A major piece from re/code:
I Want It, and I Want It Now — It’s Time for Instant Gratification
I’m working from home in San Francisco, and the granola bar I had for breakfast wears off just after 12:15 pm. I open up the SpoonRocket app on my phone and select a chicken tamale and a mint smoothie.
Six minutes later, there’s a car in my driveway. I flail to find some flip-flops and go downstairs to greet the driver, who pulls my order from an insulated bag and cooler in his passenger seat. It’s not like he has a whole pantry in there; I picked two of the four items on the SpoonRocket menu that day.
The tamale is $8, the smoothie $6, delivery is included, and it has already been charged to the credit card I loaded into the app.
I’m back at my laptop before the clock has ticked past seven minutes.
And the tamale? It’s good. But it’s more than I needed to eat for lunch. I resolve to take a walk so I don’t fall into a food coma. The dangers of the world being delivered to your doorstep.
Sean Lyons is a 23-year-old bike messenger. He just got a degree in photography, and while he’s saving up money to travel to photograph wildlife, he spends his days biking around New York City.
Carrying two iPhones that beep out assignments throughout the day, Lyons works for four different app-enabled bike-courier services: WunWun, UberRush, Zipments and Petal by Pedal. He does about 25 to 30 deliveries per day, which adds up to about 50 miles, including the commute.
When he first got started last year, Lyons tried working for traditional bike-courier services where he would make $3 per delivery. “It was outrageous,” he says. “They treat you like an animal.”
Some of the newer services Lyons works for are subsidized. When it first started, Uber was giving away free courier service for its UberRush local delivery trial. Lyons says that demand has dropped a bit since the initial promos wore out.
WunWun — which has the insane premise of deliveries from any store or restaurant in Manhattan within an hour, for free — keeps Lyons the busiest.
Lyons claims WunWun’s system of working for tips, which are suggested within the app at 30 percent, somehow actually works. “You never really get snubbed out on a tip,” he says.
By literally working his butt off, Lyons thinks he will make between $45,000 and $60,000 this year....MUCH MORE
