DoorDash Joins Forces with Wolt
ir.doordash.comWolt fed me through the pandemic in Hungary. And it's easily one of the best food delivery apps I've used. The app itself is 4/5 stars. Reliable, but the search filters don't give enough control to users. But what really stood out about Wolt was their customer service. They have incredible response times, and always do everything in their power to resolve any issues. That's rare these days, and I hope it doesn't go away now that they've been acquired. I feel like this is a successful acquisition for the people at Wolt. And may be a good success story for a European tech company that paves the way for future success. I'm happy for them. That being said, I'm not as big of a fan of DoorDash, and I worry that this will move talent and value out of Europe, yet again.
these gig economy type startups only work if a monopoly is established. Competition results in users being subsidized by venture capital, so the logical option for both parties is to join forces and basically create a cartel
This is clearly incorrect, there are three public food delivery companies in the USA alone (DoorDash, Uber, Grubhub)
Not one of those companies is profitable, so it seems it’s actually more correct than not..
All they need to do is offer Szep card option and I'll be happy. Only reason I'm still using Netpincer.
Good customer service huh? Well, prepare for that to go away now that an American startup now owns them!
Well, that's sad news. Wolt used to be the only food delivery company that had actually functional customer service. They replied swiftly, sometimes automatically even granted some promo codes when the delivery was really late. I suppose that will be gone soon.
Other companies I used ranged from "Your order never arrived? Ok, we'll refund you after some time if you jump through enough hoops" (Glovo) to non-existent: "Your order never arrived? Not our problem, talk to the restaurant. Restaurant ignores your email and calls? Well, still not our problem." (pyszne.pl, polish-only).
Pyszne is Takeaway.com, they just have a different brand name in every country. The rest of the branding is exactly the same.
I've never used pyszne but if I ever use such service I'd use my CC to pay and if I never get a refund I'd just file a chargeback. Sure, they may just ban you but you get your money back and you don't have to deal with their bs anymore.
Well, DoorDash has always a) instantly replied to me and b) fully refunded me for any order that doesn't arrive. In fact, they have an automatic flow to get refunds that takes a few seconds to complete.
Agree, my experience with their customer service has been excellent. Missing side = automatic 50% refund for cost of that dish, don't have to talk to any customer service, you just tap a few buttons in the app.
As a non-user I only have negative feelings towards Wolt myself. They have their fleet of underpaid cyclists with gigantic boxes darting around the town at full speed without regard for traffic or anything else. The system where they get paid more the faster they go doesn't seem super healthy and one of them's gonna get killed by a car sooner or later.
Sounds like the city you’re in needs to fix its bike lanes rather than continue blaming cyclists
I'm not sure parent blamed cyclists, but rather their working conditions.
Where I live we have no cyclist lanes so all food delivery gig workers use motorbikes. I personally see a traffic accident involving these people almost every week.
I think if construction work didn't have strict health and safety regulations we would see/hear about construction accidents every day.
This (new) industry should be regulated in the same way.
There is regulation in place to avoid accidents. It's called traffic rules.
On the contrary, most of the city has pretty good bike lanes set up.
It's just that they don't get enough time to do the commute safely, or at least safety is gravely disincentivized with extra pay.
No, it doesn't. I can't tell from their comment whether their city/town has good cycling infrastructure or not. Even if it does, the app would still incentivize using it (and roads and sidewalks) incorrectly and dangerously.
If the payment model is every delivery = comission, then they'll go as fast as possible, even with good bike lanes.
Red light, but the cross street is empty? They'll probably blow through it. And they'll be making these kinds of stupid risk assessments every few seconds, and statistics would say the chances of 100% success are against them...
There are cities where cyclists use bike lanes?
This news worries me, because Wolt has been the only delivery service that I could use without frustration. Most others, in their crazy run towards customer acquisition and growth, are tripping over their own shoelaces: in some cases, even basic online ordering functionality is broken.
Wolt has been getting most things right and I hope this acquisition doesn't change that.
Wolt is the first food delivery app I used years ago. It has been convenient, but I definitely started taking it for granted.
I was shocked when I traveled to Germany and used their popular app Lieferando. That app didn't even have a dynamic GPS based map, instead it showed a static map with a constant "ETA 30min". They might as well have just sent me a text with "ETA 30min" as there was no functional difference. Best part was that the courrier never arrived and the app kept showing me "ETA 30min" even two days later. Of course there was no in-app support contact. Only way to contact them was via e-mail and it took them multiple days to respond. The response was very hostile and they claimed that because the courrier couldn't find the address (a giant hotel building) they just didn't make the delivery and that's how it is. Ended up having to do a chargeback.
Contrasting this to Wolt, where I've never had any issues with delivery (and there's a real time map of the courrier's location). When I've had wrong items delivered, the in-app customer support chat has been reasonable and they've just given me credit for a new order.
I'm not sure where DoorDash falls on this spectrum. I've certainly read horror stories about DoorDash here on HN, but hopefully they've improved. Would be a real shame to lose Wolt's premium experience.
I understand the convenience of delivered food esp. during the lockdowns, but people should not be glorifying these companies that are instituting a modern big-tech-powered serfdom by scraping the bottom of the barrel of gig work. We need a better model for this , not human-robots that carry food to the well-off.
It isn't these companies' fault that couriers don't have better options. If anything, without this kind of service existing, a lot of them would be simply out of work completely.
It still feels exploitative. To open a can of worms, what if I compare this to prostitution?
Yeah I get it, there's a gap there (uncaring governments and lack of good-enough jobs), and it's not their fault that they can profit from this gap. Although I suppose the moralistic issue is that these rent-seeking companies are paying as low as possible to attract/keep the workers and pocketing the rest (not to mention the other dodgy shit like trying to extract the maximum from restaurants, e.g. by hijacking their ordering system). But hey, as a child of capitalism, I'd do the same too.
Maybe I should change jobs and be a pimp...
The one I'm using was recently forced to employ their workers full time. It means no more flexibility, losing about a 100 drivers instantly, and increasing delivery times by about 30-40 min in the short run, and I'm perfectly fine with that.
I don't know if Glovo as their only real competitor is held onto the same standard, I refuse to use them because they approached the market by throwing money at it, buying competitors and every ad they could in whichever media they could (TV, radio, newspapers, billboards, for months it was the only ad you'd get on YouTube, etc).
But what do you think about this lifestyle in which middle class people sit trapped in their homes all day while the peasants bring their food and groceries to them. Are we turning cities to prisons without bars?
I'm not "trapped indoors", I'm too lazy to cook every meal. You've made a pretty big leap between using a delivery app and using it all the time for everything. I do one meal a week, maybe two if I'm really lazy. I also buy my own groceries. Shocking, I know.
The amount of people that can afford to do that all the time will always be small enough not to make any difference in how a city operates.
the only options here aren't full-time or serfdom.
That's why we can't have nice things in Europe. I second other comments - Wolt customer service is top notch, I'd even say too proactive ;)
What can we do so there is less incentive for entrepreneurs to sell themselves to the US companies? Is the sustainable enterprise model dead today?
It’s not dead, but it doesn’t apply to companies like Wolt that take huge amounts of VC cash to lose tons of money competing in a crowded sector. This is the ideal exit for Wolt.
Europeans need to be open to more financial risk in order to create a competitive and robust capital market compared to the United States. Until then, you can expect to read more stories like this.
I used to use Wolt all the time back during the pandemic lockdowns, it had better choices than UberEats and you could see the drivers were either young students making some cash on the side or folks who had a lot of time and used it to bike around and make money. It also happened to have all my favourite restaurants to choose from. It just seemed honest.
Nowadays it's completely different. All the temp drivers got replaced by cheap Indians/Pakistanis doing it as a full time job (but without any insurance or benefits). And most of the restaurants don't even exist, they are literally just some guy cooking in his basement under a fake restaurant name, sometimes multiple names pretending to be competing restaurants - and they keep changing the names and logos all the time so you never even know who you're actually ordering your food from.
Just a shady business with shady "consultants" delivering food from shady places.
>they are literally just some guy cooking in his basement under a fake restaurant name,
Texan here. You just described every good TexMex place I've been to.
Right, but here in EU this sort of thing is illegal, and if you tried to cook shit in your basement and sell it for real money you'd get shut down instantly. Same with hiring illegals and making them work with no insurance. Same with providing no training. Same with taking no responsibility in case of accidents. Etc etc. These companies keep getting away with outright ignoring the laws where they operate - and how can you ever compete with a company that ignores regulations?
I assure you it's generally illegal in the US as well.
This is one reason why US tech will always win. Any tech company in EU or Asia that becomes big enough will be acquired by the heavily capitalized US companies or their employees will be hired away.
Can you explain "this"? What mechanism is at play here?
The second sentence by the OP explains the mechanism. "Heavily capitalized". Finland especially is very capital poor.
Massive amounts of cheap money in public and private markets. Companies like Doordash have infinite money to buy non-US startups.
Wolt has been absolutely great. They suddenly appeared here in Northen Europe with superior technology(app, website, UI, UX, everything) than the otherwise dominating Just-Eat and since then I have barely used anyone else. Since then, Just-Eat have been trying(and failing miserably) at catching up.
From what I've heard about DoorDash, this doesn't bode well, but I guess we'll have to see. Either way, I enjoyed seeing the awful JE get pushed off its pedestal and then scramble to stay relevant. It's like a textbook lesson in what happens if your company dominates a market and then decides to just chill for 10 years.
Brutal. I don’t want to think about how much I’ve spent through Wolt (CPH) during the pandemic, but from a customer experience standpoint, they have been very fair. Quick response, predictable outcomes, no hoops. Congrats to wolt, thanks to all the delivery and service workers, and I’ll delete it at the first change in CS standards.
Wolt was a show of Northern European style software/business development, and it’s why Doordash acquired them.
Now that US big tech has their dirty fingers all over Wolt, I’ll guess all that will be gone in 3 years as the bullshit starts creeping in.
Please keep nationalistic swipes off HN, regardless of which nation you have a problem with. It reliably makes threads low-quality, leads to worse (usually much worse) from others, and is not at all what this site is supposed to be for.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
p.s. in case anyone is worried: yes, we post these moderation comments regardless of country.
That is the downside of free trade: foreigners can fly in and buy up all your companies. Which is exactly why China protects their tech industry like a wolf her cubs. Capitalism favours the strong.
You can be happy when your companies are bought and you can invest in a new round of (local) startups.
I believe in Finland you mostly invest in walls and then whats left is for few angel rounds.
This should correlate with how much the founders net, and buying a house after your exit happens elsewhere too. Also, some of the profits go to the institutional investors and they definitely re-invest.
No by investing in walls I meant that in Finland typically it has been quite common that after successful exit the profits (mainly) go into property development. You start buying different kinds of real estate.
Yes I'm sure there will be a startup rival for Google any day now...
I'm not sure what kind of argument you want to make: Wolt could've been the first GAFAM to come from outside of US? Finland (GDP $271 billion) should grow and host a business such as Google (revenue $183 billion)?
You can be even more happy if you use the money to buy a new yacht.
Even as a country, yes, if the yacht is bought from the local economy and fuels new maritime innovations.
and that isolationism is the most sure way to grow financially and not socially
"Social growth" is a sufficiently fuzzy term that I'm sure that people can easily come up with definitions where isolationism is beneficial to social growth.
People from China are not isolated though: they can study and spend time abroad, form social connections before returning to China if they so prefer.
Right, that’s why there’s a very large cultural crackdown on what can be shown, with pop stars being removed and wiped from the internet . With kids having their past times curfewed.
Happy to cite, and this might be a giant rabbit hole, but I would posit there’s massive disagreement (both for and against) your statement.
Sure, some directions of "growing socially" are strictly prohibited in China and perhaps also for those who ever want to go (back) to China. But does some directions mean all directions in practise? I don't know.
First of all, their policy is much more extensive, but lets ignore because it’s not in the spirit of HN to verge so much off topic.
Believing free speech is context dependent (outside of yelling fire in a movie theater) seems like a future worth avoiding no matter what the benefits are when viewed in a historical context. You can stretch the analogy and say the same thing about Iran. Sorry just not interested, we’re going to have to disagree here.
How did we go from isolationism to free speech? If the only context dependency you allow is the one you mention, your argument applies to e.g. European laws against hate speech as well. Is Europe isolationist too?
This isn’t productive. Let’s stop.
Why would the EU approve the deal? Seems like a no brainer to reject it.
Because the EU and the member states don't have jurisdiction to block every single company in the market from being acquired.
And wolt is not exactly sensitive to national security interests or at risk of creating a monopoly
And at least in Finland Doordash really isn't a competitor, so there isn't even monopoly issues.
Finland is historically not especially concerned with monopoly issues in any case. Nearly the entire retail sector is controlled by only two companies.
At least the retailer with a 40 % market share can't deposit the money overseas to some hedge fund because it's a co-op.
But for some reason they can try to expand to next country... Which really puzzles me... After all they are collection of regional "co-ops". Even if the whole model is quite distanced at this point.
Three, Lidl is big enough to be considered relevant competition.
For just the supermarkets, yes. But S-group and Kesko are huge. They own restaurants, banks, hotels, gas stations, home improvement stores, department stores, car dealerships, and a bunch of specialty stores.
Yeah, I used "retail sector" quite carefully there. The breadth of the conglomerates here is vast. It's sort of surreal to me, even by American standards, that this level of market capture is even allowed.
The EU has no say in this, Finland does.
The EU definitely has a say. It's true that Finland can choose to leave the EU, but it's disingenuous to say that EU doesn't have a say.
However "having a say" goes even further, because Wolt operates also outside the EU. Any country it operates in will have a clear say. Even countries it doesn't operate in will have a say if they have leverage over any of the countries where Wolt operates in. So in this case, the US will have a say, even though Wolt doesn't even operate in the US.
What mechanisms does the EU have to block and US company from buying another private company(in a non defence or vital infrastructure sector)?
Depends on the specifics. In this case one of the two companies involved is headquartered in the EU, so the mechanisms are the same as if two EU companies were trying to buy eachother.
Now if we assume a more interesting situation where neither of the companies are headquartered in the EU, but still do business in the EU. Then the number of mechanisms shrinks, but not by much. The EU could just fine the companies out of existance for not complying. See examples of the EU fining Microsoft, Google, or Facebook. Not that they stopped existing, but it shows that the EU can successfully fine these companies. Another example more closely related to buying is ARM. ARM is owned by a Japanese company, and Nvidia (a US company) is seeking to buy it. Yet the EU is looking into whether they'll allow it. [1]
The fewest options are in the case where both companies are fully located outside the EU and do no business in the EU. However if some of their subcontractors are in the EU, then go back to the paragraph above. Now if these two companies are are fully, along with their full supply chain, outside of EU jurisdiction. Then the options get pretty slim. Most efficient mechanism probably being diplomatic talks. EU diplomats could ask a country that has jurisdiction (say the US) to block the sale, and in return the US would get some sweet gains elsewhere. Classic diplomatic bargaining.
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[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/27/22266504/nvidia-arm-deal...
will it need to approve the acquisition?
Why would they reject it?
Ah I love wolt, best app of all the providers! So much churn in this industry.
Unrelated to the story - Who thought its a good idea to change scrollbar's behaviour? I scroll down a little and suddenly it jumps to the bottom of the page.
Doesn't seem to behave out of the ordinary on Chrome for me, are you on Firefox?
They can underpay worldwide
Gross. Wolt was in my mind one of the less amoral delivery services. It's delivery staff are (soon to be were I'm sure) actual employees.
The delivery staff definitely aren't/weren't actual employees. They all have some kind of business entity set up that they use to bill Wolt
It's still an open question whether this is legal in some countries, e.g. Denmark. It's being argued heavily that Wolt shouldn't be allowed to avoid pension, payed vacation, and payed sick leave, which are required by law for all workers. The competing Just Eat have just signed a union agreement with couriers which includes full benefits, without increasing prices for customers.
>pension, payed vacation, and payed sick leave, which are required by law for all workers
Wait do you mean that someone like a janitor has all these benefits?
I'm honestly not sure if you're sarcastic. These are all basic human rights in most developed countries, and even in many non-developed ones. At least in theory, regulations are designed primary for the people and not for better business at all costs.
I'm sorry I worded it wrong. You are right, a janitor is absolutely deserving of all these benefits. Its just that in the US we are so far away from that norm it is a shock to hear that even a position that is typically farmed out to the lowest bidders here in the states is completely covered with no strings. I just wanted to confirm if all jobs are covered as it was leading to additional questions in my mind such as how do smaller companies manage to pay for all these benefits for entry level positions? Is it covered by the state and the company just pays into a general tax?
Why wouldn't a janitor be deserving of these things? They work hard, their job is essential for the running of other businesses, and most of all they are humans too.
A janitor is absolutely deserving of all this. My wording was poor, I should have said something more along the lines of entry level worker. This is so far from the norm in the US that I was wondering how smaller companies manage to cover the costs of these benefits. I guess they pay a general tax and the government picks up the cost?
On one hand if you can't afford to pay your employees and provide them basic benefits like paid time off, sick leave etc, then you don't deserve to be in business.
It of course depends on the country how things are implemented, but here there is a central insurance fund that all employees pay into. Then when an employee needs to take time off for parental leave the company applies to the fund and the fund covers the expenses. The company can then choose to pay out more than the fund does, or not. As is normal for benefits. This means though that every employee has a right to at least 16 weeks of leave at somewhere between 70-100% of pay. Details change the specifics.
Healthcare has little to nothing to do with companies. Technically you can sometimes get a discount by applying to a group scheme through your work, but mostly it is done independently. It costs about €170 a month a person. Depending upon how much you earn you can get a subsidy from the government for up to 100% of your monthly expense. That €170 covers most things you could need healthcare wise, although somethings aren't covered unless you buy addons, for example eyeglasses. Everyone is required to have health insurance.
>On one hand if you can't afford to pay your employees and provide them basic benefits like paid time off, sick leave etc, then you don't deserve to be in business.
I guess this is why lots of startups use 'contractor' services because things like cleaning are not their core competency but what you describe could apply to many early stage startups. In that stage many companies are in a vulnerable position and death is likely. What you describe would only further reduce the chances of the company surviving. If all we have are entrenched businesses that can afford these additional expenses we end up in stagnation over time. Maybe thats one part of the reason why we don't see many big shot companies coming out of Europe today? I don't know.
On the other hand, €170 a month seems very reasonable. From a quick search it seems like in the US the average monthly healthcare cost covered by an employer is around $1,100 or around $13,200 per year. This is in additional to the portion that employees may have to pay. This varies depending on employer and plan.
How would pensions work? That is actually what I really wanted to know about. Pensions would be an additional added cost and it seems like only the big established companies can afford to offer it.
We also use contracting services for things like janitors here. The startup I used to work for didn't need dedicated cleaners, we needed maybe 1/4th of a dedicated cleaner. So we had an external service that paid to have someone come in and take care of all the things. But they in turn worked for a company that ensured they had all these things. So the costs were passed onto us, but only a fraction of it.
As for pensions it depends a lot on the specifics of the company. There are state run pensions here in the NL. Additionally you have some that unions, or the government have negotiated industry wide. So if you are involved in hospitality, restaurants, and similar then there is a special pension that automatically gets paid into every month. I don't really know the specifics because I'm not part of said pension.
The state pension is somewhere between 700 (each if in a couple) or 1100 (if single) a month. This is then supplemented by private pensions which are afaik basically required to be offered by all companies, even if they aren't created equally, and as mentioned above there are special industry or union pensions. Then add in things like socialized housing (which is much nicer than in the US or UK), and the lack of need for a car here and you can get by much more easily.
Do you think the world doesn't need janitors?
If they are doing necessary labor, by what basis should they be excluded from social benefits?
In Europe, yes. All of these are mandatory for all workers, including janitors and other staff.
If they are regular employee of any company yes. They have all of them.
Can't claim for Denmark, but in the UK absolutely. We distinguish between a few different types of employment but janitors would typically be employees and entitled to these things.
Of course?
Depends on the market i guess, but in Finland and Germany they were employees, freelance isn't even an option.
Def not in Finland. The question whether the freelance status is legal or whether the couriers should be classified as employees is still open. There was a preliminary decision that they are employees but the court process is still ongoing.
Correct. The labor board has issued its opinion that they should be considered employees but it hasn't yet been enforced by the courts.
Instead, all Wolt couriers in Finland have been "independent contractors" and had to have their own business name or do other paperwork, that because of how Finnish law works for small business owners, means they get cut off from any public health insurance, unemployment insurance, etc.
Courier work doesn't pay nearly enough to afford private insurance here, and since they aren't unionized (because after all they're not "workers" but business owners), they can't join a union unemployment benefit either.
There has been an ongoing attempt at unionization but it has been difficult to push through; the apps are fighting against it tooth and nail because they already run at a loss and underpay the drivers as it is. Wolt deliberately obfuscates how much couriers are making an hour in the driver app, runs propaganda articles on the customer app, and both it and Foodora have continued to fight against employee or union recognition in the courts.
It's become apparent for a while they are running scared, and running out of money. Quality of service has massively degraded over the last two years, as they've stripped support staff to the bone, manipulated delivery fees and ranges to nickle-and-dime customers, massive order delays and fudged estimates, started manipulating algorithms to push certain restaurants and promotions, rushed couriers causing constant order failures, which then mean more cost in customer refunds. It's god bad enough I stopped using it completely, because I just could no longer trust that I'd even get what I ordered, or that it wouldn't be left a sodden mess leaking all over my entryway.
It's an app that was probably going to implode if they didn't get a buyout and soon, so this move is incredibly predictable. My only surprise is just how greedy they went with the bogus valuation here.
> because of how Finnish law works for small business owners, means they get cut off from any public health insurance
This is not true. Finnish public health insurance is residency based: Every resident has it [1]. What you are probably thinking of, is the extra occupational private health insurance, that most Finnish employers provide for their employees (so that during work days, the employees don't need to wait in line in the public health services, but can get back to work sooner after seeing a private doctor).
[1] https://www.kela.fi/ulkomailta-suomeen-sairaanhoito-suomessa
My father-in-law was a Finn, born and raised, and had to pay for everything out of pocket because he owned his own home business fabricating HVAC ductwork, and of course got no sick leave if he did get injured and couldn't work.
It's possible to buy private insurance of course, a common solution for tech freelancers here is to make your own business and then hire yourself as an employee, so at least you can get an occupational health care plan.
But private health insurance here is a joke anyway, they don't cover a ton of things because they assume they can just refer you to the public care for any of the complicated stuff. Mine wouldn't even cover a CPAP machine, I had to get on a public waiting list and borrow one from the state, and it took months.
I believe most of the couriers have ”residence permit for an entrepreneur”. That means you get emergency care but thats about it. As your link states ” Jos olet tullut Suomeen tilapäisesti muualta kuin EU- tai Eta-maasta, Sveitsistä, Isosta-Britanniasta tai Pohjois-Irlannista, sinulla on oikeus vain kiireelliseen sairaanhoitoon. Hoidon kustannukset voidaan laskuttaa sinulta jälkikäteen. ”
> I believe most of the couriers have ”residence permit for an entrepreneur”. That means you get emergency care but thats about it.
This is not true, for Finland. Residence permit for an entrepreneur [1] is still a residence permit. You get residency, home municipality, and everything that goes with it.
Aah, so it seems. I stand corrected.
As the Finnish say, it's not the fool who sells, but the one who buys. If a buyer is willingly offering 7 billion EUR, it's not greedy to accept it.
> It's become apparent for a while they are running scared, and running out of money.
In he meantime it seems that their executive + lead level salaries took quite a hike between 2019 and 2020. At the sametime there were stories about how cost conscious they are. Funny.
Wolt's delivery staff haven't been treated as actual employees in its native Finland. It was actually quite recent when the occupational safety administration ruled that Wolt's delivery staff are actually employees, but Wolt is appealing.
I wonder if that's why they are now exiting. They can see that there is no future for this kind of business as governments crack down on the platform economy.
The same has been speculated in Finnish groups/forums, probably it affected the decision, but of course we can't know how much. They had also been thinking of going public, so this acquisition seems safer option
Food delivery is a multi billion industry and being the number one app is still lucrative.
Surely this is not the case anymore, nowadays Wolt drivers are either fresh arrived immigrants with no language or actual illegals - it's definitely not because Wolt cares about their wellbeing and wants to hire them as employees.
73% [1] of couriers don't want to be employees (in Finland). They are quite happy with this arrangement as it means they are paid more. The survey that was conducted was quite thorough and interesting. It's worth a read.
(Just stating facts here, don't have an opinion myself on this)
[1] https://blog.wolt.com/fin/2021/06/23/taloustutkimus-majority...
Classic short-term fallacy. Yes, you get more net payout as a "contractor" - but you don't get paid sick leave or pension contributions unless you care for these on your own.
This is why this model is very frowned upon by European societies as it inevitably leaves taxpayers to pick up the tab in the form of basic social security.
You don't even get paid more. The apps have been circulating this myth in the press, but it's based on obfuscating of the numbers at best, and outright lies at worst.
There's a reason most of their couriers are immigrants: anyone else can get paid more stocking a supermarket or driving a cab.
After they freed the taxi market even that is somewhere on level of gig-work. Still, there is good amount better paid untrained work around.
> After they freed the taxi market even that is somewhere on level of gig-work.
Certainly the freeing could have been done better, but the system before wasn't exactly healthy either. There was a fixed number of taxi licenses, and taxi companies were of course heavily lobbying against increasing the number. Since there were so few of them, good luck getting a taxi on a weekend night. Then again, if you were lucky and got a taxi, it was a shiny clean Mercedes (which perhaps tells something about the profit margins they were running at).
On other hand good luck getting taxi now during weekday night, specially outside cities. Prices have gone up and from what I have heard quality of service has gone down.
I think licensing system we had made sense, prices were capped, service was at least controlled and availability during all times was guaranteed. Ofc, this lead to some issues when there was extreme demand...
Maybe. But remember that the employees themselves voted on this. This was done by an independent auditor.
People are really bad with long term planning. Your average 20 year old doesn't know anything about pensions and considers themselves to be indestructible.
It would be ridiculously easy to just copy the US and do away with the social welfare system. See how many will actually save for their retirement lol.
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Being non-employee at these income levels is just horrible deal. Miss quite many things from pensions to possible unemployment benefits and possibly even paid vacation.
It only really starts to become reasonable if you can bill yourself as consultant in fields like IT.
There’s also no reason an employee couldn’t have fully flexible hours if the business model is suitable anyway. Well, in principle no reason, anyway, in practice current employment legislation and collective agreements in Finland place limits on working times because historically the risk of employers voluntelling employees to work less-than-pleasant hours has been deemed too high.
Employment does not have to mean fixed or restricted work times.
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Assuming that Wolt, similar to DoorDash, loses money... if Wolt loses less money than DoorDash, thereby having higher profits, does this make it a more or a less successful company than DoorDash?
As almost-daily user of Wolt, I'm interested to see how this will impact me. Maybe I finally won't have to pay 3 euros for McDonalds to get delivered for a 10minute walking distance.
Jesus, this is exactly the problem, If you don't want to pay the people who deliver your food to your lazy ass a fair salary don't use food delivery. Go get your own food.
In my opinion it should be even more than €3 for most deliveries, I think this is subsidized by VC money and unfair conditions to the delivery people.
Wolt charges 3 euros for McD delivery, because McD refuses to pay 30% tax. It's end-user who pays Wolt tax, rather than restaurant.
Which tax are you referring to and in which country? Is this especially applied to deliveries?
Wolt takes 30% from order.
It's not just lazy people that rely on these services. It's disabled people too.
In Germany we have services commonly referred to as "Essen auf Rädern" (Meals on Wheels). A quick search shows that the concept actually originated in the 40s in the UK and has also made it to the US in the 60s [1].
Disabled and elderly people not being able to procure their own food isn't really a new problem and also isn't a problem that most first world societies have ignored.
So I'm not really sure what disabled people using a service have to do with the (allegedly) unfair wages of the delivery drivers.
It has nothing to do with it.
It was a direct response to the idea that the only people ordering from food delivery services are lazy, which is simply not true. I was incapacitated last year due to an injury and wasn't able to leave the house for a couple of weeks. I would have really struggled without Wolt.
Fair enough, sorry then. I mistook it as an argument against delivery fees.
If you're incapacitated for a longer time, you might still want to check out if any meals on wheels services are available to you. I actually know a few colleagues (in their 30s) that started getting those since working 100% from home. It can be quite a bit cheaper. And if you're like me it would also be healthier, because every time I order food it turns out to be something like burgers with fries ;-)
For a mcdonalds meal worth of 5-7e, 3e delivery is a complete highway robbery.
If people will go get their own food, try to guess how much the delivery guy earn then when the whole business goes down?
From user of the service point-of-view, the salary of a middleman delivery guy is irrelevant. It's only about what service is being given and how much does it cost. If the cost is too high then people will simply not buy the service. Food delivery is not a necessity after all.
The cost of delivery doesn't really depend on price of order. Not even size of order, unless it's extreme.
3€ for delivery isn't really unreasonable, it's actually quite cheap. Let's say that it takes 10 minutes all together with going to restaurant pick-up/waiting, then going to drop off. With full utilization that would be 18€ an hour. Now remove 24% of VAT: 13.68€. Rest of the taxes and so on... In the end 3€ is probably too low. Even with some 30% from whole order price.
Is 3 euros such a high price to pay someone to bike over to the restaurant and bring you a still warm meal?
Depends how you look at it.
Here in China (major cities) delivery is often free and when buying from delivery apps there are additional discount available that you can't get when visiting the restaurant.
So basically it's often cheaper to get food delivered to your home than going to the restaurant itself.
If you had to guess how the economics of that work out, how do you think the delivery person is getting paid, and by whom?
I'd guess that the restaurant is paying for all of it, and it offsets having to pay more money for more physical dining space.
In Greece, delivery in all stores is free (ie included in the price). To go from "free" to "3 EUR" when the average order is 5-7 EUR is unworkable and you'll never be able to compete.
Pretty much everything else is under 1.5 euro or free.
Depends on the economics. The food delivery companies take around 25-30% here in Finland (Wolt & Foodora). If the delivery fees were free, I'd order more food and Wolt would get more of the tax they charge restaurants. And maybe the restaurants can make up that loss by having more orders.
Delivery prices are astronomical here. For something 5min away with car (assuming no traffic) I have to pay around 7.90e. For something 1 minute drive away I pay 1.90e. Then there's ranges inbetween from 3.90 to 5.90.
My experiences with Wolt are that the food comes in a car and is not warm.
I've seen a lot of Wolt carriers using public transit in Helsinki. The whole delivery system seems pretty Laissez-faire in a country that's usually pretty strict with regulations.
I imagine there's way less of that on the Espoo side.
Free delivery deals are nice, but it is not exactly fun looking at driver going around the town for 40 minutes. And then order missing stuff...
I once had twister ankle, so couldn't bother walking 3min to pizza place. It took 30mins to deliver it by car, and it arrived cold.
It definitely won't get cheaper. 3 euros seems a completely reasonable price for this delivery.
Most other deliveries are cheaper even if they are 15mins driving distance. And some of them are free. The only reason McDonalds delivery is 3euros, because they refuse to pay 30% tax - so Wolt puts that tax on end-user.
So you expect that Mc will suddenly start giving them the 30%? Or that they’re going to start delivering completely for free (no fee & no cut from the restaurant)?
McD has razor thin margins. Your expectations are completely unrealistic.
This is not meant to be condescending, but do you have any form of disability or health issues that prevent you from getting the food yourself? In cases like this it would be fair for these apps to show support and maybe even drop the delivery charges.
wait-- you are saying the unit of work is minimal ("a 10 minute walk") so you don't want to pay it, but you also aren't willing to do it yourself ('almost-daily user').
so by your actions you basically agree that in your case it is worth it, otherwise you'd just take the 10 minute walk.
Did I miss something?
In German we have an expression for your condition: Wohlstandsverwahrlosung.
As someone who has used both Wolt and DoorDash I would say don't hold your breath on decreased fees. Probably it'll just get more opaque and restaurant menu prices will increase 10-20% while the additional fees stay the same so they can book more revenue without you feeling like you're paying more (because who is also googling the restaurant menu at the same time to compare?)
This is exactly what I see happening. Restaurants are increasing prices to cover the “Wolt tax”. My local McDonald’s does this.
Can confirm, I work in the POS space and most of the restaurants we work with increase their prices to cover the comission charges from the delivery service. DoorDash has a policy that pickup prices have to match in-store (restaurants are still charged comission though), but delivery can be marked up by whatever you want.
That and the extra service fees they charge to customers (they are a lot more in the US [0]), means you can end up paying double what it would be if you got off your ass and walked down the street to order :-)
[0] https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/technology/uber-eat...
Any contract that prohibits price differentiation between sales channels should be flat out illegal. Those kind of contracts are nothing short of evil.
Most pizza-places here attempt to avoid the "(wolt|foodora) tax" price increase for pickups by offering free drinks if you call and order instead of doing it through the app.
Wouldn't be surprised if they start splitting into separate legal entities soon to get out of the pickup price matching restrictions.
And how is this worse? I'd prefer an upfront 20% increase instead of it being added later anyway in fees
It's just less transparent
That sounds about right for the administrative overhead. The expensive bit isn't the walk.
They also take up to 30% from the price of the food, in addition to the delivery fee.