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Comment by jartelt | Hacker News Reader

>> But that may lead to unfairly low ratings for the restaurant.

> If (say) 30% of the restaurant's patrons choose to get the food via food delivery, why shouldn't those folks' ratings of the food be factored into the restaurant's rating?

If the restaurant has chosen to focus on dine in service because that generates the much of their revenue (alcohol sales, desserts, etc.), it would be a shame if their ratings were damaged by delivery customers. People check ratings/reviews before dining out, so having a bunch of bad reviews due to unwanted delivery could really affect dine in traffic as well. It's not fair to expect the restaurant to cater to these delivery customers when they not actually chosen to run a delivery service.

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This seems like a problem that the review companies are responsible for—coalescing reviews into a single, no-context scalar—moreso than it is the intermediaries' fault.

The original comment stands. If a substantial portion of people are ordering takeout from intermediaries, it's reasonable that when one of those customers checks the reviews, they contain relevant info from others who've ordered the same way and shared their thoughts. Getting in a huff because of that is akin to trying to silence people talking about you because you don't like what those people are saying and/or how other people are responding to it.

If review sites are unfairly mixing irrelevant info (presenting takeout experience using intermediaries to customers who are looking exclusively to dine in), then the ire should be aimed at those sites and, ultimately, the dine-in customers who let irrelevant info dissuade them from going through with their order.

GrubHub is a review company though. Part of their supposed value proposition is that they act as a marketing platform, and the restaurant reviews are a large part of this.

You seem to be intentionally misunderstanding and/or misrepresenting things, including context. GrubHub is a food delivery company.

If the food doesn't travel well, maybe don't offer it for take-out? I'm just as likely to ding a restaurant with a bad review if I pick up food and don't like it as if GrubHub delivers it and I don't like it.

It's not so much as it doesn't travel well, it's that the delivery driver doesn't deliver it well. I've waited over an hour for delivery food before. Actually, 45 mins to over an hour is typical no matter the service I use, so I've stopped using it. The model is that the food sits out and gets cold because the delivery driver doesn't get there in time.

Instead, I order takeout. I call the restaurant directly, with their actual number and not some phishing line from a delivery service, and place an order. I immediately leave, and travel the 5-15 mins to the restaurant. By the time I arrive, the food had been finished just moments before, and I travel back home and enjoy my piping hot food. All told the process takes me half the time or less and the food is in perfect condition.

> the delivery driver doesn't deliver it well. I've waited over an hour for delivery food before.

That's the cost of delivery. You can pay to cover the cost of fast deliver with short wait times and get hot food, or you can pay a lesser amount on a gamble that it ends in a long wait and cold food, or you can pay with your time and do it yourself. The balance has never been in favor of the general availability of delivery (with the exception of maybe places like NYC). It's surprising that it's popular at all, really.

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