Ask HN: What's up with these DoorDash dark patterns?

135 points by flycatcha 3 years ago | 146 comments

I'm in the Bay Area. We don't order using apps often, but when we do we find that so much of the selection consists of mediocre looking Chinese, Indian, pizza and Mexican.

Using the current Android mobile app, you can't actually drill into and read reviews which makes assessing the actual quality of the restaurant difficult.

And I've found that restaurants will run their own "ghost kitchen" shadow restaurant out of their main (poorly rated) location. This delivery specific restaurant has good reviews on DD, but when you Google that restaurant name nothing comes up aside from listings on the app. And then the food arrives and it's terrible and you match up the physical address and realize it's a poorly rated Indian restaurant by a different name.

Or, you order from one of these weird ghost kitchen brands and the actual restaurant doesn't actually get your order (despite the app telling you they confirmed it) and your second driver finally tells you to cancel the order.

Is it asking too much to have a service that's transparent, functions well and have the end product taste good?

woutr_be 3 years ago |

One of the absolute worst dark patterns I’ve seen was on Foodpanda. When you’re just browsing, you see prices crossed out, with a cheaper price below it, which seems to indicate there’s some sort of promotion.

You can continue browsing a specific restaurant, and order a “discounted” item, your total price will be the sum of the discounted items. That is, up until you actually want to check out, suddenly your total jumps back to the sum of the original valued of the items. Because, apparently, that discount was only for “pro” users. It’s nowhere mentioned that is the case. And since I’m logged in, they already know I’m not a pro user.

This pissed me of so much, I documented and reported this to the local consumer council, but haven’t heard back yet.

thinkharderdev 3 years ago | |

I have a (not really serious, but kind of) theory that metrics driven organizations stumble into various dark patterns through software bugs. In this case, that would look like:

1. You want to convert people to "pro" users so you try to show them all the money they can save by doing so.

2. Because of a bug in the code somewhere, you end up showing the discounted price in the cart until checkout.

3. Because some number of people don't pay attention and don't realize the switcheroo happens at the end this bug actually increases conversion.

4. Someone eventually notices the bug (after customers like you complain about it!).

5. When they fix it the metrics are adversely impacted.

6. The bug is now a "feature".

This is of course all very shortsighted since you are essentially burning customer trust for a short-term gain in conversion so it's bad for the medium/long term business. But the team has to hit its KPIs, which are tracked on a daily/weekly basis!

perlgeek 3 years ago | | |

I don't think you need bugs for that:

1. You (as a product owner/manager) want to convert people to "pro" users so you try to show them all the money they can save by doing so.

2. You don't care about the the experience of the non-pro users, because that's not the metric you're optimizing, so you never specify to developers what should happen when lower-class users shop, except that at the end they have to pay the full price

3. Developers build something that works like the dark pattern described above (they are incentivized by keeping their sprint goals, not by making non-pro users happy).

woutr_be 3 years ago | | |

I don't think this was a bug, but more a deliberate feature. From my understanding, they probably target customers who don't order that much, but are willing to pay a monthly fee for the "pro" features, which includes free delivery, and some discounts.

But I can't comprehend how this is worth it to Foodpanda, I'm an already paying customer, ordering 3-4 times a week, me not being a "pro" user should be making them money, since I pay full price, and pay delivery fees. What they've done now, is not converted me to "pro", and lost me as a customer.

spike021 3 years ago | |

I've had kind of similar things before with DoorDash or UberEats. They'll show I have a discount or some amount off ($5 usually), and then only once I'm ready to actually submit my order the full fine print shows up that I needed to have a subtotal of $30, $40, or whatever. Maybe that's fine for a family but for one person it stinks to think "oh cool I've got a discount" and I waste my time thumbing through restaurants and putting together an order only for it to not be worth it.

woutr_be 3 years ago | | |

I truly don't get these kind of patterns, because to me, it just looks like they'll miss out on orders from people (like you), who thought they would get a discount, but then end up not getting it and cancelling their order.

Surely it would make more sense to advertise that customers can get a $5 discount, if they order for $30 or more. That way, if your order only adds up to $25, I would be inclined to order a side that gets me to $30 or more.

weberer 3 years ago | |

Amazon does this bullshit all the time with VAT.

autoexec 3 years ago |

My guess is that either DoorDash doesn't want to invest in preventing what is basically fraud on their platform or they've discovered that they actually make more money if they enable it and let it continue no matter how terrible the experience is for the people who order food.

Uninstall DoorDash and the problem goes away for you, and if enough people uninstall DoorDash the math changes and the problem goes away for everybody. As a bonus you'll save a fortune by not paying the higher food prices and fees and you'll stop giving up some personal information in the process.

JumpCrisscross 3 years ago | |

> DoorDash doesn't want to invest in preventing what is basically fraud on their platform or they've discovered that they actually make more money if they enable it

The latter. Of course, it drives users to uninstall. But it juices today’s returns. (Uber Eats does the same. Sometimes I report it to zero effect.)

Caviar used to be a high-quality service in New York; I uninstalled it after DoorDash bought them. There is an open niche for a real-restaurants-only delivery service. Also, support for legislation requiring restaurants use the name on their food license on apps. (Using fake names makes tracking down food poisoning difficult. I assume someone lying about their brand is more likely to be sloppy elsewhere.)

devchix 3 years ago | | |

> There is an open niche for a real-restaurants-only delivery service

... but not at a sustainable price for workers and consumers. The trajectory of this industry is birthing crazy illogical things like ghost kitchens, weird liminal areas of food service that's not quite restaurant, not quite food-delivery, shaping bad human behaviors and creating dark patterns due to excess capital and perverse incentives.

Food costs. Making it, serving it, cleaning up. It costs more than people are willing to pay, maybe there's a strata of the market for whom the value is worth it, but not for the majority. Pizza delivery within a radius is successful but not everything can scale.

jareklupinski 3 years ago | | |

what do you use now? caviar is still alright in my neighborhood but I'm looking for the next thing...

gumby 3 years ago | |

> or they've discovered that they actually make more money if they enable it and let it continue no matter how terrible the experience is for the people who order food.

This seems like the most likely case, considering the other ethical problems with doordash.

flycatcha 3 years ago | |

Totally, I imagine they incentivize / encourage bad restaurants to appear as ghost kitchen brands on their platform, and to algorithmically inflate reviews so that most averages appear to be over 4.0.

dejawu 3 years ago |

It's insane. I once found a restaurant that had ghost kitchen'd itself EIGHTEEN times:

https://i.imgur.com/7jwBlFG.png

Some of the name variations are pretty funny though.

jmole 3 years ago |

My favorite pattern from doordash:

Browsing for a restaurant - delivery time 20-30 minutes

Adding food to the cart - delivery time 25-35 minutes

Checkout - delivery time 30-40 minutes

Payment processed - delivery time 45-55 minutes

downboots 3 years ago | |

linking to relevant terms

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment

Seems established and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising#Regulation_a...

May be a case for this imo ianal

stephenboyd 3 years ago |

The worst ghost kitchen I've seen is for an exclusively gluten-free pizza place in Seattle. That's an appealing prospect if you have a serious celiac case and you can't eat food that's made in a typical pizza place where flour gets everywhere in the process. I looked up the address and it's actually a typical pasta and pizza Italian place with gluten in most items.

rootsudo 3 years ago | |

Try Mod Pizza, in Seattle. Great price, unlimited toppings, they do not offer exclusively gluten free but they have the option and IMO they are very accurate. - no issues yet. I would order from their website over the doordash app, but if the promo works for pickup, it probably would be cheaper. I was for a while ordering them on Doordash for $6 picked up w/ unlimited toppings, and $3 of that was for the gluten free option.

LorenPechtel 3 years ago | |

That should be downright illegal.

gricardo99 3 years ago |

What about the hidden service fee? They gladly tell you the delivery fee is only $5 (or free!) but it’s not until you’ve fully ordered and paid that you see the itemized service fee that can be greater than 25%.

But at least they tell you how much you paid for the service. The worst for price transparency is “same day” costco delivery by Instacart. They markup the prices but never tell you how much more you’re paying for their service, it’s completely hidden unless the shopper/driver accidentally leaves you with the costco warehouse receipt. Once I saw the 35% markup on a nominal $300 order, I never used same-day costco again. I knew I was paying some markup for the service (they tell you on the website that prices are higher than in the warehouse), but I could not justify that much.

orangepanda 3 years ago | |

> The worst for price transparency is “same day” costco delivery by Instacart. They markup the prices but never tell you how much more you’re paying for their service

I'd rather know upfront what the total will be, instead of meaningless itemised receipts with added fees that I have no choice but to pay.

Then again, there are countries that dont include sales tax on price labels, so people must prefer the hidden fees approach.

pipeline_peak 3 years ago | |

Even with membership, I’ve never paid less than $300 on Costco Instacart.

It’s a total joke, the whole point of wholesale is to save money.

I’m far too lazy to do the math, but I think I save more money Instacart shopping Aldi than Costco

lovich 3 years ago | | |

If it’s likes BJ’s you need to not select BJ on instacart directly but instead use their direct site which appears to be a white labeled Instacart service, if you want the wholesale prices . In this example it’s https://delivery.bjs.com/ vs instacart.com.

They scrub most evidence of this being a white label service but it’s the same ui/ux and even the favicon is the Instacart carrot as of the time of this comment. Last time I compared my households ~$300 bill on the white labeled site was ~$450 on the main Instacart site

datavirtue 3 years ago | | |

Costco is for people who's main activity outside work is spending money. It saves those compulsive spenders some money and makes them feel better about their problem.

nharada 3 years ago |

Yes! I thought I was crazy!

The most annoying thing for me is constantly getting notifications for "discount codes" that don't actually work. When I've contacted support they tell me "they're expired" or "it was a bug in the app" and they offer me a much worse version of the coupon.

If it's a bug, they've had it for months, and it conveniently is very beneficial to their engagement numbers (you enter the app, make an order, and settle for a tiny discount when the deal doesn't work).

danpalmer 3 years ago | |

I get these for Uber Eats all the time. I’ve just stopped using the app. If they’re not going to treat their customers with some dignity then I don’t want to be a customer.

badpun 3 years ago | | |

Same here. The whole experience feels like buying something from mafia.

throw03172019 3 years ago |

This is very common on UberEats. I’d say well over 50% of the restaurants are ghost kitchens. I usually Yelp the names. Some of them are low ratings (1.5 stars) but on UberEats they are 4.5…

Very frustrating to “search” on UberEats. Fine if you know the restaurant you want to order from ahead of time.

JumpCrisscross 3 years ago | |

> I usually Yelp the names

I look up the address on Street View.

alkonaut 3 years ago |

There are a few of these delivery firms now, has at least one realized the best niche to use should be “trustworthy”?

E.g require any restaurant to have a brick and mortar restaurant with actual customers in it, or it’s banned. And requiring each such restaurant to have only one listed name in the app - which must be the same as the name on the sign of the physical restaurant. And clearly highlighting the age of the physical restaurant (under the current name) in the listings.

Basically: I want to use services that aren’t trying to grow quickly by inflating anything. I don’t want VC funded startups operating at a loss for growth for anything. I want to pay the true price of the service and only use services that aren’t “disrupting” by using legal loopholes or pricing to a loss to drive established actors out of markets.

LorenPechtel 3 years ago | |

Same name as the sign???

Many of the Chinese places around here have different names in Chinese and English. Sometimes slightly different, sometimes seriously different. I don't find it at all surprising, the Chinese names make sense to Chinese people but are hard for Americans to pronounce. It's the same thing as most Chinese people taking an Americanized version of their name (usually just informally) because their proper names get too badly mangled. (My wife is Chinese, more than once we've had the experience of being called from a waiting room and neither of us recognized what they had done to her name. At least with my last name the butchering is pretty consistent so I don't have a problem.)

golergka 3 years ago | |

> E.g require any restaurant to have a brick and mortar restaurant with actual customers in it, or it’s banned.

Why on earth would it matter to me as a delivery app user if I'm ordering from an ordinary restaurant or a dark kitchen? The only thing I care about is the food being good. And ordinary restaurants with actual customers in it often treat deliveries as something not really important.

craftkiller 3 years ago | | |

Because ghost kitchens have less skin in the game. They can ship a subpar product and then whenever their reviews get bad enough, they just pick a new name and start over "fresh" as an exciting "new" restaurant. Brick and mortar restaurants have a reputation to uphold. Every time I've ordered from a ghost kitchen the food has been considerably worse.

joshstrange 3 years ago |

I absolutely hate ghost kitchens, I think they should have to be labeled as such since they are often only a step at best above straight up scams. The 2 times I accidently ordered from one ("Oh nice, I didn't know we got an X nearby") the food has been below subpar and generally a huge disappointment.

These days I really hate using delivery apps. You have to dodge the ghost kitchens which isn't easy (both the fake brand name ones and the fake made-up restaurants like "It's just Wings", "F*cking Good Pizza", and "Super Mega Dilla"), you have to compare the DoorDash/GrubHub/UberEats prices to the restaurant's app prices to see which it the better deal (sometimes even if they use DoorDash for the actual delivery it's cheaper to buy through their app), and unless you are paying for the monthly/yearly subscription you can get fleeced on fees even after wading through all the bullshit to find real restaurants that have real storefronts in town.

sha256sum 3 years ago |

PSA: If you have been burned enough times using these apps then Perhaps you should give up ever believing they will change for the better. Cook food at home or skip the delivery and eat at a restaurant you know will be nice.

Consider the ratio of experiences you’ve had with any delivery app after the first order, good experiences to bad. Was the food late, cold, poor quality, damaged, or was its price marked up beyond what you initially believed?

If the same thing keeps happening and you expect different results then… well, you know what I’m getting at :)

starky 3 years ago |

>Is it asking too much to have a service that's transparent, functions well and have the end product taste good?

In my city (Vancouver), a restaurant owner actually setup a local only food delivery service during the pandemic with the idea that they keep costs as low as possible to run the service and restaurants didn't charge a markup which allowed for a flat service fee for every order and the restaurants pivoted employees to do deliveries instead of laying them off. The only downside for using it for most orders was that the options tended to be higher end dining.

It just shows how much VC money these larger services waste on their shitty services that get more and more expensive when maybe a couple of people were able to deliver the a better experience in a few months at the start of the pandemic. Unfortunately it seems like the service is shut down now as it always says "ordering unavailable", so maybe it wasn't that sustainable as a business.

Simon_O_Rourke 3 years ago | |

I second that experience - our local (high-endish) restaurant had both deliveries and take-out at the start of the pandemic, and completely wiped the floor with any crappy delivery services in our area. Then, once the pandemic finished, they stopped the deliveries and take out, and mediocre food delivery services took over again.

BjoernKW 3 years ago | | |

Both with this particular case and from a more general perspective, I keep encountering examples where businesses and people seem all too eager to revert to their olden, pre-pandemic ways without putting any thought into if such a reversal really makes sense: "The pandemic is over. Finally, we can return to the office."

In many ways, the pandemic worked as a catalyst for changes that were long overdue anyway. Yes, these changes were all the more beneficial in that specific situation. However, that doesn't mean those changes and the huge benefits they provided beyond the immediate response to an emergency become irrelevant once that emergency is over.

For example, while dining out, with fine dining in particular, is at least as much about the experience as it is about the food and having that experience on site in a nice restaurant absolutely is preferable to just having the food delivered to your door, this doesn't have to be an either-or proposition: Why not complement your usual offering with high-end delivery and take-out?

Since at least the Black Death, pandemics have also served as an accelerator for innovation and this one certainly is no different in that regard. The least we can do is to make use of that momentum and the opportunities it provided us with in addition to all the hardship.

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste, after all.

Balgair 3 years ago |

Aside: The piece on DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage is always a great read [0]

Not sure if it's still working out for A.J.'s Pizza, but that it did at any time should tell you everything you need to know about DD's internal structure; there is no there there.

[0] https://www.readmargins.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitrage

philwelch 3 years ago | |

This reminds me of Carlo Cipolla’s infamous essay on the laws of stupidity: http://gandalf.fee.urv.cat/professors/AntonioQuesada/Curs192...

In particular, his third law: “A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.”

libraryatnight 3 years ago |

My wife and I enjoy figuring out the origin restaurant. Sometimes it seems like an attempt to appeal to a different customer. We found one that traced back to a sports bar with a kitchen. The fake profile was more generic family appropriate in tone. We didn't try it but we didn't feel that was all that nefarious if that was the goal. We've also found places that were gross trying to masquerade as new and not gross. Once an address that resolved to apartment complex, which was weird.

pcthrowaway 3 years ago | |

Possibly taking a page from this:

> I sold microwave meals on Deliveroo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k47u9tduwb8

sharemywin 3 years ago |

Since they charge restaurants for the service which forces restaurants to raise prices and then charge the customers for the service(service 17% plus delivery fee plus suggested tip) and then pay drivers the least amount possible to take the order I don't understand how they aren't making hand over fist.

$20 for a big mac meal.

$30 for a large pizza.(might offer the driver like $5-$6 with tip.

I've stopped ordering delivery and pick it up myself now.

nicgrev103 3 years ago |

I've had a few. The most similar was uber eats, they constantly have a promotion on. One such was get £15 off your next order via email. I clicked through and ordered only to find no discount was applied. When I qestioned it they said some bullshit like the offer was only valid for the first 100 customers. Needless to say I am never odering through them again.

I had another one when travelling. I used skyscanner (flight comparison site), the cheapest flight took me through what must have been 3 forms and 30+ questions taking several mins to fill out. When you get to check out they say the price has now increased since you started the checkout (incuding fury and panic) and suggesting you accept the increase before the price goes up again! I quickly did a new comparison and funily enough the first price was still being shown on the comparison site. I opted for the second cheapest option and no such last min price increase was administered and I thought i'd doged a bullet. Sadly not, when I got to the airport to return home I found that the agent I had gone with had not booked my luggage on the retun flight, que a £50 surcharge to get it on last min. I am still trying to get my money back from them and the flight was in April. Unfortunately the comparison site model has encoraged agents to 'show' the lowest price at apparently any cost - some up the price last min others book your luggage only one way.

This is not limited to tech or internet companies. I found a worrying and annoying dark pattern in jewllery. Many companies use their own measurement lettering systems and there is a surprisingly large varience between companies, so you think your wife is size x and you order the ring but it turns out to be a different size which means you have to send it back to be resized (for a fee of course) and they know that you won't quibble because you don't want to look cheap in front of your partner for what is probably an emotionally driven purchase.

Compaines are literally in the business of extracting as much money from you as they can for the least resistance, so unfortunately unless people write reviews or share their expereinces it's business as usual.

LorenPechtel 3 years ago | |

Third party sites almost always offer inferior booking options to the actual company and they're much worse about hiding gotchas.

zbjornson 3 years ago |

"Virtual kitchens" (ghost kitchens) are encouraged by doordash as a way to diversify and boost revenue and stuff:

https://get.doordash.com/en-us/blog/virtual-restaurant-brand

They seem to be used frequently as decoys to allow restaurants to drop bad reviews though.

ryanmercer 3 years ago | |

"we can't delete bad reviews, but you could always make a virtual kitchen" is how I take that 'feature'.

silicon2401 3 years ago |

The beauty of the food world is that if you're willing to choose a restaurant that doesn't use a delivery app, or if you're willing to do takeout, you save money and get a way better experience. The first time I tried using a delivery app I saw that the service fee was something like 20%, whereupon I laughed and never went back. I'd rather pick up the food myself and pay nothing more than the cost of food itself, or get delivery from a local place where I can ensure the only extra cost, i.e. my tip to the driver, goes directly to the driver, cash in hand.

ironlake 3 years ago | |

My family orders take-out once a week. I used to go pick it up almost every time. DoorDash reduced my personal stress level by so much that the 20% service fee is an absolute bargain.

DoorDash itself is predatory and harmful to local restaurants and worldwide labor practices.

If you are a developer and a product manager asks you to implement a dark pattern, you should raise objections at every step of the process, implement it slowly and with defects, and talk about it publicly to shame the company. We're holding the shovel. Make dark patterns expensive.

silicon2401 3 years ago | | |

> My family orders take-out once a week. I used to go pick it up almost every time. DoorDash reduced my personal stress level by so much that the 20% service fee is an absolute bargain.

In your case I'm glad you have an option that works for you. At the end of the day it's a case by case value analysis. I'm so viscerally against things like tips and service charges I'd rather just buy a frozen pizza from the grocery store and snack on that or do takeout than support something like doordash. I think a lot of people need things like doordash less than they think they do, so I like sharing examples of how that can be done.

UncleEntity 3 years ago | | |

> DoorDash itself is predatory and harmful to local restaurants and worldwide labor practices.

And why would they change when people who know this still use their service?

All these Silicon Valley companies get away with this stuff because people value the convenience over the small businesses getting screwed over.

quinnjh 3 years ago | | |

>If you are a developer and a product manager asks you to implement a dark pattern, you should raise objections at every step of the process

In what way would this benefit the organization?

Its great sentiment and I would agree, though i fear the reality is "The squeaky wheel gets replaced"

modeless 3 years ago |

While we're piling on Doordash, how have they managed to produce a website that takes more than a second to respond to every single button press? Like even something as simple as clicking on the hamburger menu icon takes over a second to register. It's infuriating.

drugstorecowboy 3 years ago | |

Thank you for saying this, I work in the web space and there is just zero excuse for how poorly it works, none. I don't believe any amount of tracking or anything else would cause things to be as slow as they are. I have often thought that it would actually be a little difficult to make something so slow without intentionally throwing in a few second delay.

tinus_hn 3 years ago | |

Sounds like it’s trying to track all your mouse movements and clicks and either it’s broken or you’ve halfway blocked it.

joshstrange 3 years ago | |

Or switching out of the app and back causes it to throw up a spinner for longer than feels reasonable. As someone who has interfaced with their API I can tell you it's a trainwreck and I have no expectations that their actual backend is any better.

emsign 3 years ago |

An old wise man once said: For some problems like getting screwed over by people there is no absolute technical solution.

nailer 3 years ago |

In the UK one restaurant constantly has a “30% promotion” on Uber eats / Deliveroo, which pushes them to th top of results.

The only item that is 30% off is the restaurant’s merchandise.

AndyMcConachie 3 years ago |

I live in The Netherlands and order food at least once a week, usually from Thuisbezorgd. I've never had any of the problems people are discussing here.

I will say that Thusbezorgd is often more expensive than just going directly to a restaurant's website. But also we find restaurants that we like and keep ordering from them. I typically know precisely where my food is coming from because I physically know where the restaurant is.

SOLAR_FIELDS 3 years ago | |

Usually the ones in the States are quite more expensive than ordering from the restaurant as well. GrubHub adds markup to individual food items, DoorDash does it via hidden fees. Usually about 10-20% above the normal restaurant price, not including delivery fee and tip. Most often there is no other way to get food delivery from said restaurants though.

mbit8 3 years ago |

DoorDash is for digestible food. If you want rather quality food, you either need connections or step out the door into a restaurant.

faangiq 3 years ago |

Yea that whole company and industry is a dark pattern. Convenient though.

waqf 3 years ago | |

"whole industry": I am currently in Germany and the major apps here (Lieferando and Wolt) are a lot less dark patterny, the prices seem to be usually same as in-restaurant and there aren't hidden fees.

(My crunchy friends still criticise them for being an oligopoly that squeezes restaurants though, which may well be true.)

Victerius 3 years ago |

I understand and I sympathize. But... you could also cook. Prepare rice in a cooking pot and chicken in a frying pan with onions or shallots. 20 minutes. Or cook pasta and an egg. 10 minutes. Or fried potatoes with sausages and boiled eggs. 15 minutes. Or an omelette with spices and an avocado on the side. 10 minutes. Or a big sandwich if you're in a hurry. And half or more of those times will be spent waiting for the food to cook and monitoring them and stirring them.

nullhack 3 years ago | |

Transparent: Moreso than Restaurant + Delivery!

Functions well: How dutifully can one shop, and hand/machine-wash plates after eating?

End product tastes good: taste food while you're preparing it (and the food is safe to eat)

Home-cooking is a good start to OP's requirements

flycatcha 3 years ago | | |

Absolutely, my wife and I cook most of our meals. The bad experience I had with DoorDash earlier today was exacerbated by the fact that we're both at home recovering (suffering) from COVID at the moment and so using their service was more out of necessity than anything else and they really fell short.

Ekaros 3 years ago |

I think it is too much to ask knowing how much money these rent-seeking companies want to make and how expensive it is actually to have individuals deliver you stuff.

Nextgrid 3 years ago | |

> how expensive it is actually to have individuals deliver you stuff

That's not actually the expensive part. The expensive part is the greedy investors behind it and their attempt at monopolizing the industry (which thankfully is failing).

pipeline_peak 3 years ago |

I like the idea of forking over half a million to live in some Bay Area crawl space and just listen to people like OP complain about ghost kitchens and refusing to Google restaurant reviews. The reviews already exist, how is providing even more in DoorDash’s interest?

“Let’s use UberEats instead, DoorDash doesn’t have reviews”.

If you don’t know what it is, either go by car or don’t order it.

scarface74 3 years ago |

Just an FYI: YCombinator backed food delivery services…

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/zoomer

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/racer

raverbashing 3 years ago |

Here's an idea. Order from restaurants that actually exist

If you haven't seen it and knows where it is then don't order from it

Jasper_ 3 years ago |

Yes, it's asking too much, it's VC funded lmao. They want to make money and the dark patterns work. Ghost kitchens are encouraged and supported by the industry. Stop using DoorDash, find a restaurant that delivers and call their number directly. Or learn to cook.

giardini 3 years ago |

On a related fast food topic from flyover country: Ghost Kitchens(sp) in the Sky. "Here it comes, America!":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkdci55adqk

tehwebguy 3 years ago |

Same on the other platforms now. All these weird “restaurants” use the same photo style too, basically all indistinguishable.

Ekaros 3 years ago | |

I actually hate the photos or lack of there of on these sites. If I see a photo of product in banner of restaurant I expect it to representative of the food they make. But often it looks more like styled stock footage...

peanut_worm 3 years ago |

The ghost kitchen thing seems like it should be illegal. It is a huge problem on Uber Eats as well.

Ekaros 3 years ago | |

I think Ghost Kitchens are perfect pairings for delivery service. For all parties. Now I admit, each should be individually presented location and actually the place making the food.

noja 3 years ago |

Say what you like about DoorDash, but who wants to go back to the days before it?

Nowadays I can order straight from the app, simply pay for my pizza, the service fee, tax, delivery charge, and tip. Wait a little while and it comes straight to my door.

Sure, now it costs a little more, but that money is going straight to the guys that deliver my food. That's great for everyone.

gumby 3 years ago | |

> but that money is going straight to the guys that deliver my food.

Ha ha, sorry that isn’t the case. Door dash etc are actually killing some restaurants by impersonating them, forcing huge discounts on what they will pay, and of course notoriously stealing from their delivery people.

JumpCrisscross 3 years ago | |

> who wants to go back to the days before it?

Me. Specifically, before they bought Caviar [1].

No fake restaurants. Dedicated delivery staff who were on time and friendly. Differentiated offerings from Seamless.

[1] https://help.doordash.com/dashers/s/article/Caviar-x-DoorDas...

turkishmonky 3 years ago | |

I've actually stopped using third party delivery services all together - the food is routinely cold, there are hidden fees everywhere, drivers are severely underpaid, many times you can't even order from the full menu.

Pizza and Chinese food delivery has been a thing long before doordash, and the quality of directly employed delivery seems to be much higher.

If a restaurant doesn't have delivery I'll just making a to-go order and go pick it up.

nonrandomstring 3 years ago |

Seriously, all of you lazy toads, learn to cook

It's one of life's exquisite pleasures. You'll save a ton of money. Massively improve your health. It really impresses any potential partner - many a lifelong relationship started in the kitchen not the bedroom. Cookbooks are recipes are really fun. Surely my fellow hackers, don't we love to know how things work and be in control?