DoorDash to acquire Deliveroo
73 comments
·May 6, 2025Raed667
nmstoker
Will be interesting.
Back when I used Deliveroo, tipping always led to worse delivery success rates so I gave up.
They suddenly became really bad recently, which is unfortunate as they generally had the edge on Uber Eats (total charlatans!)
NavinF
> tipping always led to worse delivery success rates
What does this mean? If you don't tip on doordash in the US, your order just arrives a few minutes later than usual since the auction starts at a lower price and drivers will reject the lowest prices
darth_avocado
> A few minutes later than usual
That’s an understatement. Your order sits on the shelf for while before someone picks up if you don’t tip, sometimes more than 30 mins, until DoorDash forces some poor underpaid driver to pick it up sometimes with incentives, but mostly threats on their livelihood. In some cases, drivers do pick it up, don’t deliver, eat your stuff, or drive in other directions to focus on other orders. Orders without tips do extremely poorly these days.
pluc
These things are omnipresent in European capitals, it's quite striking. It might be inconvenient but it's not gonna stop people any more than the privacy concerns of the apps do.
Raed667
I live in France and use Deliveroo (or UberEats some rare times) maybe once a month.
There is already a tipping UI in the app, but it is not intrusive, nothing as aggressive as what you'd experience in the US where you're inclined to pre-tip even before the delivery happens.
As for the capitals, yes it is becoming a thing but from my personal experience it is limited to touristy places
ramesh31
>It is inevitable for DoorDash to make tipping an even more annoying and intrusive part of Deliveroo. I can't wait to see how europeen users react to that.
On demand food delivery is a premium luxury service (though the platforms have done their best to market it as otherwise). Please tip accordingly. These people work their asses off and are generally from a very low income background. If you have problems with that, go to the grocery store.
JumpCrisscross
> On demand food delivery is a premium luxury service, though the platforms have done their best to market it as otherwise. Please tip accordingly
I stopped automatically tipping in New York City and the Bay Area. They earn a minimum wage now [1]. If they go above and beyond, sure, I'll tip. But if they just do their job, there are now regulations that have them get paid.
[1] https://www.nyc.gov/site/dca/news/018-24/mayor-adams-first-a...
kasey_junk
Wait staff have had minimum wage protection for a very long time at the federal level, do you not tip them anywhere?
tptacek
Explain the logic of not tipping people who make minimum wage?
ramesh31
That's great for NYC. The other 99% of their markets do not.
Raed667
or maybe let's not play guessing games with the livelihood of people working in these fields, and let's bake a livable wage in the price... like any other service job ?
ramesh31
Except no other service job does. Outside of a patchwork of local ordinances here and there, few servers makes beyond the state/federal minimum wage without tips. A minimum wage which is almost always below the poverty line.
morpheuskafka
Note that Deliveroo’s Hong Kong business was sold to Foodpanda a few weeks earlier. So it looks like DoorDash only wanted to buy certain markets.
bastawhiz
It makes sense that they wouldn't buy the HK business. Operating in HK essentially means entering the Chinese market, which feels like a bold responsibility for Doordash to take on. Better to let a company that's better positioned to buy out that part of the business.
AStonesThrow
Interestingly, here in the Phoenix market, with plenty of competing delivery services, there is at least one Chinese native service that competes with the “round eyes”.
Next door in Mesa, there is a significant designated Asian Quarter. So there is a high concentration of Asian restaurants and grocery stores. On a few occasions when ordering DoorDash from one of the big Chinese places, someone from the Chinese service delivered it instead; all receipts were printed in Chinese and sometimes I apparently received someone else’s order entirely.
I believe they did this on purpose to promote use of that native service for this set of restaurants. Unfortunately I don’t feel like reaching out to them or installing their weird Chinese language app, so I decided to simply steer clear of those most authentic restaurants instead.
omneity
International operations? Is DoorDash entering new markets?
Argonaut998
First FreeNow and now Deliveroo. So much for European independence from US companies. It’s a wonder why these sales were approved in this climate.
JumpCrisscross
> a wonder why these sales were approved in this climate
The EU and UK have no good options at the merger level. If they block the sale, it trashes the start-up ecosystem. If they let it through, an American company buys a local one.
The fundamental problem is the paucity of new-firm formation in the EU and UK, the scaling barriers they face that American compeitors don't, and the increased culture of risk-taking in America that lets its firms pay more for acquisitions. The last can't be addressed. The first two probably can by the EU. (The UK is not a viable sovereign entity in these regards.)
jjallen
Yes as an American who’s loved in Europe for six years or so the risk taking and desire to start and do things a little differently is just night and day more than it is in Europe, generally speaking.
bsimpson
I'll never forget how jealous the Dutch coffee shop owner I met was of Americans.
Dude worked at a bank - respectable white collar job acc. to his Dutch friends and family. He picked up a passion for coffee and wanted to open his own shop. His loved ones all thought he was nuts to leave a stable job for a maybe.
I'm sure there's a degree of that in the US, but we have a lot more "just try stuff" in our cultural myths than the Europeans tend to. Guy felt like his options were keep a job he hates or be disowned by everyone he knows.
StopDisinfo910
Deliveroo is a UK company. It doesn't matter to the EU. It's also very much non strategic so I don't see why it would be blocked either way.
graemep
The GP said European, not EU. Its a concern in the UK too.
StopDisinfo910
There is no such thing as European independence. Europe is a continent, not a political entity.
The EU is a political entity which happens to be reconsidering its independence from the US. The UK very much is not and is kowtowing favours hoping to get a good deal.
nicoburns
Unfortunately the current UK government has about as much backbone as a jellyfish.
pzmarzly
FWIW there still are some popular European alternatives left, such as Bolt, Glovo or JustEat
mytailorisrich
No-one's approval is required apart from the company's board...
louthy
Not strictly true. In the UK, at least, a sale of a business needs to be signed off by the Cabinet Office if it is considered strategic or a security risk [1].
Unlikely, in the case of Deliveroo, but I went through this exact process and it took about a month or so to get sign off and to be allowed to sell my own company to a foreign buyer (health tech)
There’s also monopoly and competition regulation that could stop a sale.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-security-and-investment...
fy20
And Wolt.
colesantiago
Most startups in the UK have either:
1. Sold to a foreign buyer
2. Shut down
3. Relocated to the US
4. Are stagnant
The UK is up for sale (at a discount)
graemep
That is how globalisation is supposed to work.
British companies have bought plenty abroad too:
pydry
it works great until you realize that your country's most strategic economic assets are in the hands of a strategic rival or shut down.
darth_avocado
It is a global phenomenon and is a result of how capital markets work. When you have money, it’s easier to make more money by gobbling up assets. US has capital more readily available to try new things, fail and eventually build massive successes. The successes then get reinvested in the form of even more capital.
When Manchester United is owned by US billionaires, everything else is up for grabs.
fakedang
You could say the same for traditional businesses. Or real estate. Or the farmlands. Even the political parties (for the princely sum of 50,000 quid).
The UK is up for sale.
mytailorisrich
And yet the UK attracts twice the VC investments the next European country does.
putpoointheloo
[dead]
Spivak
> We’ll cover more than 40 countries with a combined population of more than 1 billion people, enabling us to provide more local businesses with the tools and technology they need to thrive,” said Tony Xu, CEO and Co-founder of DoorDash.
This makes zero sense to me for a logistics company specializing in local to local deliveries. Being bigger in a given geographic area grants some benefits of scale and efficiency but being in Seattle and Bangkok there's really no difference than two separate apps. Just with the nature of the business you probably want this to be as local as possible so the profits aren't siphoned out of your community.
morpheuskafka
As an example, US has Uber and Lyft and Mexico has Uber and Didi. When someone from Mexico goes to US, they probably wont have Lyft, and someone from the US won’t have Didi. So Uber gets most travellers’ business automatically.
Likewise even though Uber in Japan is (almost) all taxis and not actual Uber drivers, most global tourists have Uber and not something like Go that’s specific to Japan. So they are profiting off almost all the taxi rides from Western visitors.
like_any_other
> Being bigger in a given geographic area grants some benefits of scale and efficiency
And dictating terms to local restaurants and delivery workers, with the threat of shutting them out of the largest market.
carlosjobim
If you've made your restaurant dependent on any deliver app, you've already made a fatal mistake in a cutthroat industry.
It doesn't take great effort for a restaurant to do good without being on these apps. But some owners want to pay 15-20% of their gross revenue to a megacorp for the rest of their lives rather than invest a few hundreds or thousands in getting their own customers. We see the same thing in a ton of industries.
ta1243
Both my local Indian and Chinese use justeat. I don't select them because they're on justeat, I use justeat because it has them.
If they changed to another platform then I'd simply move to that platform. Of course these companies did deliveries far before techbros decided to "disrupt" the industry.
like_any_other
That's great. Wanna bet the future of your family business on the great majority of consumers acting like you, and only a negligible number being steered by convenience and habit?
ReptileMan
People often travel outside of their town. Having the same app in the next place you are offers some benefits for the users. And potential for earnings.
lurk2
Ok Hacker News I just did one of the most embarrassing things of my life. Seriously I cannot sleep because of the shame. This occurred nine hours ago.
> 8/10 food delivery service CEO who I bumped into last week, I used to hang around with his brother ages ago, we were in a queue together.
> We got to talking about KPIs, as I recall he was quite business-savvy, I mention my startup accelerator is rubbish and he says I should check his out
> I jump at the chance, both for the accelerator and possible Series A.
> We go, I do A/B testing on my landing page, he goes treadmill at his standing desk and then a few minutes on Slack for some reason.
> He asks what am I doing after this, I say I've got a pirated copy of Hot Tub Time Machine 2 I've been meaning to watch.
> He says he has wanted to see that, I maintain my spaghetti and ask him to come, he accepts.
> Go to mine, I crack open my cheapest wine, we are watching the movie and talking a bit.
> He is apparently a bit of a lightweight and wine goes straight to his head, we get to talking about product market fit.
> Oh god just typing this hurts.
> He mentions his investor never financed a Series B. I say something along the lines of "what an idiot".
> He goes in his wallet looking for his business card, we stand there for about five seconds
> He pulls away, then I for reasons unknown need to fill a non-existent void...
> "You know, I could give you the old Deliveroo"
> the old Deliveroo
> I said it jokey and cheeky but there was no way that didn't sound weird, I may have sort of winked a bit, oh god.
> He looks at me like I am a FOSS contributor and pulls away and says "err yeah just gonna go toilet"
> This occurred roughly around when Darryl from The Office is singing the "You're a nerd" song
> He returns and I put my hand on his laptop in an attempt to salvage.
> We make awkward small talk for what feels like an eternity, man this is a long film
> Eons pass and the film finally ends. I walk him to my door and go for a handshake, he effectively pats me on the shoulder.
> I am too ashamed to even post about the meet on LinkedIn, and just lie in bed alone.
> the old Deliveroo
It is inevitable for DoorDash to make tipping an even more annoying and intrusive part of Deliveroo. I can't wait to see how europeen users react to that.