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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   2519 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 22, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Does anyone have insight into the business model of food delivery apps? (Doordash, UberEats, Deliveroo, etc.)

Right now, I can order restaurant food delivered at half price with a coupon deal, maybe 60% after the driver's tip. In order to qualify for the deals, I must have it delivered, so if I want half price food from the Thai place on my block, I have to go through one of the apps and get some international student (always an international student) to go in and pick it up, then ride his (always his) scooter ~100m around the block and hand it to me.

I would prefer to pick it up myself, but this invariably voids the deal, and it doubles in price.

Who is paying for this absurdity?

  • It can't be the restaurant. Restaurant margins are notoriously thin, and if they could be doing a pad see ew at $7, not $15, I'm sure the normal price would be lower. I can't get the deal direct through the restaurant either. Has to go through the app.
  • It can't be the delivery person. Even if they're getting paid literally nothing but tips, I'm still saving money on the food. Also, my area has a minimum wage law, which means they must be getting at least that much when they're on the clock.
  • Must be the app companies, right? I'm eating VC capital for dinner every night, and it's cheaper than cooking for myself. But how is this at all sustainable? The restaurants and delivery drivers use all the apps, so they're not capturing market share. They're just burning money. Are they stupid?

It's VC/investor capital.

For example, in its existence as a company, Door Dash has lost over $5 billion.

Nevertheless, their stock is valued at $70 billion (as compared to $7 billion for U.S. Steel) and is up 70% year to date. So clearly someone thinks that, any moment now, they are going to turn the corner and become profitable.

I think they're wrong, but what do I know?

Note: $DASH can actually lose money for eternity and be fine as long as they continue to find new suckers index fund investors to keep buying their stock. In the last 3 years, they've increased their share count by around 20%. They can sell stock and recoup more than the losses from their businesses. It's kinda a ponzi.

I've been seriously looking at my index funds and trying to find a way to avoid taking a bath in the next crash. It's going to be incredibly ugly.

If you really want to avoid one specific company, short-sell it in proportion to the index fund. For example, if you have 100,000 in an index fund, and Door Dash is 5% of the index, short Door Dash for 5000. This sets up a hedge which effectively strips out Door Dash from the rest of the index. You don't gain when Door Dash goes up, but you also don't lose money when Door Dash goes down.

DoorDash constitutes less than 0.1 percent of Vanguard's "Total [US] Stock Market Index Fund", and is not even large enough to appear in its "[S&P] 500 Index Fund". So it isn't worth worrying about in the end.

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