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:54.960 out and get them. You certainly couldn't go out and 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:57.200 dine out in a lot of locations for a very 0:04:57.200 --> 0:05:00.480 long time. Yeah. So obviously, like like a lot of 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:05.120 the tech sector in twenty twenty, they had a boom period. 0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:08.560 But as it turns out, that's that's not even the 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:10.520 beginning of the story. It's not even the middle of 0:05:10.560 --> 0:05:14.159 the story. That's like the Act three part of the story. 0:05:14.200 --> 0:05:17.200 We've got a lot of precursor stuff to talk about. 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:20.360 And I love that you included in our notes here 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:23.960 a section on ancient history. 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:26.560 Oh yes, we have to go all the way back 0:05:26.640 --> 0:05:29.560 to the early nineteen nineties. 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:32.120 Yeah. 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:34.760 I almost wanted to say, Joe Piscopo was teaching America 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:37.120 how to laugh. That's the nineteen eighties. So that doesn't 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:37.600 even work. 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:43.080 Uh okay, So y'all might not know this, but one 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:45.320 of the things that I learned from doing Savor is 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:48.200 that one of the first, if not the very first 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:53.040 products delivered from an online order was a pizza. It 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:56.039 was nineteen ninety four, and this Pizza Hut franchise in 0:05:56.120 --> 0:06:00.800 Santa Cruz piloted pizza dot net. You could go online, 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:03.400 fill out a form with your delivery info and your order, 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:06.440 and it would be delivered. And I know that sounds 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:09.839 really basic here and now, but it was revolutionary at 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:13.280 the time. And it worked funnily enough by submitting data 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.000 from the form to a server in Wichita, which was 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:18.520 Pizza Hut's headquarters, which then sent the order to a 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:21.560 computer at the restaurant in Santa Cruz, where an employee 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:23.839 would receive it and then call you to confirm the order. 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:28.200 So not a one step process. In other words, no, no, yeah, 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:30.880 As it turns out, this is an infrastructure that would 0:06:30.920 --> 0:06:35.480 not scale. Can you just imagine being that employee in Wichita, Kansas, 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:40.039 Like I gotta call somebody over in Des Moines, Iowa 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:44.400 because they ordered a pizza. But fascinating because I mean, 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:48.640 like ninety four, that's before a lot of people even 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:51.360 had a handle on what the World Wide Web, let 0:06:51.360 --> 0:06:54.960 alone the Internet was. Yeah, and certainly a time when 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:57.279 I think a lot of people would have been reticent 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:02.160 to order anything, because the thought of any kind of 0:07:02.279 --> 0:07:06.240 purchase over the internet seemed inherently dangerous, although in this 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:08.640 case with calling to confirm your order, I don't know 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:11.800 if the actual purchase happened over the phone. 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:13.760 That's yeah, that's what happened. That you would give you 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:15.840 you'd give them your information at that point and so 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:18.240 and go from there. But it was so early. But 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:20.760 from there, and you know, with the growth of home 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:24.600 computing and internet access, there were a few small businesses 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:27.360 that picked up the concept, like The New York Times 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:29.960 reported on one in upstate New York in nineteen ninety 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:33.200 seven that hosted menus for forty restaurants and had like 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:37.000 checkout system and used a third party delivery service. They 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:39.960 reported in this article that more than five hundred people 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:41.040 had visited the website. 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:45.600 Wow, yeah, which you know, again again early days for 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:47.720 that kind of thing. Five hundreds right now, you're like 0:07:47.760 --> 0:07:52.320 five hundred clean, But no, that's a big deal. 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:53.000 It was. 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:54.960 It was, but it sounds so quaint. To quote The 0:07:54.960 --> 0:07:57.920 New York Times, there is no charge to visit the website, 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:01.560 but the customer pays the delivery, varying from about four 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:03.640 to six dollars depending on the service used. 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:08.320 Oh man, if simple times, and then I had to 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:11.040 include I had to include the fun tangent. This is 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:15.040 not connected to necessarily delivery services, but you know, just 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:18.880 to show how important pizza is to the evolution of 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:23.000 the Internet. One of the most famous examples of someone 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:27.920 using the digital currency bitcoin to buy something tangible was 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:29.680 in fact a pizza. 0:08:30.280 --> 0:08:32.440 But it was. Yeah, but it. 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:37.760 Wasn't that suddenly Domino's was taking bitcoin instead a the 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:42.520 titular Florida Man Florida man. In this case, a guy 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:47.840 named Laslow went on too a bitcoin oriented forum and 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:50.480 offered anyone who would be willing to bring him to 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:53.560 I don't know, large ish pizzas so we would have 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:56.040 some left over to eat the next day. For the 0:08:56.160 --> 0:09:00.440 princely sum of ten thousand bitcoin, could do it. So 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:03.720 back then bitcoin wasn't worth anything. It was less than 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:07.880 a penny for a bitcoin. But today that ten thousand 0:09:08.240 --> 0:09:13.440 bitcoin pizza would cost you one billion dollars because bitcoin 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:16.320 is over one hundred thousand dollars now. Oh so that 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:19.680 guy ordered two pizzas for a billion dollars. Talk about 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:20.439 a raw deal. 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:23.280 But he was the first. 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:25.760 Yes, it was we'll be talking about a lot of 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:28.600 raw deals, sometimes literally if you're ordering a salid. 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:30.040 But yeah, it was. 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:32.760 It was not an actual delivery service in that case. 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:36.200 It was just some rando online who happened to live 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:38.679 in the same Florida region who was willing to go 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:41.360 and schlep to Papa John's and buy a couple of 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:43.920 extra large pizzas and bring it to this guy, and 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:46.640 then they got ten thousand bitcoin at the time. Of course, 0:09:47.000 --> 0:09:49.160 back then you'd had there were no way of knowing 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:53.480 that bitcoin would eventually reach the absurd value of one 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:57.160 hundred thousand dollars per bitcoin, which I still don't understand 0:09:57.200 --> 0:09:58.520 even though I cover this for a living. 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:01.400 Yeah. No, I feel real touch right now. So cool. 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:05.200 Yeah, we've got those early, early examples where it's a 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:10.280 very primitive kind of Jerry rigged approach to delivery. Moving 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:13.360 forward from that, we got into the dot com bubble 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:16.600 craze where anyone could have an idea, or as I 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:19.240 put it in our notes, an idea of an idea, 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:22.440 and get investors excited about it, who would then pour 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:25.720 ridiculous amounts of money. Because the Internet was just seen 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:28.559 as a as a gold rush. Everyone wanted to get 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:31.120 in on it. Everyone had fear of missing out, and 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:34.360 in the process you had these folks who had interesting ideas, 0:10:34.880 --> 0:10:38.479 but they didn't have a real business plan that supported 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:41.640 that idea in any kind of sustainable way. So the 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:44.760 oh no, Yeah. The two examples I have in our 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:47.760 notes are are Webvan and I was actually a customer 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:50.200 of webvan because Atlanta was one of the cities they 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:53.120 rolled out to after they opened in the Bay Area, 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:55.960 and Cosmo, which I was never a customer of because 0:10:55.960 --> 0:10:58.480 that was like a bike messenger kind of thing. So 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:02.559 it's more like really dense urban locations like New York City. 0:11:02.920 --> 0:11:05.640 Yeah, you can't really ride bikes anywhere in Atlanta. 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:08.760 Not if you want to live. No, it's mad Max 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:12.000 Fury Road out there, y'all. And not to mention like 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:14.680 if the cars don't get you, the pothos will. So 0:11:14.800 --> 0:11:18.440 webvan gets started, and they were doing more like grocery delivery, right. 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:21.120 It wasn't It wasn't like they'll go pick up a 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:23.680 meal at your local burger king and bring it to you. 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:27.280 But they also ran into the issue of creating an 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:30.800 unsustainable business model, and they got so much money so 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:34.480 early on that they immediately started to expand into other cities, 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:36.840 like Atlanta was just one of them, Chicago and Seattle 0:11:36.880 --> 0:11:39.640 were others. And the problem was they had not proven 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:43.199 that they could have a revenue model in their first 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:46.960 city that would actually support the business before they started 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:50.120 to try and scale. So I bet you can all 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:53.800 guess where this goes, because ultimately Webvan, like so many 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:57.680 other dot com companies, imploded. Now part of that is 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:01.000 also because the market in general crashed. No more investors 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:04.400 willing to burn money by throwing it at Webvan because 0:12:04.400 --> 0:12:06.840 it was just churning through that cash super fast, like 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:08.200 as soon as it was coming in the door, it 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:12.640 was going back out again. So without that constant source 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:17.920 of cash influx from investors, Webvan couldn't, you know, screw 0:12:17.960 --> 0:12:20.400 around until it figured out how to make it work. 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:24.480 Like the whole ethos of fake it till you make 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:28.160 it just wasn't viable at that point, and so Webvan 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.040 did not make it. It died along with Cosmo, which 0:12:31.240 --> 0:12:34.240 would eventually come back in a different form. But that's 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:37.360 another story for another time. So the interesting thing to 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:39.680 me is that some of those elements from the dot 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:42.199 com days, I would argue are still in play today, 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:45.360 and you know, we'll talk about those, but it's a 0:12:45.360 --> 0:12:48.800 slightly different story. Like I would say that the current 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:54.040 run of food delivery app companies learned lessons from webvan, 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:56.040 but in the way that they learned them so that 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:58.520 they could repeat those mistakes almost exactly. 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:02.480 It does sound strikingly like some of the stories we're 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:03.280 going to get into. 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:06.440 Yeah, especially like with companies like door Dash, and we're 0:13:06.440 --> 0:13:09.640 going to really dive into that and start talking about 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:13.800 some of the elements of these app companies and some 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:17.400 of the real major cons In just a second, before 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:20.640 we do that, let's take a quick break to think 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:21.440 our sponsors. 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:32.240 Okay, welcome back. 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:36.280 Now that we have all bowed to the altar of capitalism, 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:39.760 we're going to talk about horrors of late stage capitalism 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:42.839 for the rest of this episode. So let's talk a 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:45.280 little bit about some of the app services that are 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:47.640 out there. It's funny because they're in some ways there 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:50.520 are fewer than there used to be because we've had 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:54.199 some consolidation in the market. But the big three, or 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:57.080 at least the three that I kept seeing sighted everywhere 0:13:57.080 --> 0:13:59.360 because obviously they're smaller ones and there's regional ones. 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:01.680 Yeah, and these are in the United States. There are 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:03.880 a whole other players around the world. 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:07.360 An excellent point, Lauren, Yes, absolutely, So the big three 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:10.840 that we were gonna be talking about, primarily, I'm talking 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:11.600 about door Dash. 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:13.760 That's the big one. That's the one that I typically use. 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:15.720 When I use it, although now I feel so guilty 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:18.600 now that I know more, I don't be using it 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:19.000 so much. 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:24.360 But it's like sixty some percent of the American food 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:25.480 app delivery business. 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:26.080 Wow. 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:28.440 And then you've got grub Hub, and then you've got 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:31.560 Uber Eats, and Lauren, I'll tell you Uber Eats is 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:33.280 one I never want to use. But that's because it 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:34.880 has the word Uber in front of it, and that 0:14:34.960 --> 0:14:37.040 company is like toxic to me. 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:40.800 Uh huh oh yeah, No, same, same, And I understand 0:14:40.880 --> 0:14:43.920 that basically the drivers are the same, but I'm like, 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:45.920 can I give them money through a different app? 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:49.720 Can I use a different incredibly corrupt corporation to siphon 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:53.520 money in tiny drips to the poor gig economy workers 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:54.920 who are actually doing the work. 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:56.040 Yeah. 0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:59.000 If y'all wonder why I think Uber is toxic, you 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:02.240 just need to look back at the year twenty seventeen. 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:04.920 Yepper's that's the exact year I was going to mention, 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:06.080 uh huh. 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:09.560 Oh man, what a horrible whole Uber dug for itself 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:13.480 had created such a toxic work culture that the guy 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:17.400 who took over Uber after all that is still trying 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:19.640 to dig the company out of it, you know, seven 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:22.880 years later, and here we are. But that's another story 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:26.400 for another episode. So what I thought was funny was 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:30.960 that between those three, grub Hub is technically the oldest 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:33.920 of the three big ones here in the States. And 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:36.600 when it first started in two thousand and four, it 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:39.400 was founded by Matt Maloney and Mike Evans. It didn't 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:42.560 start off as food delivery. Instead, I think the story 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:47.400 is Mike Evans was hungry and he was frustrated because 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:50.080 he couldn't tell which pizza places in his area would 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:53.040 actually deliver to his apartment. So I'm sure all of 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:54.960 us have been in that situation where you're like, am 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:57.440 I in the delivery area for this place? Or am 0:15:57.520 --> 0:15:59.760 I outside? Because then they're not gonna be able to 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:01.160 bring my order to me or what? 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:02.920 And if I'm going to have to call someone on 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:05.000 the phone, then like gosh, I don't want to have 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:06.200 to call two places. 0:16:06.400 --> 0:16:09.320 Yeah, yeah, especially if you're a millennial, because I understand 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:11.920 that you will melt if you have to talk to another. 0:16:11.760 --> 0:16:12.760 Human being on the phone. 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:14.480 True facts, and being. 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:17.960 A gen xer, I have a slightly higher tolerance, not 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:24.040 much higher, Honestly, I can't claim to be super comfortable 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:27.200 calling up strangers. But yeah, like he thought, oh wait, 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.040 what if I create a tool that makes it easy 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:32.960 for me to reference which restaurants are actually going to 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:34.880 deliver to my place? And then what if I were 0:16:34.880 --> 0:16:37.160 to make that tool something that other people could use? 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:39.320 And the story was he took one hundred and forty 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:42.400 dollars out of his personal wealth, which was like the 0:16:42.560 --> 0:16:45.280 entirety of what he had at the time, I poured 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:47.880 it in and that became Grubhub. So Grubhub initially was 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:51.200 all about discovery, right, discovering which restaurants in your area 0:16:51.680 --> 0:16:54.920 could actually potentially deliver to you. And it would only 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:58.920 be later, starting in twenty fourteen, when grubhub itself would 0:16:59.000 --> 0:17:02.400 pick up the delivery company service. By that time, they 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:05.080 were no longer the first in that in that realm, 0:17:05.119 --> 0:17:07.920 someone else was already doing that, and that someone else 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:11.040 was bumped up Bob Palo Alto Delivery. You all know 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:14.560 Palo Alto Delivery, right, Oh yeah, yeah, Pad, good old Pad, 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:16.520 Like I get tie from them all the time, the 0:17:16.640 --> 0:17:17.240 Pad tie. 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:17.800 It's great. 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:22.480 Oh man. Yeah. No, Palo Alto Delivery would of course 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:26.560 change its name because those guys were thinking way too small. 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:29.399 They were like, hey, if we want to expand. 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:31.760 Beyond the Bay Area, maybe we don't call it Palo Alto. 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:34.800 So they changed it to door Dash. This is where 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:38.520 we have like the scary music sting because they're kind 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:40.119 of the villain of the piece. 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:41.600 If I'm being honest. 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:43.560 I don't know if there's a hero of the piece. 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:44.600 No, I think everybody. 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:47.120 Well, I will say this, I think the gig workers 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:47.800 are the heroes. 0:17:48.480 --> 0:17:52.160 Goodness, but they are oh and the and the underdog 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:55.760 restaurant like small business restaurant. Yes people, Yes. 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:58.920 The restaurants and the drivers, I would say, are definitely 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:02.520 like they're probably hurt worse than anybody else. I don't 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:07.040 think consumers get out great either, but like the end customer, 0:18:07.080 --> 0:18:09.440 I don't think it's a great deal for them necessarily. 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:13.800 But I definitely think that the restaurants and the drivers 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:19.600 or the delivery people that they get shafted pretty dramatically. 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:23.120 It's kind of hard to say it any other way. 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:24.440 Nope, that's just it. 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:28.480 So Uber announced uber Fresh in twenty fourteen, the same 0:18:28.560 --> 0:18:32.280 year that grub Hubs started to deliver, and of course 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:35.920 alto deliveries have been going for a whole year by then, 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:40.600 and then by twenty fifteen it became Uber Eats. So 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:46.560 uber Fresh became uber eats, and that is that's kind 0:18:46.600 --> 0:18:50.520 of the ground setting for where we're going to talk next, 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:55.040 which is actually about the business side of things. And 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:58.000 this isn't typically a business podcast, but I think it's 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:02.440 important to get and I of all the different components 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:04.800 that are going together with this to kind of say like, 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:10.160 sometimes tech enables things that aren't really good for anybody 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:12.920 that's involved in the Like it's to a point where 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:16.800 you're like, why is this even happening because no one's 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:17.879 coming out well in this. 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:21.439 Like why have we why have we disrupted? Something like 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:22.800 that's not always a good word. 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:27.240 Yeah, yeah, no. And in investment, it's like the go 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:30.600 to right, Like for the longest time, everyone wanted to 0:19:31.240 --> 0:19:34.480 position the company to be We're going to disrupt the 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:38.480 blank sector, right. So for Uber and lyft. It was 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:42.719 the taxi sector. Well, originally it was the limo sector. 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:45.840 That's what Uber started off as. So you have a 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:49.119 really interesting stat here about how much this market is 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:50.000 actually worth. 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:54.560 Yeah, So as of twenty twenty four, the global food 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:58.119 delivery app market is worth some one hundred and twelve 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:00.520 billion dollars a year. 0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:05.119 Wild Okay, We're gonna have a lot of moments to 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:08.800 kind of take a breather and say, hey, late stage 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:12.600 capitalism sucks, doesn't it. So here's one of them, guys. 0:20:12.680 --> 0:20:15.439 And when I say guys, I apologize all you folks 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:18.080 out there. I don't want to be, you know, dismissive 0:20:18.119 --> 0:20:20.840 of anybody, all you folks out there. This is why 0:20:20.960 --> 0:20:24.040 I think it. I say it sucks because you can 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:29.080 have a company that is valued at a certain amount 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:33.920 but doesn't produce anything of value or is actually actively 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:35.639 harmful to itself and others. 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:40.119 Yeah, yeah, Like it doesn't support its own workers, it 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:46.040