I worked for five years at a grocery delivery company, and even there it was a nightmare trying to keep delivery routes profitable - that was with at least 5 hour's notice on what people had ordered, and pre-selected delivery slots, which meant we could peak at each driver doing 10-12 drops an hour if they were in an area with a high customer density. I have no idea how companies like Deliveroo expect to make a consistent profit when they get 25 minute's notice, no delivery slots, and therefore little to no ability to batch a driver's work. Everything I've read indicates a single Deliveroo driver would expect to do 1-3 drops an hour, which is just wildly inefficient.
Having said that, I do now wonder if you could make the model work by offering very cheap, or even free, delivery on the condition that you place the order a few hours in advance for a pre-selected delivery time. I'm not sure what the market is like for customers who want to order takeout food, but also know they'll want to do that in advance, but I think there's probably a niche there if anyone fancies taking a pass at it.
> Having said that, I do now wonder if you could make the model work by offering very cheap, or even free, delivery on the condition that you place the order a few hours in advance for a pre-selected delivery time.
You're right and you just described how that "Special Offers" section of über ears works. They give you a small selection of restaurants that another user near you has ordered from and a 5min countdown to place an order yourself, if you do you get free delivery and über benefits from the efficiency of a double or triple order for one of their drivers.
> Having said that, I do now wonder if you could make the model work by offering very cheap, or even free, delivery on the condition that you place the order a few hours in advance for a pre-selected delivery time.
While a nifty idea, I don't think it really works. I see two major obstacles:
Food ordering is instant (or almost instant) gratification. You want your food and you want it now. Or if not now then in 30 minutes, max. You may have the odd outlier, who plans accordingly and orders dinner at noon.
The other problem would be the customers at the end of the delivery route. While that doesn't matter much for groceries that sauce on the former tasty duck à l'orange may be mighty congealed and rather unappetizing once it arrives as one of the last deliveries of a route.
I just don't think that there's enough of a market for pre planned food deliveries and quality assurance would be impossible.
If you have a good math and data science team you should be able to predict demand pretty reliably. I think membership fee programs may be the future here with a premium for faster delivery vs normal delivery. The key is to set expectations.
Having said that, I do now wonder if you could make the model work by offering very cheap, or even free, delivery on the condition that you place the order a few hours in advance for a pre-selected delivery time. I'm not sure what the market is like for customers who want to order takeout food, but also know they'll want to do that in advance, but I think there's probably a niche there if anyone fancies taking a pass at it.