Philly Restaurants Revolt over Unauthorized Food Delivery “Partnerships”
phillymag.com
phillymag.com
So you'd think Judy would have her web people make this loud and clear on the website: https://www.baology.com/menu
While it is clear that for delivery, it partners with Caviar (and no other option), maybe there should be some decently visible blurb about that partnership being exclusive, and not being involved in any manner with Doordash and Grubhub, or any provider besides Caviar.
> Sate Kampar takes to-go orders over the phone, regularly — but unknowingly — accepting Doordash orders that way. When the couriers arrive to pick up the orders and the restaurant’s listed menu prices turn out to be higher than those listed on Doordash, guests refuse to pay the correct charge. This means lost money for Sate Kampar, as well as wasted time and angry customers.
That's pretty crummy behavior! What can you try to do is is ask callers whether they are delivery agents. Also, monitor caller ID and keep a list. Always quote the correct price to whoever is calling, whether it's the consumer or a delivery agent. If there is reasonable suspicion that the person on the other end is an agent, insist on pre-payment with credit card before preparing the meal.
1) Restaurant takes order over the phone (and may quote the total price to the ordering party).
2) Restaurant makes food.
3) Courier arrives to deliver food.
4) Courier pays restaurant for food.
5) Courier delivers food to customer.
If there is a mispricing problem, shouldn't that get solved in Step 4, where the restaurant doesn't give the courier the food until they are made whole?
1) Doordash takes order on their site
2) Courier shows up to pick it up
3) Order never got to the restaurant, customer is confused, customer blames restaurant.
In the phone example:
1) Doordash connects the customer to the restaurant
2) Customer tries to place an order based on outdated info
3) Restaurant is now trying to convince the customer that the menu they are looking at is wrong. And restaurant looks like a fool because they can't even publish a menu.
In both of these cases, Doordash is damaging the restaurant (at least their reputation and wasting their time) and doesn't sound like they're making any good-faith effort to be a good actor here.
Also, in your example, if it gets to food being made and then an argument about price, what happens to the restaurant if someone refuses to pay? They don't really get to put that cooked meal into a fridge and wait for someone else to order it. It's garbage (straight up lost money) now.
Here is an experience I had. I ordered a meal, and made it clear that I'm picking it up in person. (Why would you use a delivery service and opt for pick-up? There was a good coupon discount involved which made them look more attractive than phoning the restaurant, and they charged quite a bit for delivery.)
Anyway, the courier got there a minute before I did and took the meal away. This happened while I was on the phone with someone at restaurant, informing them that I'm walking there, less than two blocks away, coming to get my order!
They didn't have the phone number of that delivery person, and so had no way to contact him to bring the meal back. They had to make me another instance of that meal while I waited.
It sounds like you’re at fault in this case, ordering from Doordash or whoever then trying to slip yourself in the middle of a transaction that is actually between the courier-and-restaurant, not you-and-restaurant
Your second example, however, damages primarily the restaurant, as the customer has attempted to disintermediate Doordash, but is doing so with incorrect information. The restaurant's best defense here may be communication, informing the buyer of the price, and correcting misconceptions, at the time of ordering.
As quipped eloquently in another thread here, "Move fast and break other people's things" may work in the short term, but lawsuits and grumpy attorneys-general seem like they could catch up to a bad actor pretty quickly when there is real money on the line.
Doordash has VC money to burn on this kind of garbage; restaurants in general already have a tough business to make work. In my mind I know who should take on the responsibility of getting this right.
I suspect that in some cases, it may be that the downstream user has might already have paid with their credit cared before step 1 has even happened. The delivery-related operations staff are trusting their site's own prices, which are wrong due to some other employees not updating them.
Then they realize at step 4 that if they buy the meal at the correct price, they won't make a profit any more.
Which is why the restaurants are pissed, and why these services (GrubHub, Door Dash, Uber Eats) are losing 9-figures or more every year.
There’s a 6 you’re missing where the customer comes in or calls in an order directly and realizes that the prices are wildly different (in my case it was about $2/item for fast food) and complains about it, including on yelp (ha). They think I’m cheating them when none of the services will let me update the menu or the price.
to be clear, i don’t think i’ve ever had a problem with payment - the couriers generally just paid whatever amount we rang up and asked for a receipt. i assume that gets passed to the customer.
would if i could look into the legality of things. i’m usually so swamped with life and i’m such small fry i get left alone fairly easily.
It is currently being addressed in that way, but it is ruining the reputations of these local restaurants, and burning through their cash.
Presumably there’s a general law preventing this. Is there?
I expect a world where it's increasingly hard to figure out the price of things due to discounts, memberships, and "abstracted" pricing.
" This is all going to blow up at some point, and customers are going to feel really confused because these companies have been lying about the cost of delivering food to them."
Like: I have a menu from the local pizza place stuck to my fridge with a magnet. The prices on the menu are cheaper than on Uber Eats, and so is cost of delivery. The only quote-unquote "problem" is I have to pick up a phone and call my order in. (Sidenote: That turn of phrase is a touch odd, when in order to use Uber Eats I'm going to, I dunno, pick up my phone?)
The point that I'm making really poorly is that I'm not confused about the cost of delivering food, I'm confused as to, generally, what the fuck it is that Uber Eats is doing and why. What value do they actually add, and why is that worth similar to or more than the actual cost of the raw ingredients to make my food?!
Honestly, it's not likely to blow up as it's likely to just slowly deflate. Doordash or grubhub or whatever (y'know, the ones that are somehow even shadier than Uber) will just cease to operate in your area. At least one company (and honestly it doesn't matter which, because they'll be the de facto standard for everyone to partner with at this point) will stay afloat per region, though, because the idea of a centralised 'what the fuck do I want to eat tonight' portal is just too enticing to too many people for every restaurant to turn down.
The real question I have about what happens if these places collapse is what happens to the virtual restaurants on the platform...
Online ordering made that a much more sane process.
Granted these days many places have their own online portal but I’d rather go through a single portal instead of handing my credit card information to a million dodgy sites
I would think that might require a different kind of license, if it is legal at all, because the restaurant doesn't have any contractual control over what happens to the food after it leaves the premises in terms of storage time, temperatures, etc.
If the menus are outdated, the delivery service may not even know what's in the food.
Unaffiliated delivery service advertises insufficient price, sends driver to restaurant, driver arrives at restaurant, doesn't have enough money to pay for food, either doesn't get food, or delivery service covers the difference. The delivery service would need to fix their price listings pretty quickly or they'd continuously lose money.
I don't think we should stop ad hoc delivery services like this, but they should have to clearly advertise that that's what they are, not falsely claim to be actually affiliated with the restaraunt.
Edit: I think these kinds of delivery services are valuable because of the layer of abstraction between them and the food business that allows them to deliver from anywhere rather than just the businesses that sign up with the service. I don't see why I shouldn't be able to pay for a proxy to drive to, order and deliver for me.
If they are continually making this kind of pricing mistake, perhaps they should be charged with harassment or something though.
In a sane world this problem wouldn't be possible - no rational actors should be ordering and then not paying for enough food to seriously hurt a business because there isn't anything to gain from such behavior.
Who says it's one actor, instead of a town full of people trying once (or even once every couple of months to see if the issue persists), and failing?
And from the article...
> According to The Information, Doordash is expected to lose $450 million this year
So, I would probably like, just lean roughly on the side of "yes".
1. Always quote the right price to whoever places the order; don't let them hang up without being informed. Don't assume that it's a regular patron who knows the prices, or the direct consumer who has checked the correct website.
2. Learn to identify unauthorized delivery agents (caller ID, voice, etc) and insist that they pay up-front before the meal is prepared.
3. Call people back on their apparent numbers to take their orders. That will eliminate most caller ID spoofing. "Hang on; what is your first name? I will call you back at xxx-yyy-zzzz, is that okay?" Failure to reach a person of that first name with the same voice and and all -> no service.
Voice verification! I did this when operating dial-up BBSes in the 1980's! Account applicants had to leave their name and phone number; I'd call them back and then activate their account after exchanging a few words. That got rid of a lot of the "anklebyters".
Customers think the restaurant is partnered with DoorDash or whoever because why wouldn't they. All the restaurant's IP (menu, photos, logos) was stolen from their website and used without permission.
The customer then thinks "this restaurant is trying to rip me off! They have one price on the website and then ask for more after I've placed my order." Cue the Twitter outrage, complaint calls, bad mouthing to friends, etc...
DoorDash is controlling the narrative because they're the interface the customer has with the restaurant.
Very interesting. I never considered that the economic dynamics of food delivery might suppress the quality of restaurant food, but it seems obvious in retrospect.
It won't, because the USA doesn't do regulation any more, but it should.
> Postmates told the team at Hardena that the only way to change the prices would be to become a member, which meant accepting delivery orders and paying the company a percent of their profit. The listing is still live, and still reflects the 2001 menu prices. Grubhub, Doordash, and Postmates did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
(In this case "a percent of their profit" is actually 30% of each delivery order's total revenue.)
Seems convenience though as a customer but sounds like some of these people aren't even making that much money with all the waiting and stuff in between, maintenance, increased insurance, fuel, etc and then some apps I don't think it starts paying until you are there to pickup. Then again though truck drivers aren't paid while waiting to load and unload, and flight attendants aren't paid until the plane is in the air.
Plus I feel like they are taking short cuts, I don't think i'd want to publish other peoples prices because they could change, items removed from the menu, etc. I guess they scrap the website or send someone in to take notes of the menu? I rather it be an agreement where businesses themselves opt-in and update their menu and prices. Wonder how these apps handle things when stuff is out of stock (ran out of wings, but has chicken tenders still) or the ice cream machine happens to be broken? Just seems not as deeply integrated as I'd hope. but even if businesses updated menus, with being on 3 apps and their own site I'm sure something would be missed due to human error unless some sort of API with a central UI to update everything. Plus some fast food places are understaffed too, because some people rather work in another field other than fast food or just don't work at all. Reports that less teenagers are working in fast food too. Then I guess putting growth and stuff first is some business models for these apps, grow fast and figure out things later when you are a bigger company.
But even before internet ordering, businesses we're doing shady things too. Like pizza delivery drivers are required to have commercial insurance, but many don't so if found out and got in an accident, claim could be denied. Was reading that happen to some teenager using the family car for a part time job, and the state decided to take his license away because claim got denied and wasn't able to pay out of his own pocket. Sounds like the employers mention it, but don't really enforce what type of insurance you have. So many are using personal insurance, some forums discus this and some pizza drivers said they'd put their roof topper in the trunk before the police come if in an accident. So sounds like faceless huge corporations are shifting their liability to teenagers and other people just starting out and more vulnerable people. Then ride sharing, the companies say you are covered by their million dollar insurance policy but some people still have been dropped as result of ride sharing... Do they even give you a insurance policy number or card? Sounds like most people exchange their own insurance in that case or these apps are misleading. Then some even report insurance company dropping them just for asking about ride sharing insurance, even if they haven't signed up.
They're not, they're all following Thiel's 0 to 1 model and aiming for a monopoly. Over the past 10 year VCs figured out that getting into capital intensive markets where they can use their money to starve out the competition is an easier way to make money than investing in sustainable businesses. They get to raise insane rounds, throw a lot of money around and live off of the management fees.
>They're not, they're all following Thiel's 0 to 1 model and aiming for a monopoly.
Not only trying to gain a monopoly via massive market manipulation, i.e., bonfire of VC capital to sustain dumping of underpriced product for years, but also skimming & scamming as a business model for those years
The last decade is making a real mockery of the Vc investing model to create value --many big ones are just trying to strip-mine the economy. Sure taxis/limos needed a better app-based UI, and perhaps delivery apps are more convenient, but this is not providing a new better service, it is simply trying to steal from the restaurant's profits