Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Instant Stinking Rich


I never heard of DoorDash Inc. until I read an article in my newspaper on May 24, 2019. I admit DoorDash has never heard of me either but that may be because I’m Not Worth 9 Times More Than I Was a Year Ago and DoorDash is.

An “Oh My Gosh!” Note: DoorDash actually began back in the fall of 2012 at a small macaroon store in downtown Palo Alto.

If you remember Joe Friday, he used to say, (If you don’t remember Joe Friday, he still used to say) “We just want the facts”. Well here are some DoorDash facts…

Ø DoorDash is a Food Delivery Service.

Ø A year ago DoorDash was still considered a Startup but it was valued by investors at $1.4 Billion.

Ø Now investors are betting it is worth 9 Times More Than $1.4 Billion ($12.6 Billion)!

Ø You certainly have heard of Domino’s Pizza. Domino’s is not a Startup. DoorDash now has a private-market valuation higher than the market capitalization of Domino’s.

Ø Investors are being attracted by DoorDash’s rapid growth (No chit, Sherlock), which has outpaced all its competitors in the U.S. Food Delivery Service Market in the past year.

Ø DoorDash’s annualized total sales, including the amount that goes to restaurants, was $7.5 billion in March, up 280% from a year earlier.

I saw all this coming 20 years ago. Well, not really. I did not see all of this coming but I did think it was strange when I heard a Mother of 3 say with great pride at a neighborhood party, “I don’t cook”.

That’s what’s causing all of this. People don’t cook as much as they used to. In more and more case they don’t cook at all.

To get “Home Cooking” you now have to go to a Restaurant. To feed their I Don’t Cook Families the used-to-be-cooks of the Good Ole USofA started doing Take Out. Now they have “progressed” to Take In.

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If you were paying attention to what I pecked out above, you may have noticed I used the word “restaurant” twice. It’s the first one that was the most important peck out.

The first one was, “DoorDash’s annualized total sales, including the amount that goes to restaurants, was $7.5 billion in March, up 280% from a year earlier”.

Do you see the significance of this use of the word “restaurant” here? This means that the Restaurants are not cooking either. They are getting their food from DoorDash and its competitors Uber Eats, Grubhub, Postmates and Deliveroo!

The fly in all of this ointment is I Don’t Cook America is adopting the Good Ole USofA’s Online Shopping for Clothing Technique. Here is the way all of this works…

Ø Many Online Shoppers say to their collective selves, “Selves, I want a shirt but I don’t know what color I want. I’ll just order a blue one, a green one, a purple one, a yellow one, a gray one and a white one”.

Ø After I get them, I’ll try them all on and decide which 1 I like the best and I will return the 5 I don’t like the best.

Ø In Chez Almandine Home Cooking Restaurant the customer says to the waiter, “I want the Spinach and Artichoke Appetizer”.

Ø The waiter punches the code for Spinach and Artichoke Appetizer into his hand-held device and instantaneously an order for a Spinach and Artichoke Appetizer is sent to DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Postmates and Deliveroo.

Ø The first Spinach and Artichoke Appetizer to arrive at Chez Almandine Home Cooking Restaurant is served to the waiting diner and the 4 late-arriving Spinach and Artichoke Appetizers are sent back from whence they came.

This is going to be a big problem for the Food Delivery Service Industry because 5 wrong-colored-don’t-like-best shirts can be put back on the shelf at Online Shirts R Us but those 4 late-arriving Spinach and Artichoke Appetizers are going to be a big problem!

Would I kid u?
Smartfella

Lagniappe: Go back and scan this Foolishness again and note how many times I pecked out “Billion”. Needless to say (Why do we often say, “Needless to say” and then say it anyway?)… A Billion Is A Thousand Million.