: Roy and his friend realized they could "buy" their own pizzas through DoorDash. They would pay $16 to DoorDash, and DoorDash would then pay the restaurant $24.
: DoorDash had scraped the restaurant's menu without permission and was subsidizing the cost of the pizza, likely to gain market share or test the area. 466130_458477
The story became a landmark example of the "growth at all costs" mentality in Silicon Valley, where venture capital money was essentially used to subsidize consumer habits in ways that were fundamentally disconnected from business reality. : Roy and his friend realized they could
The specific ID "466130_458477" refers to the story , famously documented by tech writer Ranjan Roy in his newsletter, The Margins. The story became a landmark example of the
The post, titled "Doordash and Pizza Arbitrage," gained viral attention for exposing a breakdown in logistics and pricing. Roy's friend, who owned a pizza shop, noticed that DoorDash was listing his pizzas for on their app, despite his shop only charging $24 for them. Key Highlights of the Arbitrage:
: For every pizza ordered, they made a net profit of $8 , while getting their own pizza back. In one experiment, they ordered 10 pizzas, paid $160, received $240 from DoorDash, and only spent about $75 on the raw materials (dough and sauce—the boxes were even empty in some test runs).