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adding $5 fees to every order (even when the customer is outside Seattle city limits) while calling for the law to be repealed.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.”

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmus.orgEnglish
    20·
    9 months ago

    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@slrpnk.netEnglish
      22·
      9 months ago

      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.

    • youngalfred@lemm.eeEnglish
      8·
      9 months ago

      The fish and chip co-op that used to be nearby was the best - trawlers parked out the back, super fresh produce, generous portions and reasonable prices.