"Tony Delivers" - just order your food and send him a screenshot

https://seattle.eater.com/2024/2/21/24079162/tony-delivers-seattle-delivery-app-fees-downtown

Tony Illes was working as an Uber Eats delivery person when an ordinance passed last year by the Seattle City Council came into effect in mid-January. The new rule required app companies to pay workers like Illes a minimum wage based on the miles they travel and the minutes they spend on the job. The apps say that this amounts to around $26 an hour, and both Uber Eats and DoorDash responded by adding $5 fees to every order (even when the customer is outside Seattle city limits) while calling for the law to be repealed. According to a recent DoorDash blog post, the ordinance has resulted in an “unprecedented drop in order volume,” a drop that Illes felt personally. He told Geekwire that “demand is dead” and told local TV station KIRO 7, “I didn’t get an order for like six hours and I was done.”

So Illes had an idea: Who needs these apps, anyway? He printed up signs with QR codes directing people to a bare-bones website with his phone number, promising that he would deliver food by bike in Uptown, South Lake Union, Belltown, and a chunk of the downtown core for $5 a pop from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. daily. All you had to do was order the food and send him the screenshot. He called himself “Tony Delivers.”

MrFunnyMoustache ,

That's awesome! Cutting off giant corporations and giving money directly to the person doing the work is exactly what we should be doing. I bet he is making more money than he would have had he worked for any of the food delivery companies even though it's cheaper.

rottingleaf ,

Many people prefer relative stability with lower average income over freedom.

MrFunnyMoustache ,

I understand that, but from my personal experience, this is not more stable because companies like these will fire a chunk of their workforce without batting an eye for the slightest shift in the market, whereas a self-employed person will just see a slight decline in demand. Also, the difference in income more than makes up for the perceived stability. Sure it isn't for everyone, but as a consumer, I'd rather most of the money I pay won't go to corporate executive's multi-million dollar salary, but to the people actually providing the service.

rottingleaf ,

I agree. Just every such order becomes a social interaction until you get used to it.

Which is not bad even for me with my social problems.

The issues are with 1) brand recognition and ads affecting how consumers behave, 2) regulations which may make it hard for individual businesses of this kind in some countries, 3) information exchange.

MrFunnyMoustache ,

Yes, it's harder to do this, especially when you're starting out; if I saw such an ad like in the post in my area, I would definitely prefer that over a big corporation even for the same price. The fact that this is significantly cheaper makes it even sweeter, and I would have definitely used this guy's services had I lived in Seattle.

ArmoredThirteen ,

Damn I live just outside their range 😭

Tristaniopsis ,

There should be more local cooperative delivery services. Small scale, profit sharing.

jimmydoreisalefty ,
@jimmydoreisalefty@lemmus.org avatar

Co-op delivery company in the works?!

Great on Tony, doing the damn thing!

https://fitsmallbusiness.com/what-is-a-cooperative-co-op/

A cooperative, or co-op, is an organization owned and controlled by the people who use the products or services the business produces. Cooperatives differ from other forms of businesses because they operate more for the benefit of members, rather than to earn profits for investors.

Co-ops are organized to provide competition, improve bargaining power, reduce costs, expand new and existing market opportunities, improve product or service quality, and obtain unavailable products or services (products or services that profit-driven companies don’t offer because they see them as unprofitable).

Cooperatives present lots of opportunities for small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. In this post, I’ll go over how cooperatives work, why you should form one, and how you can start one for your business.

Excrubulent ,
@Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

These delivery services are prime candidates for cooperatisation... which after a quick search using quotes to filter out "corporatisation" it turns out is a word that serious people use.

Anyway, the reason for this is that they are minimal services - all you need is an app and the ability to get that app on people's phones - and almost no investment in infrastructure.

It would be so easy - conceptually, I know software is hard - to replace that app with a cooperative based model, and you could leverage open source to make a general platform that could be adjusted to individual coops' needs, and allowing a customer to use a single contact point for any affiliated services. Each coop then wouldn't meed to develop their own app, it would be ready made for them.

It could also use federation to link up groups for discovery and to weed out scummy groups.

pkill ,

Not that complex software-wise either, probably the sole biggest challenge would be proper geofencing, then routing can be handled externally

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