I'm amazed and amused reading some replies - it looks like some people would love to live in a world where single corporation fulfills all their basic needs:
* restaurants from amazon
* home real estate market[0]
* shopping from amazon
* entertainment from amazon
* alexa from amazon, listening all the time
* education (already some basic form of it exists - alexa is used to answer kids questions)
Although many important key services are still missing: healthcare, insurances, banking.. etc.
There is perhaps an appeal to megacorps as voluntary nation-state membership; it is not trivial to leave one's tech ecosystem, but it's much easier than leaving one's nation, and there are advantages to all the components of the stack working together. (Blood and souls for my Lord Apple of Cupertino!)
I haven't used the restaurant service, but I'm starting to be shocked at how quickly Amazon is going downhill in most of their consumer-facing businesses. I dropped prime last month after maybe 6 years, since the price keeps climbing and the value of the service keeps dropping. I used to make nearly all of my online purchases through them, but between the fakes and poor customer service I couldn't justify the cost of prime anymore.
Although I think this is a good thing, I'd rather not see one company control the entirety of e-commerce. And out of the big tech companies Amazon is the easiest to drop (excluding AWS, strictly consumer services). I'm still not Google-free, but switching email and search was much more difficult than leaving Amazon.
I want someone to come in and crush entrenched rent-seekers by building and scaling better, cheaper products. There are only a handful of companies in recent memory that have managed to do that - Walmart, Vanguard, Uber/Lyft, and arguably Airbnb and Robinhood are the first few that come to mind - and I can't think of any other than Amazon that have done it in multiple spaces (CPG + IaaS so far).
I'd prefer if different startups did it in each of those industries, but I can live with Amazon taking over the world if it means that health care no longer sucks and selling a home no longer costs 6% and kids in underfunded school districts get their questions answered.
Sad to see it go. I was on the original Amazon Local team for about two years, that ultimately turned into restaurants. A lot of my growth came from the people on amazon local, really solid people and good people, the product just had trouble catching on. That’s amazon, they’ll give just about everything a solid try and do their best knowing it may not work out.
The funny thing is, Amazon probably could do a good delivery restaurant business. There are already many "delivery only restaurants"[1] Uber Eats encourages others to start them. But Amazon, unlike Uber, is capable of building physical infrastructure. The future of this is "food fulfillment centers", large warehouse spaces which house various specialty kitchens. Common functions, such as shipping, cleaning, equipment maintenance, and order handling are shared. Surprising that Amazon didn't go that way.
> large warehouse spaces which house various specialty kitchens. Common functions, such as shipping, cleaning, equipment maintenance, and order handling are shared.
Amazon's mapping system puts my house in the wrong location, and to make matters worse, in my experience the drivers are utterly nasty about it.
I have stood in front of my house as I can see the driver go by multiple times. I will jump up and down and wave and try to flag them down, and they just speed by. I call them to give them directions, and they ignore everything I have to say. I was often talking to them on the phone when I see them speed by, and they're not even paying enough attention to see me flagging them down with one hand while I have my phone at my ear. I ask them to open Google Maps because that has my address in the right location, and one guy shouted at me "This is Amazon Prime! We don't use Google!".
Both times, I complained to corporate because my food was an entire _hour_ late, and it was ice cold by the time it got here. The first time, I got credit for my next order, which is the only reason there was a second time. There was never a third time, and I let my Prime subscription lapse without renewing it not too long after that.
I think you might be partially on to something here; generally the idea being that food delivery is essentially commoditized and Amazon is uniquely suited to thrive in commoditized industries with their vast infrastructural advantages.
They do have Whole Foods and Amazon Go, which both supply ready-to-eat foods along with meal kits. It would be a minor logistical challenge to simply start preparing their own meal kits on-demand and delivering them via Prime Now (which operates inside the exact same markets as Amazon Restaurants?) with the bonus benefit of owning quality control in the kitchens.
Yeah it did, and restaurants actually put up stickers for it on their doors!
What you're describing is what Travis Kalanick bought and have been building in LA and San Jose since last year. There are other commissary kitchens that's now doubling as virtual kitchens with half a dozen brands sharing utility, equipment and even staff.
I'll do you even one better, here's the real future in less than three years:
Restaurants will shed front of house as most low end full service will be liability, instead restaurants will consolidate, rely on DSPs (especially GrubHub because unlike the other two chooses to break apart their commission structure), and merge with digital agencies in order to brand, market, create content, and manage communities.
Just as there are already “enough” physical cars, there is also already enough physical restaurant infrastructure, so today it’s more a question of efficient utilization. What Uber Eats is doing in this space is really smart: Keeping track of local food search keywords, and reaching out to local restaurants saying “Hey, if you provided such-and-such food items at such-and-such time of day in your area, we think you’d do really well. You can sell these items on Uber Eats under a different brand if they don’t fit in your existing cuisine niche.”
Longer-term you’re probably right that centralization could be more efficient in some cases, but looking too far into the future often makes less economic sense today. See: Webvan.
Maybe customers can over look Amazon workers not getting bathroom breaks and being forced to urinate in plastic jugs so they can get their online orders next day...but customers might not overlook those working conditions when they find out the people handling their food are urinating in the kitchen because they don’t get bathroom breaks.
Not to mention the stories of 100 degree warehouses so amazon can save on electricity, I wouldn’t put it past them to not keep food as cold as it should be to save a few bucks.
Take a look at what Deliveroo is doing with their "Editions" brand. They get some space, set up small takeout only kitchens and enable a restaurant to expand their delivery range (different neighborhoods or even cities).
I can see asking Alexa to bring me a three meat pizza, and the delivery drone places it on my personal robot, which grabs a beer from the fridge before it brings it to me at my recliner. That's Prime delivery!
So the goal is to be like a food court, but cheaper and/or better because, due to delivery-only, the location can be cheaper, and the space can be more efficiently used (no customer seating)?
Restaurant food is massively overpriced compared to raw materials (despite basic dishes like pasta and sous vide steak taking basically no time and effort to prepare), and mass producing it along with mass delivery using vans might fix that.
I wonder if Amazon would ever dive into the home real estate market. With modern day search, realtors provide very little value above doing the paper work, and that seems very automatable. There's just no reason to pay 6% of every house sale to middle men, but that's the way it currently works. A large company like Amazon or Google could make a ton of money at a much lower rate. I think this makes a lot more sense than going into the restaurant delivery business.
They already have trucks and people used to moving things around. They could sell you a house and have your stuff moved in 2 days. I even have the branding figured out for the moving service: Amazon Prime Movers.
Redfin is already in that market and it doesn't seem to be doing very well. I'm actually fairly surprised how slow redfin is able to grow and expand their market. Their website felt second to none in terms of usability.
It's expensive to have boots on the ground in every zip code. RedFin hires their own agents full time. OpenListings and Zillow refer online buyers to their affiliated agents who cut them a deal on commission in exchange for leads. You can always list a place with photos and all on Zillow or CraigsList and mention that seller will not pay an agent's commission. End of the day there's a "For Sale by Owner" sign for those driving or walking by.
But considering that in the US it's the seller who pays both agents, there are no immediate savings for potential buyers, and some, being new to the home-buying process in general or new to that zip code, would prefer some hand-holding and chit-chatting provided by their agent at no cost to them.
Among some not so obvious valuable tidbits that the buyer's agent can provide:
* general feel about the neighborhood, whether it's on the rise or in decline
* previous scandals and issues, like contaminated water, city attempting to pass an additional levy or tax, house being on the airport path, etc.
* potential future improvements, like a light rail station planned nearby
* referrals to various local professionals, like inspectors, surveyors, painters, or movers
* any other new developments in town or neighborhoods that the buyer might not have considered, especially when shopping remotely
I'm not surprised. Amazon's entire MO is a relentless focus on the customer. They do that by methodically optimizing and controlling every aspect of the supply chain right up to the moment the product is handed off to the customer. And they get better at it every day.
Restaurant delivery breaks that model. There is too much variability. Too much can go wrong outside their control, and they don't have enough leverage to change it.
If they can't win (even at zero margin) and can't make customers consistently happy, why be in it at all?
Ah, this is too bad. We used it at home occasionally. Everything we've used has either gone out of business, cut ingredients to an embarrassing portions, or raised prices way too high (probably to where they need to be to be sustainable).
It's not a viable business, I think. Not without some big leaps forward.
I’m glad. I didn’t see this going anywhere. I’ve tried the service several times when I was living in Seattle. Pretty much every option had terrible ratings and everything I tried was generally a bad experience. Delivery was always on time, but paying $15-25+ per person for a soggy, wet meal just wasn’t worth it. We ordered a pizza one time arrived completely cold with soggy crust.
Not surprising. I got a number of promotions for this but every time I went to see what restaurants were available it was just fast food. Nothing that wasn't already available from Uber eats or Caviar.
This seems to be a trend with big tech companies - they try to get into a new domain under their name and then when it succeeds half-heartedly kill it off.
It looks very dysfunctional and inefficient even from a venture capital "recycle it and risk it for another moonshot again" perspective and makes it look like they have lost their ability to innovate entirely once they start posting positive income to justify their stock cost. I am not sure if it is as dysfunctional as it looks or I am missing something.
[+] [-] pxtail|6 years ago|reply
* restaurants from amazon
* home real estate market[0]
* shopping from amazon
* entertainment from amazon
* alexa from amazon, listening all the time
* education (already some basic form of it exists - alexa is used to answer kids questions)
Although many important key services are still missing: healthcare, insurances, banking.. etc.
edit: banking-related product already out [1]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20152956
[1] Banking - Amazon.com Credit Builder - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20149304
[+] [-] lukifer|6 years ago|reply
On the other hand, I think Douglas Rushkoff and Bruce Schneier are correct in comparing the FAANG ecosystem to feudalism: https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2012/11/when_it_com...
[+] [-] zrobotics|6 years ago|reply
Although I think this is a good thing, I'd rather not see one company control the entirety of e-commerce. And out of the big tech companies Amazon is the easiest to drop (excluding AWS, strictly consumer services). I'm still not Google-free, but switching email and search was much more difficult than leaving Amazon.
[+] [-] tfehring|6 years ago|reply
I'd prefer if different startups did it in each of those industries, but I can live with Amazon taking over the world if it means that health care no longer sucks and selling a home no longer costs 6% and kids in underfunded school districts get their questions answered.
[+] [-] whoevercares|6 years ago|reply
Forget about Haven already?
[+] [-] ronnier|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Maven911|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Animats|6 years ago|reply
The funny thing is, Amazon probably could do a good delivery restaurant business. There are already many "delivery only restaurants"[1] Uber Eats encourages others to start them. But Amazon, unlike Uber, is capable of building physical infrastructure. The future of this is "food fulfillment centers", large warehouse spaces which house various specialty kitchens. Common functions, such as shipping, cleaning, equipment maintenance, and order handling are shared. Surprising that Amazon didn't go that way.
[1] https://ny.eater.com/2016/9/26/12717518/delivery-only-restau...
[+] [-] Sendotsh|6 years ago|reply
Deliveroo in Australia does something like that.
https://foodscene.deliveroo.com.au/restaurant-profiles/secon...
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/restaurants-bars/deli...
[+] [-] amyjess|6 years ago|reply
Amazon's mapping system puts my house in the wrong location, and to make matters worse, in my experience the drivers are utterly nasty about it.
I have stood in front of my house as I can see the driver go by multiple times. I will jump up and down and wave and try to flag them down, and they just speed by. I call them to give them directions, and they ignore everything I have to say. I was often talking to them on the phone when I see them speed by, and they're not even paying enough attention to see me flagging them down with one hand while I have my phone at my ear. I ask them to open Google Maps because that has my address in the right location, and one guy shouted at me "This is Amazon Prime! We don't use Google!".
Both times, I complained to corporate because my food was an entire _hour_ late, and it was ice cold by the time it got here. The first time, I got credit for my next order, which is the only reason there was a second time. There was never a third time, and I let my Prime subscription lapse without renewing it not too long after that.
[+] [-] hbosch|6 years ago|reply
They do have Whole Foods and Amazon Go, which both supply ready-to-eat foods along with meal kits. It would be a minor logistical challenge to simply start preparing their own meal kits on-demand and delivering them via Prime Now (which operates inside the exact same markets as Amazon Restaurants?) with the bonus benefit of owning quality control in the kitchens.
[+] [-] alaskamiller|6 years ago|reply
What you're describing is what Travis Kalanick bought and have been building in LA and San Jose since last year. There are other commissary kitchens that's now doubling as virtual kitchens with half a dozen brands sharing utility, equipment and even staff.
I'll do you even one better, here's the real future in less than three years:
Restaurants will shed front of house as most low end full service will be liability, instead restaurants will consolidate, rely on DSPs (especially GrubHub because unlike the other two chooses to break apart their commission structure), and merge with digital agencies in order to brand, market, create content, and manage communities.
[+] [-] trevyn|6 years ago|reply
Longer-term you’re probably right that centralization could be more efficient in some cases, but looking too far into the future often makes less economic sense today. See: Webvan.
[+] [-] masklinn|6 years ago|reply
"Delivery-only restaurant" sounds self-contradictory, a restaurant is by definition a place where you can eat.
These sounds more like takeouts, or traiteurs.
[+] [-] will_brown|6 years ago|reply
Maybe customers can over look Amazon workers not getting bathroom breaks and being forced to urinate in plastic jugs so they can get their online orders next day...but customers might not overlook those working conditions when they find out the people handling their food are urinating in the kitchen because they don’t get bathroom breaks.
Not to mention the stories of 100 degree warehouses so amazon can save on electricity, I wouldn’t put it past them to not keep food as cold as it should be to save a few bucks.
[+] [-] bethling|6 years ago|reply
https://foodscene.deliveroo.co.uk/promotions/deliveroo-editi...
[+] [-] Fjolsvith|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uremog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freewilly1040|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devit|6 years ago|reply
Restaurant food is massively overpriced compared to raw materials (despite basic dishes like pasta and sous vide steak taking basically no time and effort to prepare), and mass producing it along with mass delivery using vans might fix that.
[+] [-] rchaud|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] thatoneuser|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] civility|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianmonk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cherioo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prostoalex|6 years ago|reply
But considering that in the US it's the seller who pays both agents, there are no immediate savings for potential buyers, and some, being new to the home-buying process in general or new to that zip code, would prefer some hand-holding and chit-chatting provided by their agent at no cost to them.
Among some not so obvious valuable tidbits that the buyer's agent can provide:
* general feel about the neighborhood, whether it's on the rise or in decline
* previous scandals and issues, like contaminated water, city attempting to pass an additional levy or tax, house being on the airport path, etc.
* potential future improvements, like a light rail station planned nearby
* referrals to various local professionals, like inspectors, surveyors, painters, or movers
* any other new developments in town or neighborhoods that the buyer might not have considered, especially when shopping remotely
[+] [-] craz8|6 years ago|reply
Despite the convenience of purchasing with Amazon, it’s just an expensive way to buy food!
At least they never just threw it over the gate like tonight’s Amazon delivery!
[+] [-] dewitt|6 years ago|reply
Restaurant delivery breaks that model. There is too much variability. Too much can go wrong outside their control, and they don't have enough leverage to change it.
If they can't win (even at zero margin) and can't make customers consistently happy, why be in it at all?
[+] [-] sametmax|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icelancer|6 years ago|reply
It's not a viable business, I think. Not without some big leaps forward.
[+] [-] r32a_|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tracer4201|6 years ago|reply
I’m glad. I didn’t see this going anywhere. I’ve tried the service several times when I was living in Seattle. Pretty much every option had terrible ratings and everything I tried was generally a bad experience. Delivery was always on time, but paying $15-25+ per person for a soggy, wet meal just wasn’t worth it. We ordered a pizza one time arrived completely cold with soggy crust.
[+] [-] imgabe|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Nasrudith|6 years ago|reply
It looks very dysfunctional and inefficient even from a venture capital "recycle it and risk it for another moonshot again" perspective and makes it look like they have lost their ability to innovate entirely once they start posting positive income to justify their stock cost. I am not sure if it is as dysfunctional as it looks or I am missing something.
[+] [-] bredren|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dawnerd|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NotPaidToPost|6 years ago|reply
All of the incumbents are bleeding money.
Amazon decided to invest in Deliveroo not to miss the boat but it seems sensible not to pursue their own platform.
[+] [-] John_Michael|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanmercer|6 years ago|reply