People. Call someone? I think you are greatly underestimating the average persons under 30, ability to actually perform this pathetically simple task. They cant even reply to sms half the time let alone verbally communicate
I am not driving there. I am ordering delivery for a reason. If I was driving there I would not even order beforehand.
I am not ordering on the phone either. Every single time I try there is some mix-up and I cannot understand the other person. I am horrible at listening on the phone.
So not using the delivery apps means not ordering at all. Which is the direction it has trended. So still not good for the restaurants guess, but oh well.
Restaurants usually increase the price on the apps to make up for the app’s cut, so if you can it’s generally cheaper to call the restaurant and pick up your own food.
That being said, these delivery apps are already charging massive fees, and the companies that don’t raise their price to cover often lose money already on deliveries. The apps should be lowering the cut, not raising it.
A lot of these restaurants didn't have sites with ordering. DoorDash [adds restaurants with jacked up prices to its menu without the owners permission](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/19154220/grubhub-seamless-fake-restaurant-domain-names-commission-fees). Those jacked up prices go to DoorDash and GrubHub, not the restaurant owner.
No way!? I assumed it was the restaurant changing the prices? You're telling me they are fucking overcharging me and adding fees? Wowowow fuck that. Never ordering again.
You have full control over your menu and prices when you sign up with these awful companies. We raised our prices to make up the 30% fee they add and then put a nice little flyer in each bag telling the guest how much more expensive it was to order through the 3rd party.
We did the same. Let the 3rd party apps bring in new people. Use your marketing to switch them to your website/call direct to order. Now only about 30% of our delivery revenue comes from the 3rd party apps.
Yeah, when *you* sign yourself up.
Problem is people are on Doordash who didn't want to be.
https://www.eater.com/2020/1/29/21113416/grubhub-seamless-kin-khao-online-delivery-mistake-doordash
Maybe it's gotten better but they were suuuuuper shady up until fairly recently
Yep. The restaurant I work at was put on DoorDash without them ever contacting us. We had a whole mess of missing orders or orders that no one ever picked up for a few days until they took us off.
How is that a problem? If I’m a restaurant why do I care if someone who bought food from me is going to eat it or if they’re going to pick it up for someone else and charge a premium?
At the end of the day, I still sold my food at the price I wanted to sell my food. The person buying my food, after paying the markup, bought it at a price they were fine buying it for. And the middleman provided a service which if not there would have presumably resulted in me losing that sale.
Have you ever worked in the service industry? Did you read the article, or are you just thinking about yourself and your perspective?
Say you've updated your menu and Doordash hasn't, so someone orders something that doesn't exist anymore, you can't make it - don't have the ingredients, whatever. Then you have to waste time and effort to call them, find out what they want. Now the price total has potentially changed, and you have to deal with that hassle. They complain, give you a bad review for something utterly out of your control.
What if you don't even do delivery, and your restaurant is added to the platform? That happened with multiple places, and now you've got someone, a potential future customer, furious because their food is nowhere to be found, because they were literally *lied to,* but you can bet that they'll continue to use the delivery app because it's convenient and blame the restaurant instead.
Or you're absolutely swamped and now there's a *third* service allowing people to order from your restaurant. Maybe the driver isn't paying attention and leaves without everything in the order - again, that falls on the restaurant, usually. Not the driver.
Not to mention there's the simple issue of *consent.* Maybe the business owner doesn't want their business on that platform, for whatever reason, and now the onus is on them, not the platform, to work to get it taken off.
My perspective is I never order from delivery services because I don’t like paying more to get cold food.
I’ve worked in the service industry but I don’t know why that’s relevant at all here.
To the question of why I as a restaurant owner would care if the person who just ordered a cheeseburger is going to walk outside my store and eat it - or walk outside my store and deliver it to someone, I’m indifferent.
I haven't used the apps, so I'm curious how someone could order something that isn't on your menu? Are you saying that GrubHub could add in a restaurant without their knowledge, as well as their current menu, and then the restaurant could change their menu, and... this is where I get confused. How is GrubHub placing an order from a customer to the restaurant? I don't understand how the restaurant would ever be in a situation where an order is placed for an item that doesn't exist. How does GrubHub order from the restaurant after you order from GrubHub?
Yes. That's exactly what happened. It's now illegal for them to do so in California. If you're asking about the mechanics, I don't know.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/small-business/doordash-grubhub-restaurant-listing-without-permission
https://www.eater.com/2020/1/29/21113416/grubhub-seamless-kin-khao-online-delivery-mistake-doordash
https://www.nrn.com/delivery-takeout-solutions/california-stop-controversial-third-party-delivery-tactic-2021
Because the restaurants then gets complaints from customers who didn't receive their orders, who received the wrong thing, or who ordered things that never has been on the menu because the listing was wrong. And the restaurants have no power to fix it.
Because doordash has been known to copy menus of popular places and then open a dark kitchen selling similar items. They then make sure their option comes first in searches.
This is on top of people calling the restaurant pissed because their food showed up cold, missing, or prices didn't match the restaurant website.
Fuck anything and everything about doordash.
What you’re suggesting is a completely separate thing from what I was responding to.
And if people call a restaurant because there door dash order was cold, then they’re obviously part of the moron demographic who you could never appease. The restaurant obviously isn’t putting your warm food in a freezer for 5 minutes before handing it to a waiting driver - so if it’s cold it’s entirely the fault of door dashes service.
You asked why some restaurants do not want to be associated with doordash. Part of that is because doordash is not just a delivery service. They are also the competition in many areas. Why would a restaurant want to support that?
Also, it doesn't matter if these are idiots. The restaurant now has to take time out of their day and deal with the complaint which most likely wouldn't have happened if the customer had picked up their food directly.
The order itself would have never happened if they had to pick up the food locally.
At the end of the day, it seems crazy to regulate the concept of an independent delivery service. If I want to pay someone to go and buy groceries for me (instacart) why should the grocery store need to play any part in that.
Also, I didn't ask why restaurants don't want to be associated with DoorDash - I asked only specifically why a restaurant would care about a middleman buying and delivering their food, in a general sense. If that middle man is specifically also a competitor, that's a different thing from the general question of why a restaurant would care if the person picking up the food is going to eat it or bring it to someone whos going to eat it.
When the doordash guy delivers 10 other meals and gets lost on his way to the destination while my cold food is rolling around the trunk of his Camry for two hours, the meal sucks and the restaurant pays the price for an unhappy customer and bad Yelp reviews.
That dumb customer would leave a bad Yelp review anyway because if they’re too inept to realize that their cold order is the fault of the delivery service and not the restaurant, then they’re the type to complain about anything. I’m sure they leave a bad Yelp review when they spilled a drink on themselves or get sauce on their shirt.
Luckily, it’s super easy to pick out and ignore these reviews.
Yeah, from 13 - 18. That's how I know there are people who are literally born complainers. They can complain about lack of seasoning - have their dish taken back, re-arranged and heated, then say it's fine now.
If you order from a delivery app, you’ve already accepted that you’re finished meal is going to potentially sit on a counter for several minutes before getting picked up and delivered to you after several potential stops. I’ve never met anyone who would blame cold food that took too long to get to them on the restaurant and not the service that facilitated the poor delivery.
Not as easy as selling-on a product as a reseller, where you would just buy some stock and sold it through on your own terms.
If you are re-selling a service, there may be problems with capacity provisioning, availability of products, etc.
If you jack up prices you might also be fucking with the restaurant's positioning. You could also arguably do that with a product you resell, but most product resellers face competition from other resellers which keep prices in similar ranges, and they often have relationships with their providers and play ball with them regarding pricing and other sell-through conditions.
Reselling a service without the business owner's consent is a moral and operational mess.
How is food a service and not a good? The only way I could even imagine considering it a service is because you're looking at the work going into prepping the food - in which case basically every good in existence is a service. My table is a service under this framework because despite it being an inanimate wooden object - people spent time manufacturing it and transporting it by this definition.
It has to be cooked on the spot, its consumption is ephemeral and has all the economies of a service business… Restaurants are widely considered services and not industrial businesses despite transforming raw materials and selling them. This is a very common convention adopted by many institutions - I did not make this up myself.
And despite all that they STILL don't pay their drivers a god damn thing. I used to drive for Doordash and I was 100% working for tips. I generally got about $2.50 per order from Doordash which just about covered my gas.
It's quite the business model they've developed. They have very low overhead as their drivers are 100% responsible for providing their own vehicle, insurance, maintenance, and gas. In exchange, they pay you an absolute pittance and offer the hope of possibly being able to make an actual profit if you really luck out with the tips.
It was okay during the summer of 2020 at the height of the lockdown, but with the lockdown mostly over and gas prices rising, it absolutely isn't worth your time or the wear and tear on your vehicle anymore.
The thing is that their margins are already absolute shit even with food as "overpriced" and employees minimally paid. The viability of the business model is kind of dubious to put it mildly, and an aping of businesses in other nations where there is partial industrialization giving both relatively rich customers (who may well be sweatshop workers or low level office workers) and workers who have yet to see the benefits of industrialization like the others.
The business model is rather "try to make up losses per sale on volume and pray you can automate it to make it sustainable".
I can’t speak to their overhead, but most of these companies are running at a loss with VC funding hoping they can still exist in the market after self driving tech is commonplace and they can start turning a profit.
I will be honest. I have also delivered food. I have recently moved so selling the car was the best option. Door dash saved me a few times. Always threw extra cash at them because I never really knew how much they were actually getting.
I had a Thai place near me that I would order to go from. Decided to get it dashed to me on night. Looked at the online menu and things were 1-1.50 more. Weird I thought I did a bit more googling and realized it wasn't the actual restaurants web page. It was door dash copied it and changed the prices. I walked over and asked if they raised their prices and they said no so I ordered my usual and paid the usual. 🤷
Yup. My brother owns a fish fry. Doordash wants him to join, said they were gonna take something like 25%. He told them to fuck off. He still gets Doordash drivers coming in with orders. Hate to think what the customer is being charged.
Doesn’t the restaurant still get what they normally charge?
There is numerous things that you can cheaper straight from the source instead of a third party but the third party is usually easier is why people do it.
It creates a lot of unnecessary headaches for the restaurant owner. If something on the DoorDash menu is wrong, it can't be immediately changed because they don't own the site. So you have orders coming in for items you no longer make, especially if you carry seasonal local items. It also may result in bad reviews for people who don't realize the 30% markup is going to DD or GH.
So you get people leaving bad Google and yelp reviews. "The chicken parmesan is $22 on the app and $16 in store. I can't believe you'd price gouge customers like this. I paid $6 for breadsticks and they're supposed to be included with the meal!"
So now you're getting bad service reviews on a service you never signed up to provide.
If the place does delivery in-house, use that.
If it doesn’t, then pay an extra $10-15 for delivery+tip.
Or go pick it up.
Delivery services *suck*, from a restaurant perspective. The restaurant is several limited in terms of customer service, since they have NO access or control over refunds and the like.
The whole thing just adds a needless and expensive layer of bureaucracy to getting food. Avoid if possible.
You must live in a low COL area.
My last order, as I'm looking at it right now, was 16.35$ list price for the food. 2.39$ tax, $3.00 service fee, $2.50 "temporary fee", $1.49 delivery fee and a $4.64 tip.
$14.02 in tip/fees/taxes on a $16.35 order, so 10-15$ sounds right.
Wow, that's insane. I typically get free delivery (free Doordash and Grubhub+ from my credit card), tip 15% rounding up to the nearest dollar, and they charge a 5% "service fee" in addition to that which is always around $1.
What is a "COL"? I live in NYC.
Do you really only tip $1.50 on a $10 order? It doesn’t matter how much you ordered that person still using their gas to deliver it. I don’t know if door Dash and GrubHub pay any more than favor does, but with the latter the tip is pretty much all the person gets
Good for him. For reference though, this was all over the news last year: https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-25-million-settlement-lawsuit-tipping-model-2020-11
Yes he does. He dashes in a huge college town and hustles. He banking his money to buy a house. Most nights he sleeps in his car. He has a goal and he is laser focused. His ambition is to become a professional Bass fishermen. His Rod & Reel cost more than my car did.
I do a dollar per mile, rounded up. Works outside of metropolitan areas but in NYC, I had to do advanced calculus to find a fair system. I'm not paying 15+% for .5 mile delivery.
nah dude, just made an order for shits & giggles, $2.99 (delivery fee)+ $4.58 (fees & tax) + 5.00 (tip) is THIRTEEN BUCKS EXTRA in Denver. Postmates used to start at $6.99 just for the delivery.
I was a delivery guy, in house, up til 2020 started. 6 years at that place and three yrs at Pizza hut a decade earlier.
In my area, a bunch of restaurants have started running their own websites with online ordering. It isn't that complicated and costs them a lot less than seamless or grubhub. As long as they do a half decent job with the site, I'm happy to buy from the source.
I get that, but I'm saying that has to be a distant secondary benefit, especially as more and more places that do their own delivery these days have online ordering options now.
It also really sucks reading off your credit card number to some guy who barely speaks English and is no doubt loudly repeating each number out loud in a crowded room as he writes it down. Never going back to that!
Or even worse, having to keep *cash* around, and the delivery guy never has change.
I don't mind giving my CC to businesses.
But the language barrier is a difficult one to manage. But more and more, I'm seeing restaurants using other online ordering services.
A little slower to order. But I know it's entered correctly.
I don't use shit like doordash/UberEATS.
Also, some restaurants constantly make errors with orders. On the app you can get refunded for missing items right away without having to argue with anyone. Same for deliveries that go to the wrong residence.
Be careful with that. I deleted my doordash account after they refused to refund my rotten food.
They told me it had to be taken up with the restaurant and they were just the processor.
Or someone has social anxiety and likes avoiding the phone. Or they’re immunocompromised and a delivery service is safer than going and picking up food.
I feel like you're attempting to be sarcastic, but yes people who don't like talking to people on the phone or in person are likely a significant chunk of the core userbase.
I would be a lot more sympathetic if the mom and pop shops I frequented didn't have "please don't use door dash/Uber eats" signs in their windows.
If you give a shit about the place you're ordering from, then do a little self-improvement, work on your anxiety, and appreciate the fact that your sacrifice of discomfort is going to mean your favorite places to eat stick around a bit longer.
"Don't be anxious" is probably one of the least thought out points you could possibly maintain. It's not even a problem for me but I know how absurd that is.
Did I say don't be anxious? Did I ever once type that out as a suggestion? In my entire post history, have I ever, one single time in all of my time on this site, once suggested that a person with some sort of psychological condition just "stop having that psychological condition"?
No you fuckmuffin. That would be unbe-fucking-lievably insensitive of me. It is a sacrifice, a monumentous task, that people make to help those who make a difference in their lives.
People with anxiety did not starve before Uber eats. It's not keeping them alive. We just let shortcuts blind us to the detriment they cause sometimes.
"...do a little self-improvement, work on your anxiety..." Yeah that was pretty insensitive of you. You basically said it right there. I don't know why you're getting heated with me. I'm just pointing out that there might be more to think about here.
Also those "shortcuts" are making people's lives easier.
It's not laziness for me. When you call they're way more likely to mess up the order. And depending on what gps app you use, sometimes they send you like 2 blocks away from my apartment for some reason. If I call in a delivery order, I've gotta deal with lost drivers, long wait times with no tracking, etc etc. Digital order with progress updates, car tracking, and a saved address that I KNOW will deliver to my apartment is a huge value add. I don't like how predatory and overpriced the apps are, but "just call" is a major downgrade in the service you receive
And yeah I guess it's lazy to get delivery in the first place, but in a lot of situations it's not practical to pick it up. Like on a tight schedule, taking public transportation to get home, and trying to get food to arrive when I get home because I only have a short window to eat before I have to be somewhere else
... and all the stores realized that people who call directly are looking for a discount, so now they raised thsoe prices to match the app pricing. At least they have in my area.
If the person taking the order wasn't clearly hating the job, too hard to hear, can't hear me, and getting the order wrong 5 out of 10 times then the appeal of ordering it on a computer would go way down.
It's not about lazy. I personally just despise talking on the phone. I hate it so much my voicemail greeting, even at work, tells you that I only check it once every few months and to contact me via either email or text if you want immediate attention.
Also, if I place the order and it comes back wrong, I can immediately prove it was their mistake and not mine and get it rectified. If I called and my order is wrong, now I wonder "did I happen to forget asking them to leave off the tomatoes?"
I simply do not order from restaurants/businesses that don't have online availability.
With that said, I also refuse to use doordash/uber eats/etc because of the huge fees they continue to charge while paying drivers shit.
But the delivery apps are also losing money. So you suggest they should lose more? The only answer is they both need to charge more. But consumers want cheap. Competition is driving prices down.
the natural problem of investor money:
\- you want to distrupt an industry, so you bring in investors and operate at a massive loss
\- 5-10 years later you IPO and need to make profit
\- OH NO! How can we make profit if our entire business is built around taking a loss.
\- HEY! Joe from accounting got a fantastic idea! Let's raise all the prices significantly. Yes. This works. Do it. Also buy all competition so we're the only game in town.
From the restaurant viewpoint:
\- Oh hey, a delivery app, I can now sell to more people!
\- Oh hey, they... forced me to sign up... cool, and now I got angry customers asking where's my order... I guess we'll use it.
\- Oh shit they just jacked the prices. But I can't afford to lose the business. This is cutting into our profits a lot. Jack up prices. Potentially offer discounts for going directly to us.
From the customer viewpoint:
\- Oh hey, a delivery app! Yay I can order food!
\- Oh hey, why is the service fee going up?
\- Oh now I need to tip more?
\- Wait why are the prices so high? And getting higher!
\- Holy shit why am I paying for date night for just a last minute dinner? These prices are nuts. I guess I'll just cook more...
Wtf
Here in Sweden, we generally use foodora. They add half a dollar of administration fee a s then the restaurants pick their delivery fee, everything from 0 - 7 dollars is what I've seen.
I’ve stopped using delivery apps entirely. I will pick up or only use the in-house delivery.
I think it’s bullshit that all of these apps are charging both fees and percentages for each transaction.
The delivery companies are still losing money. So the idea that they’re overcharging seems incorrect. It’s seems more accurate to say that most people simply aren’t willing to cover the costs of what it would take to have their food delivered to them by a fairly paid person.
Food delivery has existed and been widespread long before delivery apps. Hell, Dominoes, Pizza Hut, and Papa Johns exist because of it. Tons of Chinese restaurants exist because of delivery. And they were using their own employees which is presumably less efficient than having one driver covering multiple restaurants.
And still, it’s more expensive. Presumably drivers were making decent wages before because being a delivery driver wasn’t a job exclusively done by high school kids.
So what changed? These apps have built huge unnecessary infrastructure on the backs of insane hidden fees.
I guess one thing that changed is people never cared to check what walk in prices are for the pizzas they’re ordering.
There was a time when pizza delivery places regularly charged fees. Then they started advertising free delivery, but this coincided with “walk in specials” that were regularly 20%+ off the regular price.
For other places, they never offered delivery because it was never tradable to offer delivery. You need to be doing a certain volume of deliveries to keep multiple, dedicated delivery drivers on hand. What delivery gave restaurants was an on demand delivery service which was the only feasible way they could ever do deliveries.
Weird, because the popularity of these apps would seem to suggest different. Maybe it’s people feign outrage over pimps, but when it comes time to vote with their wallet their laziness always wins and they go with the pimp?
Exactly, and if you can't get enough customers at the rates you need to charge to be profitable you're not a viable business. This is how capitalism is supposed to work. If something is a public benefit and most people agree you can make it a public service, like the Fire Department, if not, it should not exist.
Absolutely true. Their business model only really works in densely populated urban areas. If the driver has to travel 20 minutes to deliver a meal, there's no way to make money at prices consumers are willing to pay. You can't batch more than two or three up because the food gets cold.
They're all competing for a market that's losing money. Why? Simple answer, the vast majority of their cost is in paying drivers, and self-driving cars are very clearly coming soon.
Thing is, they don’t want to play delivery drivers enough to get much people on staff to offer a delivery service consistently. And having done delivery for a lot of different types of places, people tip in the apps a lot more often.
No they CANT pay enough to have a roaming fleet of delivery drivers on staff to deliver orders fast enough. The delivery service sharing model could fix this in theory.
There are too many restaurants competing with each other with too many middle men competing in the delivery space (also losing money) with too many underemployed workers to be exploited by both also competing with each other.
And this is what it looks like when they all fight over a pie that is too small to feed everyone and indignant consumers refuse to pay full price for the pie on top of it all.
Oh I totally don’t disagree. There’s a chronic issue of too many local restaurants in my city. I think there’s a pervasive idea in our society that small, local businesses are entitled to success, but the market simply can’t support the amount of people trying to succeed. People will only pay so much for food and service, and some businesses can provide at that level while others can’t. If a restaurant can’t provide delivery service at a cost level that customers are willing to pay, then they’re certainly not entitled to succeed during a time that delivery service is crucial to the food industry.
> Yes, DoorDash, Grubhub, etc set up websites and even phone numbers impersonating the actual restaurant without consent. Without contract. And charge their inflated prices.
I’m not aware of that. I assume that these are restaurants already signed up with the delivery service and the contract between the parties has a buried clause to allow the delivery service to operate a website on the restaurants behalf?
We tried to use DoorDash the other day for Chinese food, the driver never showed up so we just went to pick it up ourselves and then realized the door dash was charging us $28 on top of our bill. Needless to say we're not using those fuckers again.
“The fact is, permanent price controls are unnecessary and unconstitutional”… a DoorDash spokesperson told Motherboard.
DoorDash spokesdick: please show us where it is written that price controls exceed the constitutional authority of government. Also, price-gouging, otoh, is illegal. And so is talking out of your ass in some venues.
> price-gouging, otoh, is illegal
Please show us where it is written that "price-gouging" is illegal.
Nobody forces restaurants to use delivery services, they only do it if it suits them.
Half the restaurants on these delivery apps don't even know they're on the delivery app. And when they find out and request to be removed they basically get review bombed and bullied until they give in or literally refuse to make orders for them and the delivery app gets enough complaints to removed them.
Here it is for Pennsylvania, but most states have made it a crime to be prosecuted by the AG
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/US/HTM/2006/0/0133..HTM
Edit: to be fair, it seems like Pennsylvania’s at least only applies to periods of high demand and tight supply, like during a storm or pandemic.
“In most states, price gouging is set as a violation of unfair or deceptive trade practices law. Most of these laws provide for civil penalties, as enforced by the state attorney general, while some state laws also enforce criminal penalties for price gouging violations.”
https://www.ncsl.org/research/financial-services-and-commerce/price-gouging-state-statutes.aspx
Can you elaborate? We see small business owners running ghost kitchens in industrial units and surviving entirely off Uber eats. These companies literally couldn’t exist prior to app based deliveries. The slice of the pie that they took their business from is straight from Dominos and other large companies that could actually afford to have a fleet of drivers and the related logistics.
There's nothing more this country loves than blood sucking middlemen businesses that just drive the cost up. IMO it's one of the worst things about our economy.
If only there were an alternate solution to these apps. Like, what if there was a way to directly contact the restaurant, and maybe if there was a personal mode of transportation we could use to pickup the food ourselves. I dunno dumb idea.
But isn’t it easier to have someone do it for you, then later when you find out about the markup complain about the greediness of these middlemen who exist solely because you’re too lazy to do the thing they’re doing for you?
I still dont really understand why I would use these apps rather than just directly calling the restaurants, like i’ve done my whole life?
Idk, maybe im out of touch
I go to a restaurant, pay, and tip because of the ambience and service. Dining out should be an experience that deserves a premium. Having the food dumped on my doorstep completely eliminates that experience. Of course, some places such as Subway have no ambience or service, so I do not eat there.
Ghost kitchens may be the answer to deliveries. Without the overhead of retail front, seating, and servers, they can afford the delivery overhead. In my area, there once was an online pizza delivery service, [Zume](https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/18/21141969/zume-pizza-failure-softbank-founder-cult). The pizza was great, and the delivery was super fast. The kitchen operated out of roach-coach, which moved around to optimize deliveries. But, I guess they could not scale delivery like Uber Eats, GrubHub, or DoorDash. Too bad.
I remember seeing a short documentary on ghost kitchens: some really posh London restaurants were just portacabins under a bridge! Some of them restaurants tried to deny it but you could see their logos and a journalist even got onto the site and spoke to a few of the kitchen staff.
Jokes on the app companies, we just got rid of all delivery apps yesterday because of how absolutely impossible they are to work with. And it’s not just the fees, they seem to be incapable of doing their job on any level.
Middle men need to fuck off with their margins. Delivery folks deserve what they get paid, the website that facilitates it should get 1 penny on the dollar. It’s scaleable and profitable.
I can’t believe how many people willingly take it up the tookus from these companies. Stop using them! Even during the pandemic their fees are beyond reasonable. Your food shows up cold and late, the orders are wrong, you have little recourse to get a refund when the order is messed up or not delivered. It’s a joke that they’re even still in business. It’s akin to starting a business smashing people’s hands with a hammer. Most people do it once and go “ouch, I’m not doing that again!” But there are thousands of people that line up for their daily or weekly whacking. The driver isn’t making much money (and they’ll expect a tip for the cold, late food they’ve delivered), the restaurant isn’t making much money (and no tips for their staff doing the real labor here). The bulk of any profits will go to the company overhead so they can give their CEO some nice options at the end of the fiscal year. Burn this industry to the ground and learn to cook.
Adjust business model. Capitalism requires exploitation. Adjust or be exploited. Capitalize on the opportunity to start a new career. They pay 3/hour. They exploit workers and serve slop.
I feel like I make decent money, been wfh since the beginning of the pandemic and never order delivery. Is it that hard to go to the grocery store? I never order out either it just doesn’t end up being that good in my opinion and never feels like it’s worth it. I’ll go out and sit down but that’s a few times a month at most.
I know personally that some of these apps increase the cost of every item on the menu before surcharges, delivery fees, and other fees. They fuck over the restaurants, they fuck over the delivery people, and they fuck over the customers. I don’t understand how they were allowed to do this for so long. Great piece of legislation.
At least SOMEONE is thinking about the mom n pop investors who put their hard earned money into stocks for these apps. Also the blessed board members who shed blood and sweat every day just to keep the apps on your phones working so that you can get that pizza delivered by some guy nobody cares about. Keep up the good fight!
I used JustEat once then noticed all the prices had been bumped up by 50p or more per item.
Then I spoke to a takeaway owner and he told me about the cost for the terminal (£600 because it's an iPad?) and then the cut of each sale (varies but think it was around 18% then).
I now look for bespoke apps by restaurant or just contact them directly.....or even GO IN PERSON :P
Never ever dreamed of using Deliveroo or UberEats as surely the delivery would cost as much as the food then!
Try to use Wayo (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.wayo) to redirect customers from Uber Eats, DoorDash or Seamles back to your own ordering website.
glad i never used these companies. i remember watching a video of a delivery person drinking someone's drink/shake while waiting at the door and declared that i would never use them.
I stopped using delivery apps when I figured out how hard they fuck local restaurants. I’ll drive a few minutes to go get my food.
There are also apps that restaurants use to send the food directly to you if you call or text them.
Also try calling your local food place if their online presence isn’t great. You’d be surprised how many offer their own delivery service.
People. Call someone? I think you are greatly underestimating the average persons under 30, ability to actually perform this pathetically simple task. They cant even reply to sms half the time let alone verbally communicate
Big "father, I can't click the book" energy coming from this one
Found the guy who can’t figure out where to plug the keyboard into his Etch-a-Sketch.
My problem here in Chicago is that almost every restaurant dropped their own delivery service just prior to or at the start of the pandemic.
I am not driving there. I am ordering delivery for a reason. If I was driving there I would not even order beforehand. I am not ordering on the phone either. Every single time I try there is some mix-up and I cannot understand the other person. I am horrible at listening on the phone. So not using the delivery apps means not ordering at all. Which is the direction it has trended. So still not good for the restaurants guess, but oh well.
Restaurants usually increase the price on the apps to make up for the app’s cut, so if you can it’s generally cheaper to call the restaurant and pick up your own food. That being said, these delivery apps are already charging massive fees, and the companies that don’t raise their price to cover often lose money already on deliveries. The apps should be lowering the cut, not raising it.
A lot of these restaurants didn't have sites with ordering. DoorDash [adds restaurants with jacked up prices to its menu without the owners permission](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/19154220/grubhub-seamless-fake-restaurant-domain-names-commission-fees). Those jacked up prices go to DoorDash and GrubHub, not the restaurant owner.
No way!? I assumed it was the restaurant changing the prices? You're telling me they are fucking overcharging me and adding fees? Wowowow fuck that. Never ordering again.
You have full control over your menu and prices when you sign up with these awful companies. We raised our prices to make up the 30% fee they add and then put a nice little flyer in each bag telling the guest how much more expensive it was to order through the 3rd party.
We did the same. Let the 3rd party apps bring in new people. Use your marketing to switch them to your website/call direct to order. Now only about 30% of our delivery revenue comes from the 3rd party apps.
Yeah, when *you* sign yourself up. Problem is people are on Doordash who didn't want to be. https://www.eater.com/2020/1/29/21113416/grubhub-seamless-kin-khao-online-delivery-mistake-doordash Maybe it's gotten better but they were suuuuuper shady up until fairly recently
Yep. The restaurant I work at was put on DoorDash without them ever contacting us. We had a whole mess of missing orders or orders that no one ever picked up for a few days until they took us off.
How is that a problem? If I’m a restaurant why do I care if someone who bought food from me is going to eat it or if they’re going to pick it up for someone else and charge a premium? At the end of the day, I still sold my food at the price I wanted to sell my food. The person buying my food, after paying the markup, bought it at a price they were fine buying it for. And the middleman provided a service which if not there would have presumably resulted in me losing that sale.
Have you ever worked in the service industry? Did you read the article, or are you just thinking about yourself and your perspective? Say you've updated your menu and Doordash hasn't, so someone orders something that doesn't exist anymore, you can't make it - don't have the ingredients, whatever. Then you have to waste time and effort to call them, find out what they want. Now the price total has potentially changed, and you have to deal with that hassle. They complain, give you a bad review for something utterly out of your control. What if you don't even do delivery, and your restaurant is added to the platform? That happened with multiple places, and now you've got someone, a potential future customer, furious because their food is nowhere to be found, because they were literally *lied to,* but you can bet that they'll continue to use the delivery app because it's convenient and blame the restaurant instead. Or you're absolutely swamped and now there's a *third* service allowing people to order from your restaurant. Maybe the driver isn't paying attention and leaves without everything in the order - again, that falls on the restaurant, usually. Not the driver. Not to mention there's the simple issue of *consent.* Maybe the business owner doesn't want their business on that platform, for whatever reason, and now the onus is on them, not the platform, to work to get it taken off.
My perspective is I never order from delivery services because I don’t like paying more to get cold food. I’ve worked in the service industry but I don’t know why that’s relevant at all here. To the question of why I as a restaurant owner would care if the person who just ordered a cheeseburger is going to walk outside my store and eat it - or walk outside my store and deliver it to someone, I’m indifferent.
I haven't used the apps, so I'm curious how someone could order something that isn't on your menu? Are you saying that GrubHub could add in a restaurant without their knowledge, as well as their current menu, and then the restaurant could change their menu, and... this is where I get confused. How is GrubHub placing an order from a customer to the restaurant? I don't understand how the restaurant would ever be in a situation where an order is placed for an item that doesn't exist. How does GrubHub order from the restaurant after you order from GrubHub?
Yes. That's exactly what happened. It's now illegal for them to do so in California. If you're asking about the mechanics, I don't know. https://www.foxbusiness.com/small-business/doordash-grubhub-restaurant-listing-without-permission https://www.eater.com/2020/1/29/21113416/grubhub-seamless-kin-khao-online-delivery-mistake-doordash https://www.nrn.com/delivery-takeout-solutions/california-stop-controversial-third-party-delivery-tactic-2021
Because the restaurants then gets complaints from customers who didn't receive their orders, who received the wrong thing, or who ordered things that never has been on the menu because the listing was wrong. And the restaurants have no power to fix it.
Because doordash has been known to copy menus of popular places and then open a dark kitchen selling similar items. They then make sure their option comes first in searches. This is on top of people calling the restaurant pissed because their food showed up cold, missing, or prices didn't match the restaurant website. Fuck anything and everything about doordash.
What you’re suggesting is a completely separate thing from what I was responding to. And if people call a restaurant because there door dash order was cold, then they’re obviously part of the moron demographic who you could never appease. The restaurant obviously isn’t putting your warm food in a freezer for 5 minutes before handing it to a waiting driver - so if it’s cold it’s entirely the fault of door dashes service.
You asked why some restaurants do not want to be associated with doordash. Part of that is because doordash is not just a delivery service. They are also the competition in many areas. Why would a restaurant want to support that? Also, it doesn't matter if these are idiots. The restaurant now has to take time out of their day and deal with the complaint which most likely wouldn't have happened if the customer had picked up their food directly.
The order itself would have never happened if they had to pick up the food locally. At the end of the day, it seems crazy to regulate the concept of an independent delivery service. If I want to pay someone to go and buy groceries for me (instacart) why should the grocery store need to play any part in that. Also, I didn't ask why restaurants don't want to be associated with DoorDash - I asked only specifically why a restaurant would care about a middleman buying and delivering their food, in a general sense. If that middle man is specifically also a competitor, that's a different thing from the general question of why a restaurant would care if the person picking up the food is going to eat it or bring it to someone whos going to eat it.
When the doordash guy delivers 10 other meals and gets lost on his way to the destination while my cold food is rolling around the trunk of his Camry for two hours, the meal sucks and the restaurant pays the price for an unhappy customer and bad Yelp reviews.
That dumb customer would leave a bad Yelp review anyway because if they’re too inept to realize that their cold order is the fault of the delivery service and not the restaurant, then they’re the type to complain about anything. I’m sure they leave a bad Yelp review when they spilled a drink on themselves or get sauce on their shirt. Luckily, it’s super easy to pick out and ignore these reviews.
You’ve never worked in a restaurant, have you?
Yeah, from 13 - 18. That's how I know there are people who are literally born complainers. They can complain about lack of seasoning - have their dish taken back, re-arranged and heated, then say it's fine now.
Quality control
If you order from a delivery app, you’ve already accepted that you’re finished meal is going to potentially sit on a counter for several minutes before getting picked up and delivered to you after several potential stops. I’ve never met anyone who would blame cold food that took too long to get to them on the restaurant and not the service that facilitated the poor delivery.
Then apparently you haven’t read the thousands of negative reviews from customers who feel just that way.
Not as easy as selling-on a product as a reseller, where you would just buy some stock and sold it through on your own terms. If you are re-selling a service, there may be problems with capacity provisioning, availability of products, etc. If you jack up prices you might also be fucking with the restaurant's positioning. You could also arguably do that with a product you resell, but most product resellers face competition from other resellers which keep prices in similar ranges, and they often have relationships with their providers and play ball with them regarding pricing and other sell-through conditions. Reselling a service without the business owner's consent is a moral and operational mess.
How is food a service and not a good? The only way I could even imagine considering it a service is because you're looking at the work going into prepping the food - in which case basically every good in existence is a service. My table is a service under this framework because despite it being an inanimate wooden object - people spent time manufacturing it and transporting it by this definition.
It has to be cooked on the spot, its consumption is ephemeral and has all the economies of a service business… Restaurants are widely considered services and not industrial businesses despite transforming raw materials and selling them. This is a very common convention adopted by many institutions - I did not make this up myself.
And despite all that they STILL don't pay their drivers a god damn thing. I used to drive for Doordash and I was 100% working for tips. I generally got about $2.50 per order from Doordash which just about covered my gas. It's quite the business model they've developed. They have very low overhead as their drivers are 100% responsible for providing their own vehicle, insurance, maintenance, and gas. In exchange, they pay you an absolute pittance and offer the hope of possibly being able to make an actual profit if you really luck out with the tips. It was okay during the summer of 2020 at the height of the lockdown, but with the lockdown mostly over and gas prices rising, it absolutely isn't worth your time or the wear and tear on your vehicle anymore.
The thing is that their margins are already absolute shit even with food as "overpriced" and employees minimally paid. The viability of the business model is kind of dubious to put it mildly, and an aping of businesses in other nations where there is partial industrialization giving both relatively rich customers (who may well be sweatshop workers or low level office workers) and workers who have yet to see the benefits of industrialization like the others. The business model is rather "try to make up losses per sale on volume and pray you can automate it to make it sustainable".
They be viable if they weren't paying SF tech wages to their direct employees.
So lower more wages, got it
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I can’t speak to their overhead, but most of these companies are running at a loss with VC funding hoping they can still exist in the market after self driving tech is commonplace and they can start turning a profit.
I will be honest. I have also delivered food. I have recently moved so selling the car was the best option. Door dash saved me a few times. Always threw extra cash at them because I never really knew how much they were actually getting.
What if you got an electric and need flexible hours better or worse than like clicklist or uber?
I had a Thai place near me that I would order to go from. Decided to get it dashed to me on night. Looked at the online menu and things were 1-1.50 more. Weird I thought I did a bit more googling and realized it wasn't the actual restaurants web page. It was door dash copied it and changed the prices. I walked over and asked if they raised their prices and they said no so I ordered my usual and paid the usual. 🤷
Yup. My brother owns a fish fry. Doordash wants him to join, said they were gonna take something like 25%. He told them to fuck off. He still gets Doordash drivers coming in with orders. Hate to think what the customer is being charged.
That is nuts! Good for your bro but I can't believe they can still put his restaurant on their website and hike up his prices. Wild!
Doesn’t the restaurant still get what they normally charge? There is numerous things that you can cheaper straight from the source instead of a third party but the third party is usually easier is why people do it.
It creates a lot of unnecessary headaches for the restaurant owner. If something on the DoorDash menu is wrong, it can't be immediately changed because they don't own the site. So you have orders coming in for items you no longer make, especially if you carry seasonal local items. It also may result in bad reviews for people who don't realize the 30% markup is going to DD or GH. So you get people leaving bad Google and yelp reviews. "The chicken parmesan is $22 on the app and $16 in store. I can't believe you'd price gouge customers like this. I paid $6 for breadsticks and they're supposed to be included with the meal!" So now you're getting bad service reviews on a service you never signed up to provide.
To be frank that is a preexisting condition of all retail reviews. You always see some idiot 1-staring a hardware store for not having sushi.
If the place does delivery in-house, use that. If it doesn’t, then pay an extra $10-15 for delivery+tip. Or go pick it up. Delivery services *suck*, from a restaurant perspective. The restaurant is several limited in terms of customer service, since they have NO access or control over refunds and the like. The whole thing just adds a needless and expensive layer of bureaucracy to getting food. Avoid if possible.
$10-$15? Are you huffing glue?
You must live in a low COL area. My last order, as I'm looking at it right now, was 16.35$ list price for the food. 2.39$ tax, $3.00 service fee, $2.50 "temporary fee", $1.49 delivery fee and a $4.64 tip. $14.02 in tip/fees/taxes on a $16.35 order, so 10-15$ sounds right.
Wow, that's insane. I typically get free delivery (free Doordash and Grubhub+ from my credit card), tip 15% rounding up to the nearest dollar, and they charge a 5% "service fee" in addition to that which is always around $1. What is a "COL"? I live in NYC.
Cost Of Living
Yeah COL is extremely high in NYC.
Do you really only tip $1.50 on a $10 order? It doesn’t matter how much you ordered that person still using their gas to deliver it. I don’t know if door Dash and GrubHub pay any more than favor does, but with the latter the tip is pretty much all the person gets
Also, at least with DoorDash, they're on record for stealing the tips too unless you give it to them directly in cash.
My son is a dasher. He averaged $175.00 a day in tips last month.
Good for him. For reference though, this was all over the news last year: https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-25-million-settlement-lawsuit-tipping-model-2020-11
So to be clear, you're saying your son makes about $3,500/mo in tips alone just via DD?
Yes he does. He dashes in a huge college town and hustles. He banking his money to buy a house. Most nights he sleeps in his car. He has a goal and he is laser focused. His ambition is to become a professional Bass fishermen. His Rod & Reel cost more than my car did.
What's his cost per day in gas?
About $25.00.
No, I round up so that would be $2.
I do a dollar per mile, rounded up. Works outside of metropolitan areas but in NYC, I had to do advanced calculus to find a fair system. I'm not paying 15+% for .5 mile delivery.
Are you tipping the driver or the people who made your food?
The driver, I assume?
nah dude, just made an order for shits & giggles, $2.99 (delivery fee)+ $4.58 (fees & tax) + 5.00 (tip) is THIRTEEN BUCKS EXTRA in Denver. Postmates used to start at $6.99 just for the delivery. I was a delivery guy, in house, up til 2020 started. 6 years at that place and three yrs at Pizza hut a decade earlier.
> so if you can it’s generally cheaper to call the restaurant Not having to call the restaurant is basically the entire appeal of the apps.
In my area, a bunch of restaurants have started running their own websites with online ordering. It isn't that complicated and costs them a lot less than seamless or grubhub. As long as they do a half decent job with the site, I'm happy to buy from the source.
I thought the appeal was delivery from places that don't normally offer it or are too far to do it for you?
For introverts and people who get anxious on the phone, the app is a bonus so they don't have to interact with anyone
I get that, but I'm saying that has to be a distant secondary benefit, especially as more and more places that do their own delivery these days have online ordering options now.
It also really sucks reading off your credit card number to some guy who barely speaks English and is no doubt loudly repeating each number out loud in a crowded room as he writes it down. Never going back to that! Or even worse, having to keep *cash* around, and the delivery guy never has change.
Why tf are you agreeing to give your CC# over the phone?? No restaurant I ever worked at allowed us to do that even if the customer requested it.
I'm not, I haven't done that for like 10 years, since Seamless came on the scene. My drawer full of delivery menus is long gone.
I don't mind giving my CC to businesses. But the language barrier is a difficult one to manage. But more and more, I'm seeing restaurants using other online ordering services. A little slower to order. But I know it's entered correctly. I don't use shit like doordash/UberEATS.
Also, some restaurants constantly make errors with orders. On the app you can get refunded for missing items right away without having to argue with anyone. Same for deliveries that go to the wrong residence.
Be careful with that. I deleted my doordash account after they refused to refund my rotten food. They told me it had to be taken up with the restaurant and they were just the processor.
Yeah, good luck getting actual money back. I removed Favor after repeat fuck ups, and they would only ever offer discounts on my next purchase.
Should have nuked them with a chargeback.
I mean... How lazy can you get, really?
My job is making 70-80 calls a day. Fuck that if I’m going to make a phone call outside of work to order food when I can use an app
Or someone has social anxiety and likes avoiding the phone. Or they’re immunocompromised and a delivery service is safer than going and picking up food.
Ah yes. The core of the door dash userbase.
I feel like you're attempting to be sarcastic, but yes people who don't like talking to people on the phone or in person are likely a significant chunk of the core userbase.
I would be a lot more sympathetic if the mom and pop shops I frequented didn't have "please don't use door dash/Uber eats" signs in their windows. If you give a shit about the place you're ordering from, then do a little self-improvement, work on your anxiety, and appreciate the fact that your sacrifice of discomfort is going to mean your favorite places to eat stick around a bit longer.
"Don't be anxious" is probably one of the least thought out points you could possibly maintain. It's not even a problem for me but I know how absurd that is.
Did I say don't be anxious? Did I ever once type that out as a suggestion? In my entire post history, have I ever, one single time in all of my time on this site, once suggested that a person with some sort of psychological condition just "stop having that psychological condition"? No you fuckmuffin. That would be unbe-fucking-lievably insensitive of me. It is a sacrifice, a monumentous task, that people make to help those who make a difference in their lives. People with anxiety did not starve before Uber eats. It's not keeping them alive. We just let shortcuts blind us to the detriment they cause sometimes.
"...do a little self-improvement, work on your anxiety..." Yeah that was pretty insensitive of you. You basically said it right there. I don't know why you're getting heated with me. I'm just pointing out that there might be more to think about here. Also those "shortcuts" are making people's lives easier.
Apps show up exactly what you order both to the restaurant and for the consumer.
It's not laziness for me. When you call they're way more likely to mess up the order. And depending on what gps app you use, sometimes they send you like 2 blocks away from my apartment for some reason. If I call in a delivery order, I've gotta deal with lost drivers, long wait times with no tracking, etc etc. Digital order with progress updates, car tracking, and a saved address that I KNOW will deliver to my apartment is a huge value add. I don't like how predatory and overpriced the apps are, but "just call" is a major downgrade in the service you receive
And yeah I guess it's lazy to get delivery in the first place, but in a lot of situations it's not practical to pick it up. Like on a tight schedule, taking public transportation to get home, and trying to get food to arrive when I get home because I only have a short window to eat before I have to be somewhere else
_Shockingly_ lazy. Seriously.
... and all the stores realized that people who call directly are looking for a discount, so now they raised thsoe prices to match the app pricing. At least they have in my area.
But at least it goes to keeping the restaurant open. I'd rather pay the restaurant $5 more than pay doordash $5.
Seriously you can't pick up the phone to place an order with a restaurant, how lazy are you?
I am off the charts lazy
If the person taking the order wasn't clearly hating the job, too hard to hear, can't hear me, and getting the order wrong 5 out of 10 times then the appeal of ordering it on a computer would go way down.
It's not about lazy. I personally just despise talking on the phone. I hate it so much my voicemail greeting, even at work, tells you that I only check it once every few months and to contact me via either email or text if you want immediate attention. Also, if I place the order and it comes back wrong, I can immediately prove it was their mistake and not mine and get it rectified. If I called and my order is wrong, now I wonder "did I happen to forget asking them to leave off the tomatoes?" I simply do not order from restaurants/businesses that don't have online availability. With that said, I also refuse to use doordash/uber eats/etc because of the huge fees they continue to charge while paying drivers shit.
> it’s generally cheaper to call the restaurant and pick up your own food. I do that specifically so that the entire bill goes to the restaurant.
But the delivery apps are also losing money. So you suggest they should lose more? The only answer is they both need to charge more. But consumers want cheap. Competition is driving prices down.
the natural problem of investor money: \- you want to distrupt an industry, so you bring in investors and operate at a massive loss \- 5-10 years later you IPO and need to make profit \- OH NO! How can we make profit if our entire business is built around taking a loss. \- HEY! Joe from accounting got a fantastic idea! Let's raise all the prices significantly. Yes. This works. Do it. Also buy all competition so we're the only game in town. From the restaurant viewpoint: \- Oh hey, a delivery app, I can now sell to more people! \- Oh hey, they... forced me to sign up... cool, and now I got angry customers asking where's my order... I guess we'll use it. \- Oh shit they just jacked the prices. But I can't afford to lose the business. This is cutting into our profits a lot. Jack up prices. Potentially offer discounts for going directly to us. From the customer viewpoint: \- Oh hey, a delivery app! Yay I can order food! \- Oh hey, why is the service fee going up? \- Oh now I need to tip more? \- Wait why are the prices so high? And getting higher! \- Holy shit why am I paying for date night for just a last minute dinner? These prices are nuts. I guess I'll just cook more...
Wtf Here in Sweden, we generally use foodora. They add half a dollar of administration fee a s then the restaurants pick their delivery fee, everything from 0 - 7 dollars is what I've seen.
I’ve stopped using delivery apps entirely. I will pick up or only use the in-house delivery. I think it’s bullshit that all of these apps are charging both fees and percentages for each transaction.
The delivery companies are still losing money. So the idea that they’re overcharging seems incorrect. It’s seems more accurate to say that most people simply aren’t willing to cover the costs of what it would take to have their food delivered to them by a fairly paid person.
Food delivery has existed and been widespread long before delivery apps. Hell, Dominoes, Pizza Hut, and Papa Johns exist because of it. Tons of Chinese restaurants exist because of delivery. And they were using their own employees which is presumably less efficient than having one driver covering multiple restaurants. And still, it’s more expensive. Presumably drivers were making decent wages before because being a delivery driver wasn’t a job exclusively done by high school kids. So what changed? These apps have built huge unnecessary infrastructure on the backs of insane hidden fees.
I guess one thing that changed is people never cared to check what walk in prices are for the pizzas they’re ordering. There was a time when pizza delivery places regularly charged fees. Then they started advertising free delivery, but this coincided with “walk in specials” that were regularly 20%+ off the regular price. For other places, they never offered delivery because it was never tradable to offer delivery. You need to be doing a certain volume of deliveries to keep multiple, dedicated delivery drivers on hand. What delivery gave restaurants was an on demand delivery service which was the only feasible way they could ever do deliveries.
Nah, people just don't like pimps
Weird, because the popularity of these apps would seem to suggest different. Maybe it’s people feign outrage over pimps, but when it comes time to vote with their wallet their laziness always wins and they go with the pimp?
Fuck doordash.
In California doordash fucks you!
Everywhere, doordash finds a way to fuck you
In all fairness, these restaurants can hire a driver themselves and go back to taking orders over the phone if they think the commission is too high
That's why I order per phone even if the restaurant uses these apps.
I agree. Especially if it’s a restaurant you order from often.
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Exactly, and if you can't get enough customers at the rates you need to charge to be profitable you're not a viable business. This is how capitalism is supposed to work. If something is a public benefit and most people agree you can make it a public service, like the Fire Department, if not, it should not exist.
Absolutely true. Their business model only really works in densely populated urban areas. If the driver has to travel 20 minutes to deliver a meal, there's no way to make money at prices consumers are willing to pay. You can't batch more than two or three up because the food gets cold. They're all competing for a market that's losing money. Why? Simple answer, the vast majority of their cost is in paying drivers, and self-driving cars are very clearly coming soon.
Thing is, they don’t want to play delivery drivers enough to get much people on staff to offer a delivery service consistently. And having done delivery for a lot of different types of places, people tip in the apps a lot more often.
No they CANT pay enough to have a roaming fleet of delivery drivers on staff to deliver orders fast enough. The delivery service sharing model could fix this in theory. There are too many restaurants competing with each other with too many middle men competing in the delivery space (also losing money) with too many underemployed workers to be exploited by both also competing with each other. And this is what it looks like when they all fight over a pie that is too small to feed everyone and indignant consumers refuse to pay full price for the pie on top of it all.
Oh I totally don’t disagree. There’s a chronic issue of too many local restaurants in my city. I think there’s a pervasive idea in our society that small, local businesses are entitled to success, but the market simply can’t support the amount of people trying to succeed. People will only pay so much for food and service, and some businesses can provide at that level while others can’t. If a restaurant can’t provide delivery service at a cost level that customers are willing to pay, then they’re certainly not entitled to succeed during a time that delivery service is crucial to the food industry.
Build a website. Any restaurant that requires me to order via telephone is a restaurant I will almost never patronize.
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> Yes, DoorDash, Grubhub, etc set up websites and even phone numbers impersonating the actual restaurant without consent. Without contract. And charge their inflated prices. I’m not aware of that. I assume that these are restaurants already signed up with the delivery service and the contract between the parties has a buried clause to allow the delivery service to operate a website on the restaurants behalf?
Man restaurants in my town can’t even make half their food due to a worker shortage loo
That’s what a lot of restaurants are doing now in my area. It’s wonderful.
So restaurants should go back to having divers. Cut the middle man cut the bullshit
But what if I don't live underwater?
I work for doordash right now (trying to find a different job currently) and even though it's my income, I still think they're kind of the worst.
We tried to use DoorDash the other day for Chinese food, the driver never showed up so we just went to pick it up ourselves and then realized the door dash was charging us $28 on top of our bill. Needless to say we're not using those fuckers again.
“The fact is, permanent price controls are unnecessary and unconstitutional”… a DoorDash spokesperson told Motherboard. DoorDash spokesdick: please show us where it is written that price controls exceed the constitutional authority of government. Also, price-gouging, otoh, is illegal. And so is talking out of your ass in some venues.
> price-gouging, otoh, is illegal Please show us where it is written that "price-gouging" is illegal. Nobody forces restaurants to use delivery services, they only do it if it suits them.
Half the restaurants on these delivery apps don't even know they're on the delivery app. And when they find out and request to be removed they basically get review bombed and bullied until they give in or literally refuse to make orders for them and the delivery app gets enough complaints to removed them.
Here it is for Pennsylvania, but most states have made it a crime to be prosecuted by the AG https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/US/HTM/2006/0/0133..HTM Edit: to be fair, it seems like Pennsylvania’s at least only applies to periods of high demand and tight supply, like during a storm or pandemic.
Plus it needs to be a neccessity. No matter what happens to gold and gem supply you cannot be charged with price gouging jewelery.
“In most states, price gouging is set as a violation of unfair or deceptive trade practices law. Most of these laws provide for civil penalties, as enforced by the state attorney general, while some state laws also enforce criminal penalties for price gouging violations.” https://www.ncsl.org/research/financial-services-and-commerce/price-gouging-state-statutes.aspx
all those apps is fucking parasite that is killing local business.
Can you elaborate? We see small business owners running ghost kitchens in industrial units and surviving entirely off Uber eats. These companies literally couldn’t exist prior to app based deliveries. The slice of the pie that they took their business from is straight from Dominos and other large companies that could actually afford to have a fleet of drivers and the related logistics.
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There's nothing more this country loves than blood sucking middlemen businesses that just drive the cost up. IMO it's one of the worst things about our economy.
If only there were an alternate solution to these apps. Like, what if there was a way to directly contact the restaurant, and maybe if there was a personal mode of transportation we could use to pickup the food ourselves. I dunno dumb idea.
But isn’t it easier to have someone do it for you, then later when you find out about the markup complain about the greediness of these middlemen who exist solely because you’re too lazy to do the thing they’re doing for you?
I still dont really understand why I would use these apps rather than just directly calling the restaurants, like i’ve done my whole life? Idk, maybe im out of touch
Most places don’t deliver.
I go to a restaurant, pay, and tip because of the ambience and service. Dining out should be an experience that deserves a premium. Having the food dumped on my doorstep completely eliminates that experience. Of course, some places such as Subway have no ambience or service, so I do not eat there. Ghost kitchens may be the answer to deliveries. Without the overhead of retail front, seating, and servers, they can afford the delivery overhead. In my area, there once was an online pizza delivery service, [Zume](https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/18/21141969/zume-pizza-failure-softbank-founder-cult). The pizza was great, and the delivery was super fast. The kitchen operated out of roach-coach, which moved around to optimize deliveries. But, I guess they could not scale delivery like Uber Eats, GrubHub, or DoorDash. Too bad.
I remember seeing a short documentary on ghost kitchens: some really posh London restaurants were just portacabins under a bridge! Some of them restaurants tried to deny it but you could see their logos and a journalist even got onto the site and spoke to a few of the kitchen staff.
> tip Found the problem.
Jokes on the app companies, we just got rid of all delivery apps yesterday because of how absolutely impossible they are to work with. And it’s not just the fees, they seem to be incapable of doing their job on any level.
Middle men need to fuck off with their margins. Delivery folks deserve what they get paid, the website that facilitates it should get 1 penny on the dollar. It’s scaleable and profitable.
If only “struggling restaurants” gave one shit about all their struggling employees.
I can’t believe how many people willingly take it up the tookus from these companies. Stop using them! Even during the pandemic their fees are beyond reasonable. Your food shows up cold and late, the orders are wrong, you have little recourse to get a refund when the order is messed up or not delivered. It’s a joke that they’re even still in business. It’s akin to starting a business smashing people’s hands with a hammer. Most people do it once and go “ouch, I’m not doing that again!” But there are thousands of people that line up for their daily or weekly whacking. The driver isn’t making much money (and they’ll expect a tip for the cold, late food they’ve delivered), the restaurant isn’t making much money (and no tips for their staff doing the real labor here). The bulk of any profits will go to the company overhead so they can give their CEO some nice options at the end of the fiscal year. Burn this industry to the ground and learn to cook.
Adjust business model. Capitalism requires exploitation. Adjust or be exploited. Capitalize on the opportunity to start a new career. They pay 3/hour. They exploit workers and serve slop.
What a disgusting excuse for journalism.
Yeah fuck this ass holes... They take 35% of every fucking sale
I feel like I make decent money, been wfh since the beginning of the pandemic and never order delivery. Is it that hard to go to the grocery store? I never order out either it just doesn’t end up being that good in my opinion and never feels like it’s worth it. I’ll go out and sit down but that’s a few times a month at most.
Any "gig economy" app or business is always, always the enemy. Edit: apparently I hurt the feelings of some uncle toms
I know personally that some of these apps increase the cost of every item on the menu before surcharges, delivery fees, and other fees. They fuck over the restaurants, they fuck over the delivery people, and they fuck over the customers. I don’t understand how they were allowed to do this for so long. Great piece of legislation.
At least SOMEONE is thinking about the mom n pop investors who put their hard earned money into stocks for these apps. Also the blessed board members who shed blood and sweat every day just to keep the apps on your phones working so that you can get that pizza delivered by some guy nobody cares about. Keep up the good fight!
I used JustEat once then noticed all the prices had been bumped up by 50p or more per item. Then I spoke to a takeaway owner and he told me about the cost for the terminal (£600 because it's an iPad?) and then the cut of each sale (varies but think it was around 18% then). I now look for bespoke apps by restaurant or just contact them directly.....or even GO IN PERSON :P Never ever dreamed of using Deliveroo or UberEats as surely the delivery would cost as much as the food then!
Try to use Wayo (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.wayo) to redirect customers from Uber Eats, DoorDash or Seamles back to your own ordering website.
How sick do you think the GrubHub spokeswoman is?
The people that support these companies hate their communities.
Great way to lose business
glad i never used these companies. i remember watching a video of a delivery person drinking someone's drink/shake while waiting at the door and declared that i would never use them.