this is a rant. ive been trying to build an alternative to doordash and grubhub that would give bike messengers better working conditions and provide better service to resturants. well, i cant even get a $^$$ phone call despite hitting up 80% of the resturants 5 times over in berkeley. if small biz poeple arent going to return the love, than im not going to give them my money and im going to demand the city of berkeley tear down there sidewalk outdore dining areas! so here goes…
SHOP SMALL IS BULLSHIT
Every year, small businesses in Berkeley implore the rest of us to shop small. They want us to shop at their boutiques, or dine at their small family owned restaurants rather than going to a big chain. They will tell you about how doing so benefits the community in numerous ways. Many people fall for this and will indeed shop small, even if it means paying more money for things. I used to buy into this nonsense as well until I decided to try to start my own small business and began attempting to recruit business from small, independent restaurants. After my experience (hint: it’s been an absolute failure) I’ve become jaded to the entire concept of shop small and now I think it’s bullshit.
For the past 10 years I have been working as a bike courier for the big food delivery apps. I’ve seen how the big food delivery apps treat the restaurants that are there clients, I’ve even had an opportunity to see statements provided by the apps to the restaurants itemizing all the fees that they charge. When city government attempts to limit what these fees are or how often they can be charged, the food delivery apps simply invent new alternative fees designed to get around this. Not surprisingly, these restaurants then take to the media to complain about how high the fees are and, implore the community to come up with an alternative to the big food delivery apps that would charge them know or zero fees. They even go so far as imploring us to order directly from them instead of the app.
During the past three years or so, the Democrats have wanted to shut down the gig economy which would directly threaten my livelihood. Now with the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, I believe that regardless of what the Democrats do, the big food delivery apps will end up going away because they will not be able to survive a 20 to 30% drop in demand. This is because they employ people who get paid up to $400,000 a year to do vaguely titled jobs like ‘data science’ or ‘android app engineer’. Anybody who knows a thing or two about business knows that you cannot thrive if you have a bunch of people sitting in a windowless office getting paid $400,000 a year to stare at a computer screen all day, especially in an economy like this one.
Given these realities, I decided to try to start my own alternative to apps like DoorDasher & GrubHub. I paid $1200 to a programmer to build a platform app that functions just like doordash, complete with online payments that include invoicing, pickup options and even fraud detection/prevention. Because I would be a small operation that is collectively run, I would not have to charge the restaurants much more than a five or 10% commission to make it work. The rest of the money would come from a five or six dollar delivery fee along with tips from the customer. With the App ready to go, I reached out to over 80% of Berkeley’s independent restaurants numerous times over. I am providing a product that these people talk about how they want every time they talk to the media. Today I have received exactly 0 phone calls, inquiries or sign-ups. I have received absolutely nothing in the way of potential client interest.
The restaurants claim that they want a local independent alternative to companies like doordash, but I don’t believe them all. I am also not the only person in Berkeley to have tried to do what I am attempting to do. There are other bike couriers working in Berkeley for the big food delivery apps that have attempted to do what I am trying to do, they have also achieved the same result: exactly 0 phone calls, zero interest, zero sign-ups. So you can listen to these restaurant owners all you want, but the fact that they are not even showing interest in alternatives shows what’s really going on: they’re not interested in an alternative to the big food delivery apps. They’re not interested in something that will cost less money. They’re not interested in something that is locally owned and locally run. They’re not interested in something that provides them better service. They’re just not.
Which brings me to the last point, all of these restaurants and all of these boutiques want us to shop and dine small and regularly implore us to do so. But these entities are not practicing what they preach. They won’t do business with smaller suppliers, they won’t even show interest in a locally owned food delivery app that would charge them less money and provide better service. So all of these small business owners that tell us to shop small and dine small are not willing to do so themselves. While they tell us to shop small, they turn around and shop big. So after my experience I’ve decided that I’m not going to shop small anymore. I’m not going to dine at independent restaurants only corporate owned outfits like McDonald’s or panda express. When I need to buy something, it will either come from a big box store or Amazon. If I need to ship something it will be done directly through UPS or FedEx and not one of their local independently owned service providers. In fact I will go out of my way to shop and dine big even if it is slightly more inconvenient for me. I will do so because quite simply, I am jaded and I think that shop small is bullshit because the small business owners that implore us to do so are unwilling to shop small themselves.