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Comment by ramphastidae | Hacker News Reader

This is undeniably a good thing if you put yourself in the shoes of the restaurant.

Imagine if someone went around impersonating your business online, leveraging the good name you have built for yourself over the decades. They create ads offering your expert development services, ostensibly competing with your existing website, but with intentionally slashed pricing and a ‘creatively’ misrepresented offering (aka growth hacking). Then they subcontract the job to some crappy outsourcing firm that bungles it, but who cares, they got their cut and you signed the TOS.

Now bad reviews are piling up online about the bad experiences people had with your business, your reputation is destroyed, and your business is next.

I know it’s not a perfect analogy but try to empathize with the restaurants here.

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The misrepresentation would seem to be the big thing. Someone, let's call them Joe, publishes a list of restaurants online with links to their menus and offers to deliver for the price of the order with tip plus a $10 delivery fee. And has a clear disclaimer that they're not affiliated with the businesses. That seems pretty unobjectionable. And how would the restaurant even know? [ADDED: Subject of course to any health regulations that might apply to food delivery.]

But that, of course, is not what any of these services do.

There is still an argument that some foods just aren't a good match for delivery and, disclaimer or not, some consumers will still tend to blame Sally's Piping Hot Burgers when their burger arrives soggy and cold (or, worse, because of mishandling someone gets sick) rather than think that maybe they should have just gone and picked it up themselves or just not gotten burger take-out. So Sally should maybe have a right to refuse to sell to anyone other than the end consumer. But that seems trickier.

> some consumers will still tend to blame Sally's Piping Hot Burgers when their burger arrives soggy and cold

A friend who manages an excellent restaurant says that this is indeed a problem. One of their signature dishes is fried chicken, and it is glorious. They optimize everything about the meal with the understanding that it's 15-30 seconds from the kitchen to the table. But those are the wrong choices for 15-30 minutes of travel time. You'd be better off just getting Popeye's. But who gets the negative review on Yelp? Not the delivery company.

I’m incredibly perplexed why people do this. Even pre pandemic it was patently obvious to anyone who paid attention that certain foods just don’t deliver well. Before the internet became a thing, the only places that regularly offered delivery were pizza joints and Chinese food, because both of those survive delivery well! I ordered delivery burgers once, from a restaurant close by, and learned my lesson that burgers are best enjoyed immediately and not 10 minutes later. Why should I blame the restaurant for that?

>> were pizza joints and Chinese food

Don't forget indian food. Much of that cuisine was specifically developed for delivery. The multitude of cultures and eating habits (vegetation, Muslim etc) in modernizing india meant that housewives would prepare hot lunches for their husbands away at work, food which was delivered by the famed Dabbawala network. Some modern restaurants are so proud of this that they deliver food to the table in metal dabba boxes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala

"In the late 1800's, an increasing number of migrants were moving to Bombay from different parts of the country, and fast food and canteens were not prevalent. All these people left early in the morning for offices, and often had to go hungry for lunch. They belonged to different communities, and therefore had different types of tastes, which could only be satisfied by their own home-cooked meals. So, in 1890, Mahadeo Havaji Bachche started a lunch delivery service in Bombay with about a hundred men."

Amusingly, Indian food isn’t well suited for restaurant-style eating. The meal prep takes too long forcing restaurants to cut corners. It only works well with a limited, set menu.

Depends on how the chef runs the place. Indian food is difficult if one sticks to western notions of "made to order", each meal being started only after ordering. But a curry house will prep things like the curry base before opening, doing maybe 75% of the work before the first orders arrive. Then it goes quickly. In western cooking the skill is in the actual cooking, with indian food the skill comes in the non-cooking prep work.

Restaurant indian food is made in batch though. The food tastes just as fresh and often tastes better after the spices have had time to settle.

No clue about the history. All I know is: The longer it takes them to deliver my vindaloo, the better it tastes.

> I’m incredibly perplexed why people do this. Even pre pandemic it was patently obvious to anyone who paid attention that certain foods just don’t deliver well.

I don't say this with any malice, but a lot of people are just not that bright. Things that you think are "perplexingly obvious", to the point that you can't conceive of not thinking about them, just aren't to them.

> a lot of people are just not that bright.

From anecdotal observation, I wouldn’t say intelligence is the deciding factor, but impatience. People don’t pause to evaluate.

I have a friend who lashes out or gives up at mundane life problems (why is this hamburger soggy and how to avoid it) without pondering a solution or cause. Her immediate reaction is to find blame (even if herself), not to consider if and how the issue can be fixed.

But I’m confident she has the ability and intelligence to find solutions, because from what she tells me of her work—including customer and management reviews—she does it in professional settings.

I don’t think delivery choices really have anything to do with someone’s intelligence. Some of the most intelligent people I know have horrible diets, some to the point of nearly refusing to eat anything but a few select dishes, others just extreme laziness when it comes to food. It’s a total afterthought.

In this situation, I think it’s more that when you really want a burger, Chinese food just isn’t going to cut it. A kinda soggy burger is still better because it’s what you want.

The claim is not that you have to be dumb to want a suboptimal burger over optimal Chinese food. It's that it doesn't make sense to do so and then blame the restaurant for the burger not being as fresh as it would be if you got it in-person.

Also note that I'm not claiming that this is simply due to people being dumb. It's just my experience that, in the absence of an explanation for why someone does something "obviously" dumb, it makes more sense to accept that they're dumb than it does to be "perplexed". There's a cultural barrier against communicating openly about differences in intelligence, and it can lead to blindspots if you rely on it too much tk explain people's behavior. But it's my observation that the pendulum has swung so far to one side that many people don't even like to consider that others may be reasoning poorly.

I know people have different degrees of intelligent judgment, but you should also consider the fact that people who order online have already accepted the absurd fees and taxes imposed by the app (19% fee on Doordash, 16% on Grubhub, + tips + taxes). If you're willing to pay extra money in order to get your desired food while you're busy doing your own work, isn't it reasonable to get mad at the restaurant and the app for handling the food poorly?

> Things that you think are "perplexingly obvious", to the point that you can't conceive of not thinking about it, just aren't to them.

And it can take almost half a lifetime to realize this

That other people can have so vastly different brains.

Which is pretty strange given that you see can see clearly a vast spectrum of different mental capabilities (from handicap to genius) your entire life. I guess it flies in the face of cultural virtues about how hard work will set you free.

There are plenty of people who aren't very bright or capable and yet have very "free" (in the financial sense) lives and live comfortably.

Of course there are plenty of people, both bright and dull, who could live comfortably and yet stay mired in debt and distress.

People are kept separate.

In first grade, I was in the "green" reading group, with just 4 or 5 out of about 30 kids. Nothing was ever said about abilities. I just assumed that the groups were random. I was the best in the green group by far, so it seemed that I was experiencing the other extreme of mental abilities. Late in the year, something inadvertently revealed to me that "green" was the best. To this day, I have no idea how bad the other groups could have been.

I remember being the best in AP Chemistry too. I set the 15-year record for the final exam score, permanently changing the grade scaling for the class by 3 points out of 100. (old scaling would have given me a 103 but that became a 100, and even years later all the grades would be lower by 3 points) That class was about 15 out of 350 students who started as freshmen. There were other students, about 50 out of the 350, who dropped out. I don't have much of an idea of what their science classes might have been like.

More charitably. A lot of people really wanted food delivery in the pandemic who had never use it much before. And discovered, to their disappointment, that a lot of food deliveries were pretty bad.

There’s certainly something to that. Before the pandemic, I would have never thought to order a burger for delivery because that’s just not what one does. If I wanted delivery, I’d go for pizza or Thai food.

But during the pandemic I wanted a burger, and getting my car out sucked (yay city living), so I ordered a delivery burger. Immediately after that subpar experience I thought “oh, that’s why ordering delivery burgers isn’t the norm” and went back to ordering noodles and pizza instead.

It’s the leap from “culturally this isn’t a common thing to do (order a delivery burger), so obviously it’s the restaurants fault that my experience wasn’t as good as it would be in store” that I don’t get.

I don't think there's any indication that this issue is new to the pandemic, is there?

I also don't have any strong opinions about this particular topic, and there could very well be some other explanation. I'm just generally remarking on the common expression of such confusion at other people acting suboptimally; sometimes it's just because most people aren't all that smart or thoughtful.

I think it's a matter of expectation more than anything. Someone who orders food from a restaurant might expect that the restaurant has recipes designed for delivery. I wouldn't expect a top quality restaurant burger when I order delivery, but I'd still be disappointed if it were a soggy mess instead of the 5-8/10 I've come to expect from decent delivery options.

I think it IS a matter of expectation, yes.

If I go and pick up something that doesn't sit around at room temperature well (let's say a milkshake), and drive 20 minutes home before eating it, I'm not going to ding the restaurant for the fact it's melted.

If, however, milkshakes are offered for takeout (reasonable), but then a third delivery party gets involved and starts offering them for delivery, anyone ordering it will have the impression of "I ordered a milkshake. It arrived to my hand melted! 1-star, bad!" Since they clearly aren't thinking enough to -not order the milkshake in the first place-.

Milkshake is an extreme example to demonstrate the point, but applies to anything that doesn't sit well (previously mentioned burger included), with the added trouble that customers are less likely to know what will sit well.

Funny fact, one of the best deliveries I’ve gotten this year was ice cream. The local creamery[0] has an option to sign up for weekly deliveries. They obviously bring the equipment to keep it properly frozen (easier than a milkshake I know), and check IDs for their alcoholic ice creams. I suspect that if they wanted to, they could have pulled off milkshake deliveries, although the logistics wouldn’t scale.

0 - https://ilovethestil.com/

I've had Jeni's delivered before, yeah. Packed in dry ice it shipped fine. But, yeah, it's packed to travel. Not just placed in someone's passenger seat for 30 minutes.

TIL alcoholic ice cream is a thing.

local = Boise Idaho. If you were wondering

The quality of the food really isn't a binary state, though. I think most people get the idea that delivery food isn't going to be as good as having it at a restaurant, but they're expecting a middle ground if the item is offered for delivery.

I know a few people who own top quality restaurants. They spent a shit ton of time figuring out delivery. One in chicago does it for reheat with nice instructions on everything. Like a blue apron style setup. A bbq place just won't sell certain items ever togo. Heck maggianos obviously spent time in their take home setup.

One of the problems is that, with some exceptions, if a restaurant offers take-out at all, they probably offer their whole menu. If I look at the menu for my local Greek pizza place, I can pretty much guarantee you that their pizzas, Veal Parmesan, and salads are going to stand up to take-out (AFAIK you can't get delivery) better than their burgers, meatball subs, or calzones.

Ironically, the main reason pizza works so well for delivery is because the drivers have specialized boxes that hold in heat, maintains the right humidity conditions, and is easy to handle.

The third party app drivers don't have this, so pizza delivered from them often arrives cold and soggy, and sometimes even smashed to one side of the box.

> Even pre pandemic it was patently obvious to anyone who paid attention that certain foods just don’t deliver well.

Before the pandemic, many people had literally never ordered delivery before!

I for one only ever ordered carry-out, or ate at the restaurant. I live in an urban jungle of restaurants, all within walking distance; why would I pay someone to drive to a place that's within five minutes' walk?

Recent months have been educational about both the virtues and vices of delivery food. This has not been an education I would have ever otherwise received.

A local (actual, not American) Chinese joint makes by far the best soup dumplings in town. During the pandemic they’ve understandably switched to takeout only, but now their reviews are filled with people that are disappointed by dumplings that aren’t steaming hot inside and have holes because they stick to the takeout containers. I feel really bad for the owners - they’re forced to choose between endangering the lives of their workers or offering a subpar product.

I can't imagine getting takeout soup dumplings. They're almost getting a little too cooled down by the time you finish them in a restaurant. Dumplings that you pan fry at home can work reasonably well but, of course, a product that you have to partially cook yourself is not what a lot of people are looking for in take-out.

For the most part, they're okay, if you don't have super high expectations for the soup portion of it.

Some Chinese places near me have started selling the dumplings they make frozen as well.

The thing is I do have high expectations.

I'd be very happy with good frozen potstickers and wontons. Actually cooking them is pretty easy; I just find making them really tedious. And I haven't really found the ones I can get in Oriental markets all that great.

> because they stick to the takeout containers

Technological solution: some sort of return-for-deposit Teflon-walled thermos. Only available for regular customers, of course.

I miss getting those soup dumplings hot and fresh so much that I would unironically pay for this in a heartbeat if it worked.

After seeing a one-star negative review for a mosquito electric zapper because it didn’t get rid of their roaches problem, nothing people do or say on internet will ever surprise me again.

Who is old enough to remember the McDLT?

https://youtu.be/UTSdUOC8Kac

I am.

And it was dropped because when McDonalds stopped using styrofoam they couldn't make it work any more.

There is an irony in that. We went from a society that uses styrofoam to paper cups. Never mind that styrofoam is one of the most easily recycled substances we have, while the wax on paper cups makes them destined for the landfill.

> styrofoam is one of the most easily recycled substances

Is that actually true? I've always heard to put styrofoam in trash rather than recycling.

We can recycle styrofoam? This is news to me.

You can't recycle wax paper cups. But they'll either break down in the landfill, which is fine. Or they won't, which is a form of carbon capture, which is also fine. You can also burn it for energy.

Paper in general doesn’t always recycle well in practice. The issue is that grease ruins batches of paper that are being recycled by literally greasing the fibers so they don’t stick together into a coherent product. This is a big issue when food grease ends up in the recycling chain, especially in the form of pizza boxes.

I'm not sure where you live, but here in SF, waxed paper and cardboard go in the compost bin.

Dropping the McDLT was what started me on the road to not try 'new' items from fast food places very much. If I like the new offering, it's going to be cut, just like the McDLT. McDLT was my all time favorite fast food burger from the 80s.

Before VCs started trying to buy delivery market share and take a slice of restaurant profits, the restaurants that offered delivery were the ones that were well suited for it. Others would offer take-out, but there it was up to customers to solve the travel-time problem, so people generally got take-out from nearby restaurants.

Now, though, consumers are being offered the food they love delivered to their door, with no hint that it might be a bad idea. I'm not surprised at all that they are unhappy that the thing they were sold turned out to be disappointing. I agree that if one understands all the logistical, marketplace, and culinary factors, it doesn't make much sense to blame the restaurant. But one of the glories of capitalism is that purchasers don't have to understand a thing. They just have to have money and a desire.

I think the real bad actors here are the delivery companies here, not the consumers. The delivery companies are selling something they really can't deliver. It shouldn't be up to consumers to figure all this out on an order-by-order basis.

> Why should I blame the restaurant for that?

Of course, you should not and you would not

But, to paraphrase PT Barnum: no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average populous.

There are a sufficiently large portion of the customer base who either lack the intelligence or just do not care enough to figure out what is the source of the problem, and will happily blame the restaurant, and broadcast that erroneous blame in person and online. More than enough of these to ruin a restaurant's reputation and business.

That is why this law is a good thing.

My product or service, I should have the right to control it's distribution up to and including it's first sale (especially if it is not a commodity).

Because more people than you think do not understand this and how delivery platforms work (ie. that restaurants do not control them)

If you're a restaurant and some of your dishes do not handle delivery well then you should not sell them as delivery/takeaway but only on premises. Otherwise you'll have to accept that some customers will be unhappy and leave a bad review.

I think this is a learning curve for many restaurants that are not used to this business model. Certainly in Europe it was not usual for restaurants to offer delivery/takeaway, which was only done by some pizzerias for a long time. Now these platforms are booming and the pandemic has made them critical.

A couple of times I've been tempted to order from Five Guys with one of the services I have a promo with. But then I remember that said Five Guys is far enough away that I wouldn't want to drive to it and, best case, what I receive is not going to be great. Better to grill it myself.

> I ordered delivery burgers once, from a restaurant close by, and learned my lesson that burgers are best enjoyed immediately and not 10 minutes later.

Weird. It takes me notably longer than that to eat a burger in a restaurant, and I never notice any quality problems over that period of time.

The ten minutes it spends on your plate is a very different ten minutes than those spent tightly wrapped in foil in a car; one makes the burger a lot soggier than the other.

So the problem is how it's packed, and delivery could be done correctly. Okay, that makes sense.

It's not only about packing. If you take your first bite a minute after a dish is ready in the kitchen, it leaves a much different impression than the first bite you take after 10 minutes in a ride. The extra time spent in the delivery is always going to make a huge different in how the food tastes, at least for certain dishes (dumplings, e.g.).

I'm really perplexed by what problems you have with burgers?

Burgers work really well with delivery. Used to order burgers very regularly at parties (GBK in London), it was one of the few things everybody would agree with and find good.

I can imagine that you would have troubles if the restaurant wasn't aware it was intended for delivery and gave a loose burger on a plate to the delivery guy. Gotta be put in a tight box to stay warm and in shape.

OT, but Indian food also travels very well.

Except for the foil wrapped naan. Toasting it briefly sometimes helps...

There are definitely good delivery burgers. Not every restaurant makes them good for delivery, but we have few around and they are our favorite delivery.

I've had some ok delivery burgers, but it was the actual burger place doing the delivery

Does delivery tend to be different from takeout in your experience? It does in mine. The gap between finishing prep and me eating it is much longer for delivery, except that the apps almost all lie about it. While your order is sitting there waiting for a driver for 10 minutes, they tell you, no way! It’s not our inability to get a driver there quickly! It’s the restaurant who is still wrapping up right now! If they even tell you that. Then they drop off a few other orders on the way. You end up with food you think came off the stove 13 minutes ago that actually came off like 40 minutes ago. And then you think it came out of the oven worse because the app puts all the blame and uncertainty on the restaurant.

As the rare food service worker on HN, I can confirm this is exactly the case. Yesterday I watched an order from a partnered delivery service take just over an hour from the ticket printing to the driver showing up.

That makes a lot of sense, but personally I wouldn't know. I refuse to use the delivery service apps. I despise them both for how they treat their workers and how they treat the restaurants. If a restaurant doesn't offer their own delivery (as e.g., pizza places used to), I'll pick it up myself.

I've been ordering in way more than I would have been comfortable with pre-covid. I never blame the restaurant, especially when I see the driver taking a circuitous route, indubitably filling multiple deliveries on the way. And I don't really blame the drivers, either, because of how their pay structure translates to incentives.

Ordering for pickup has gotten so much easier this year. Restaurants usually will hand me my food at the door, so I only need to spend a few seconds waiting, and the food is just in way better condition when I carry it home myself.

Fried chicken delivers great if you leave the box open so it can vent. I tell the bar by my house this every order. The paper boxes that are standard for fried chicken are terrible for it. They work for fast food chains because it goes under the hot light to steam out for 5 minutes before going in the box. Fryer to box immediately makes a literal sauna.

Wouldn't this be a problem for any takeout order? I know some restaurants don't offer takeout for this reason.

Some foods definitely work better than others. As others have noted, pizza usually does. And Asian stir fry type dishes are mostly pretty decent. Basic fried chicken (or rotisserie chicken) are fine too actually. They're not totally top drawer fried chicken like you get at a good restaurant that specializes in it but it's pretty good heated up in the oven. Soups. Etc.

And then there are a lot of foods that just aren't going to be good. Basically, if it's something that either cold or that you would normally consider reheating in the oven or microwave it's probably OK. Otherwise, not.

And, as others have noted, take-out you have more control over. There are some sandwiches I'll order from a local place and pickup given that I know I'll be home in less than 10 minutes. I'd be less tempted if I knew it might be sitting in a delivery car for an hour.

I was talking about the specific restaurant mentioned in the comment I was responding to.

Some food are really good for takeout. The extreme example would be Japanese Bento box. Delicious even after hours.

I was talking about the food mentioned in the comment I was responding to.

Seems the remedy is simply to not offer fried chicken for takeout, end of story. A customer picking up his/her own order to take home is certainly not arriving in 30 seconds either.

So there's nothing wrong with takeout; during COVID you might buy it takeout, and eat it at a nearby table. Even outside of COVID, you might eat it in your car. This law is to ensure the restaurant has control over whether it's the customer taking it out (and it's then up to them how long they wait to eat it), or a third party (and the customer has no control over how long it waits before they eat it).

Because otherwise, there is nothing preventing Doordash or similar from adding the location to their app. The restaurant may not offer them favorable terms, or otherwise work with them, but even without official support, Doordash interopts with the restaurant's online ordering system for pickup (or even involves a human to call it in), sends a driver to pick it up ("Here to pick up an order for Steve"), and then delivers it. Nothing the restaurant can do to prevent it.

This restaurant is in a neighborhood. The reason they offer take-out at all was because neighbors just wanted to pick something up and eat at home. That's probably not 30 seconds, but it's way different than the amount of time a delivery company ads. It's also psychologically different if the consumer is the one in direct control of the delay.

Wouldn’t this also be bad as take-out then? How is the delivery even possible if they aren’t already allowing for the poor experience through take-out? If it’s meant to be served at the table then it should be table only and then it’s fine right? There’s plenty of restaurants that do this, so it’s unclear how the delivery is causing this issue. But I may just be misunderstanding.

But in that instance the dish wouldn’t be available for take out either.

If the restaurant sells takeout, why does it matter whether I take it gone to my house or another person’s house?

DoorDashers have a tendency to pick up multiple orders at the same time without informing me. So I’ll order food expecting it’ll take 20 minutes, then it takes 40 because the dasher decided to take 4 orders at once. With a friend, I know they’re going there and coming right back, and if not, they generally let me know and I can reconsider.

Maybe restaurant could timestamp food on packaging so customer doesn't blame them for late delivery?

This is fair point but what stops these businesses from refusing to do food pick up. Especially, if they know food won't taste good if not consumed within a few minutes. I rather resturants remove to-go option instead of blaming delivery companies.

In my friend's case, it's because people in the neighborhood sometimes like to pick things up. Why should they penalize those people just because delivery companies have without their permission decided to start advertising their food?

Agreed, and this reminds me of friend who started to carry foldable chairs and table in their car during lockdown. They would, sometimes, set those up in the parking lot of the restaurant and eat there.

However, perhaps a solution might be a labeler that prints a label with consume by time and attach the label to carryout container. Or some other kind of disclaimer on the containers. Yes, this adds burden on the restaurants but hopefully, reduces negative reviews.

Or we could place the burden correctly on the delivery company, and require them to work with the restaurant to create the optimal delivery experience. Say, by mandating that delivery companies actually have to get a restaurant's agreement before advertising their food.

This is removing to-go option. There are apps that claim to offer delivery from a restaurant not intending to provide it.

Legally the only way to acquire restaurant food over here atm is takeout or delivery. They can't just not offer it.

so the remedy is to implement a law that will live forever, even as we expect covid to (hopefully) recede this year?

This specific issue was an issue pre-pandemic as well. The surge in take-out has amplified the problem.

What’s the problem here? The negative reviews are found on this delivery service app. They would therefore help other customers know that this restaurant is less desirable to order delivery from.

That’s what both parties want.

It seems to me that this is working “as intended” and no intervention from the state is needed.

I can't envision a way you can be making this argument in good faith while actively discarding that the review is next to the restaurant's name and not the delivery service's delivery of that restaurant's food.

For people who can’t understand it, think about Amazon and the various “1 star; late” “reviews”. To think that the same won’t happen with food is wishful thinking.

Why should regulation like this be enacted due to shitty consumer behavior that is evident everywhere, not just online reviews?

I really don’t know who this is helping because I’m not going to start using a more inconvenient way of ordering because these restaurants want things their way.

It’ll only result in these local businesses losing access to the $750 I pay in delivery each month.

> due to shitty consumer behavior

This is not shitty consumer behavior. It is lying... a company pretending to be another company or a representative of another company... when they are not.

If you buy a fake Toyota car and it sucks, do you blame Toyota then complain when a law is passed making this fraud illegal?

> is lying... a company pretending to be another company or a representative of another company... when they are not.

This law affects much more than that.

It doesn't because you can always ask for permission.

Forcing companies to ask for permission changes a lot. In general, it's usually bad for market competition.

> It’ll only result in these local businesses losing access to the $750 I pay in delivery each month.

If you're using exclusively delivery platforms and not getting delivery from the restaurants themselves, I can guarantee you that the local businesses likely never had access to the 750$ you pay. Assuming a tip of say 20% to the driver, let me take the sales tax of my local city which is around 8%, a 10% commission from grubhub with a processing 3.05% fee (plus $0.30 per order).

This means on a platform like grubhub, your 750$ you pay in delivery is paying grubhub 97$, 60$ to government, 150$ to delivery people. Restaurants only receive 443$, assuming you never take advantage of deals they offer to stay afloat, and the restaurant only pays grubhub the minimum fees (they are often pressured more or the grubhub algo will deprioritize them).

> And has a clear disclaimer that they're not affiliated with the businesses.

This isn’t actually clear. GrubHub’s about page:

“ Grubhub is a leading online and mobile food-ordering and delivery marketplace with the largest and most comprehensive network of restaurant partners. ”

This tells me as a customer that the restaurant is a consenting partner. This is a lie.

EDIT: a commentor below had issue with my use of the word lie here. To clarify, I meant that this is not a clear disclaimer.

> But that, of course, is not what any of these services do.

Response to edit: A lie by obfuscation, or a lie by misdirection is still a lie.

If you set something up so it is easy to believe a thing, without ever stating that thing, you are still lying, it is just not obvious that you are.

There's also a matter of SEO. Grubhub is an extremely popular website who's pages will far exceed the restaurant's own webpage's rank, so even when searching for local restaurant store by name, the grubhub page will feature prominently, despite having no relation to the restaurant.

No, you're misinterpreting it - they don't claim all of the restaurants are partners, just that they have the most comprehensive network of restaurant partners.

Edit: -4 downvotes so far for highlighting a person's bad logic - good start to the New Year for critical thinking on HN; I'll assume they're projecting their anger for the topic onto me, their emotion overriding their logic.

There are different types of lies. A lie of commission would be like Grubhub saying “All restaurants are our partners”. The second case (which applies here) is a lie by omission. They are withholding very important information in an intentional way.

Since we’re on the topic of food: It’s like if someone asked, “Hey did you eat the whole pizza?” and you reply “I ate my three slices”. That’s true, except you also ate the other nine slices. Lie of omission.

It’s not bad logic. It’s you failing to recognize a basic tactic used by companies and four year olds and everyone in between.

Nowhere on their about page do they make it clear that they also have restaurants who are not their partners listed on their platform.

The given ask that there is a clear disclaimer. I’m saying it’s not clear at all, and therefore the hypothetical has deviated from reality so much that it’s useless.

I went to pickup a take out order for my wife the other day and the cashier asked if this was a personal order? I was so confused I didn't even know how to answer and just asked "personal order meaning what". She answered, "I mean you're not with door dash or something right, you personally made the order?". It was a pretty baffling exchange and maybe this misrepresentation speaks to some of that.

There’s reports of delivery sites trying to hide that they’re delivery sites when they pick up the order. Normally a DoorDasher uses a DoorDash bag (it seems), but supposedly they don’t use it inside, and then put the order in the DoorDash bag in the car. Not sure how true it is though (it could just be people not wanting to hold up the line)

The way cashiers assume I'm a delivery driver makes me think I'm literally the only person who uses the app.

This is actually the Postmates business model; they hire a delivery person to go to a restaurant, stand in line, and make the order. At no point does the restaurant know of the buyer’s existence.

Well, minus the clear disclaimer, and also minus tipping people at the restaurant (tip goes to courier)

With any luck, this will kill Postmates. That business model is deceitful at best, actively a scam more likely.

Postmates is so useful though. I think it's pretty clear in its marketing that it is a service that will go to a store or restaurant and buy the things you ask for, similar to the way Instacart works. Doordash on the other hand will sometimes do this without making clear which restaurants it has a relationship with or not. That causes all types of problems.

It’s probably because some restaurants have “banned” delivery app people. So, in this instance, the Postmate person can feign ignorance and act like they’re just ordering for a friend (which is a common thing).

Using the restaurant's logo and name and in general masquerading as the restaurant's official website pretty clearly crosses the line.

> So Sally should maybe have a right to refuse to sell to anyone other than the end consumer. But that seems trickier.

Maybe restaurants should defend themselves from that by not selling some dishes in transportable packaging. Maybe 'delivery' companies wouldn't be so eager to put those dishes on the menu if they had to provide the container themselves and scoop the dish into it from a plate?

It’s a form of domain squatting if someone lists as you, above you in search, leaving some customers frustrated and likely picking someone else, forever.

I should never be able to force Sally to make me a cheeseburger. Therefore, Sally should have the right refuse to sell to anyone. No maybe.

> But that, of course, is not what any of these services do.

Likely because customers don't care. Nor does this law introduce such a requirement. Instead it increases the cost of entering the delivery market, thus it protects extant delivery services from new competitors.

> So Sally should maybe have a right to refuse to sell to anyone other than the end consumer.

They can already do that; restaurants know which delivery services are placing the order.

It's also undeniably a good thing for customers as well. Using an unexpected intermediary in a transaction is a terrible experience. If I see a restaurant on GrubHub then I want to know that that restaurant wants orders coming through GrubHub. Otherwise, I'll be much better off calling up the restaurant directly. As it stands, I currently have to use Google Maps as my restaurant portal, using the restaurant's website or phone number to figure out how to place orders. Only if their website is or links out to a 3rd party like GrubHub do I then actually use GrubHub.

But if GrubHub only showed restaurants that were actually delegating their delivery to GrubHub, then I could use it as a portal. Right now it's not trustworthy for that purpose.

Honestly, I had thought that it was a partnership. For one, only a rather small subset of the restaurants in my area show up on Grubhub. I imagined that outsourcing the delivery function of their business would be a net win.

Around where I live, the listed restaurants seem to be mostly chain fast food restaurants. The local pizza place I order from doesn't seem to be listed nor are most of the other local take-out restaurants I would recognize the names of from driving by. I've looked because one of my credit cards gave me a free DoorDash subscription and there's literally nothing I'm interested in.

IDK, this seems more like a mixed-bag to me on account of being opt-in instead of opt-out. Absolutely I agree that businesses should be able to easily opt out of being listed on a given delivery platform if/when it causes problems for them.

But on the flip side, I've observed a lot of restaurant owners not having the time, energy, or know-how to set up even basic online things that could really boost their business.

I would expect that many restaurants really benefited from Doordash adding their menu to their website without their knowledge (even if some have, in net, suffered).

Going straight to opt-in seems like it could hurt some businesses.

Not to mention, of course, any new entrants! This law will make it much harder to compete with "the next Doordash".

> But on the flip side, I've observed a lot of restaurant owners not having the time, energy, or know-how to set up even basic online things that could really boost their business.

Isn't part of being a successful business knowing where to put your energy as a business owner? You're saying that restaurants don't necessarily have the ability to make the best decisions for their business, therefore they should be able to opt-out and not opt-in. The flip side of this argument is that these apps can cause undeserved damage to a restaurant's reputation. How do you know what's best for restaurants?

You're arguing that the onus should be on the restaurant to opt out whenever a delivery platform causes problems, but the onus should be on the delivery platforms to create a product that restaurants, not just consumers, want to use.

This is already the case with bigger companies. As is the usual case with a lot "disruptive" firms, that "growth hacking" comes from exploiting some regulatory loophole that no one else has seen yet (e.g. most things related to the "sharing economy").

I'm pretty sure if I just declared myself to be a sales partner (idk the term?) of Cisco, IBM, Oracle, etc and just resold their gear, I'd be in hot water legally because my actions would reflect on them.

>I'm pretty sure if I just declared myself to be a sales partner (idk the term?) of Cisco, IBM, Oracle, etc and just resold their gear, I'd be in hot water legally because my actions would reflect on them.

This is pretty much how local governments buy IT gear. Put out a "I want a router" low volume RFP that the tech companies don't want to bother with, and some local vendor will resell to you. Ideally, they're getting a volume discount and sharing some of it with you at least.

But don't those vendors have to have some sales agreement with Cisco? I'm guessing they don't after reading about it a bit more, but I'm just surprised.

Yes they do. They have a special website and phone line to order goods at a discount (in volume) and to get direct support/return.

Cisco/HP/Oracle/VmWare/Microsoft are all about sales network. Partners take care of the sale and they can take care of the installation on site and the servicing.

I'm sorry to say but B2B sales companies have nothing to do with restaurant delivery at all. It was a really really bad comparison.

There is nothing illegal about purchasing hardware products from those companies and then selling them on to other customers, even without a formal sales agreement in place. This is the first sale doctrine. However software is different and licenses can't necessarily be resold.

And, of course, many hardware products do have software components these days. But, yes, in general you can resell hardware without a formal agreement. You just can't claim to be an authorized partner or reseller given that implies certain training levels, etc.

> Isn't part of being a successful business knowing where to put your energy as a business owner?

If you own a small restaurant... are you really in it to be a tycoon of industry? Or are you passionate about the food and the community?

I know I want to spend as little time as possible thinking about sales and marketing, and just focus on improving my product and making my customers happy.

Most small restaurants fail within a year of opening. It’s a very tough business.

Some app claiming that you are partnering with them for delivery when that is not the case is not necessarily positive for a business given potential reputational risk.

> Most small restaurants fail within a year of opening. It’s a very tough business.

Why is that? Seems straightforward - exchange food for money. Why's that so difficult to make work?

1. there's lots of competition. restaurants are an extremely common business in existence and to start.

2. product market fit. you think your cooking is good. Do other people think your cooking is good? Do other people think your cooking is worth coming back for in a week, a month, or a year? You can try and do trendy things in food but these trends come and go quickly.

3. Rent and capital costs. It is expensive to fit a space for a kitchen, so you probably took a loan for that. Landlords are trying to squeeze every dollar they can out of you. There may be cheaper options than a leased space like a food truck or a sidewalk stand, but if they're even legal where you are the permits aren't cheap and there's usually a long waitlist. And better locations with more foot traffic cost more money.

4. Labor & management. Most people do not have experience running a restaurant's operations, which have to be tightly managed to both keep expenses down and keep service at decent levels. Bad service will turn customers away for good and bad word of mouth can snowball.

5. Margin. The tendency for new restauranteurs is that they underestimate their expenses and how much margin they need to be making. Prices need to be right for the market you're trying to serve, but you also need to not scare away too many customers. What pencils out in a home kitchen is not necessarily what pencils out in a restaurant.

As far as I can tell, every home for sale or rent in america requires a kitchen. So basically everyone is in competition with them.

> I know I want to spend as little time as possible thinking about sales and marketing, and just focus on improving my product and making my customers happy.

That's fine and understandable, but you also have to weigh the risks of delegating those responsibilities to external parties that don't necessarily care about your success because they have thousands if not millions of customers. Not to mention the restaurants that don't want any part of the delivery platforms altogether because they don't like what they're seeing.

In an opt-out model, the restaurant has to take time to deal with (and possibly remove themselves) from a platform that didn't ask for their business, potentially dealing with upset customers along the way. Wasn't the whole point of this idea to reduce time and energy spent on these kinds of activities to focus on the food and the community? If you had no idea that you were on one of these platforms and an angry customer reaches out to you, how does that benefit the restaurant?

It's really strange to see a collectivist for-the-greater-good argument being applied in a business sense here because it's based on two incorrect underlying assumptions: that every business owner wants the same thing (automated marketing and logistics services handled by one provider), and that platforms will always act in the best interests of their users. As a hypothetical business owner, shouldn't I have the right to prevent delivery platforms from using my restaurant without my permission? Say I get a bad experience with a delivery platform once, and I remove myself. Now I have a keep a lookout for any other platform that wants to use my name, all because those platforms made the argument that they know what's best for the restaurants and then didn't measure up. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

> As a hypothetical business owner, shouldn't I have the right to prevent delivery platforms from using my restaurant without my permission?

> The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

We certainly agree on both of these counts!

> Not to mention, of course, any new entrants! This law will make it much harder to compete with "the next Doordash".

Well of course the law will make it much harder to compete to be the next predatory, deceitful company that pretends to be small businesses! That’s the whole point of this law. Some business practices are unethical and relying on them to grow should be made illegal.

Will there be a "next DD"? It seems that they were hard pressed to make money despite the pandemic. Who wants to pick up the baton and continue losing money?

What I don’t understand is: Uber at least had a vision (self driving) that VC could look forward to. What’s the end goal of these delivery apps that just bleed money?

I think your anger is blinding you to the fact that this law doesn't actually address any of those concerns.

Yeah, like I said, restaurants should absolutely have easy and fast recourse against predatory platforms.

The heuristic, "but will restaurant owners ask to be delisted because of this?" should be a powerful force for keeping overly aggressive product managers in check.

I worry that the bill misses the point that these platforms can also be a free or low-cost source of new business. As a small business owner myself (albeit e-commerce), free new customers doesn't sound so bad. (Obviously, for many established businesses, it's just cannibalization of their existing base - but that's not true for all businesses).

It’s true that these platforms can also be free or low cost sources of new business. GrubHub et al can still mail/call/etc. them an offer to become a partner, with stickers and a “congratulations we’d love to do business with your business”.

Totally. That's what'll have to happen instead. But it's more expensive (cost to restaurant ultimately goes up) and annoying.

If it’s costs more for the restaurant to do business with GrubHub then now they have the law on their side to decline to do business with GrubHub on account of it being too expensive.

>The heuristic, "but will restaurant owners ask to be delisted because of this?" should be a powerful force for keeping overly aggressive product managers in check.

You can just build a second or third site and relist the restaurant thereby avoiding the opt out law. Finally you can build an aggregator that allows customers to search all of your sites at once. The room for loopholes is too big.

Now that I think about it, I think this law could also hurt competition even amongst established players, allowing them to squeeze restaurants even harder.

Imagine platforms A, B, and C. Platform A approaches Daisy's Cafe offering an amazing deal on a delivery partnership, as long as the Cafe agrees not to use any other delivery companies. Daisy asks around and hears great things about Platform A, so she says yes – what a win!

Months later, the quality of Platform A starts going way down – food is delivered to the wrong addresses, delivered cold, etc. All of the restaurants in Daisy's area also deliver with Platform A, so the local customers don't use other platforms – she's stuck. If she switches, she'll lose almost all her delivery traffic overnight.

Now imagine if Platform C did delivery for her without an agreement signed. Daisy isn't breaking the agreement with Platform A when customers order through Platform C! She'll still lose business when she stops working with Platform A, but not as much, so it's an easier choice to make.

In this scenario, predatory platforms are more likely to squeeze restaurants if agreements must be signed, because exclusivity can be enforced.

Of course, the simple patch here is to disallow exclusive delivery platform contracts, but I don't see that in this bill.

We’re at a point with this pandemic that those who will purchase with delivery platform have likely developed some form of affinity towards a preferred vendor or two.

A bigger issue is that few restaurants will survive through the extended statewide shutdowns. Delivery is meant to be a small route of generating revenue, rather than the sole revenue stream. The overhead costs of a retail storefront and operations will destroy most restaurants, if it hasn’t already.

Separately, these delivery apps and services are terrible, unprofitable businesses. None of the platforms have turned a profit despite the once in a lifetime opportunity with all customers being locked inside... all these platforms are optimized to run on VC money as they are garbage ventures that cannot make money. The IPOs are rushed to give VC money a way out of the ticking timebomb.

Unless you think the pandemic has created a significant shift in consumer behavior with respect to takeout--like it probably has with grocery delivery--it's hard to see how delivery companies unable to make money over the past year will do so in the future. And I'm not sure why people would change. The overall take one hears is nice to have (even essential in some views) during pandemic, but expensive and unreliable.

The fact is that mainstream, even upper middle class, consumers won't en masse pay enough for some sorts of services to work when extended beyond the niches when it already does work.

What’s preventing them from doing this today?

I'm definitely under the impression that exclusivity agreements exist in this industry today. But the fact that some delivery apps list restaurants that haven't signed up with them reduces the power of the exclusivity (since some delivery traffic is coming from these other, "unofficial" apps).

If they don’t have the time/skill/capital to handle online business on their own, then they can set up a partnership with these companies. That is a minimal effort, no?

The key thing is this deals with a predatory practice.

Opt-in doesn't mean the delivery business has to just sit around hoping that restaurants will reach out to opt-in. A delivery business can contact the restaurants to ask them to opt-in.

How is a business to reasonably identify all the different platforms listing their info without their permission? Opt out isn't a good model.

There's also a _ton_ of these businesses that aren't tech savvy. It's way too big an ask

I realize you're not suggesting this, but it unnerves me that the way to deal with a weak link in a business is to commandeer that business and blow it out of the water. That's the whole "disruption" culture. All it shows is that a weak business can be destroyed, not that a strong one can be built up.

For a restaurant to work, those basic online things have to be coupled to the production and delivery subsystems. The whole machine has to work. This can only be tested by building a working restaurant.

Some delivery platforms masqueraded as restaurants to customers and customers to restaurants. How can they opt out if they don't know it's happening?

It reads like what dropshippers did.

> Going straight to opt-in seems like it could hurt some businesses.

So, Facebook is indeed right when they say Apple’s opt-in tracking prompt will hurt small businesses?

Can you explain how this has anything to do with tracking?

More pondering than a serious question; would it make a difference if they didn't rely on the original business name and reputation? For example, if I created a fictitious "Lucky Dog Chinese" and in fact delivered food provided by the "Lucky Cat Chinese" would that be disagreeable? Almost like dropshipping for restaurants.

California law wouldn't prohibit that.

The next step is "ghost kitchens".[1] These are commissary facilities that advertise as restaurants but only deliver. The ousted Uber CEO tried to get into that business, but not much seems to have come of "Cloud Kitchens".

Some of these seem to be new ways to get people to work for too little. The delivery service is just the landlord; they rent people who want to run a restaurant a kitchen space, sell them raw materials, and deliver the product. Doordash has one in Redwood City. They have Rooster and Rice, and Chick-Fil-A franchisees. That's near me, and it was sad to see gig drivers waiting for their specific order to be ready. If they were employees being paid for waiting time, the next driver would get the next order, to minimize paid waiting.

[1] https://www.fermag.com/articles/9618-7-Ghost-Kitchens-You-Ma...

There are a number of these ghost kitchens in my area available on Uber Eats, some of which are pretty good.

Some of the best Nashville hot chicken I've ever had has been delivered from a place simply titled "Nashville Hot Chicken Shack". Googling them, I couldn't find anything about them. Not even putting in the street address gives me anything. But I did find out the address belonged to another restaurant, which let me realize that they were a ghost kitchen using that restaurant's kitchen facilities. And then I noticed in the app that the restaurant's name was mentioned in small print, which finally confirmed it.

This exact thing is happening to one of my favorite local pizza places. Very frustrating for them.

They're frustrated by free advertising and new customers?

The smart thing to do is krep taking the business and just put a leaflet in the pizza box/whatever saying ordering directly is cheaper/faster, if that's the case.

That “free” advertising is competing with your own channels (without the 30% commission).

Also there are uncountable reports of them fucking up the delivery itself by not having appropriate containers, when the restaurant they are dealing doesn’t actually do deliveries. That will lose you customers and hurt your brand.

I’m confused. How is GrubHub getting a 30% commission out of restaurants that don’t actively partner with them?

They only do this ruse for a while, then after controlling a good chunk of the business they “sell” their services officially to the restaurant, including commission. It’s not a charity.

It's not just about the money. The menus, information, and other details are just wrong or go out-of-date because this pizza restaurant changes things on a daily basis. Additionally their business is not setup for take-out at scale. They do the occasional take-out but when the phone starts ringing with to-go orders they were not anticipating, they are not staffed or ready to meet the demand. They call to remove themselves and then a few weeks later they end up back on there.

I think they mean that other partnered restaurants get 30%. I could be misreading it though.

They inflate menu prices and add additional service and delivery fees. You end up spending $50 on a meal that should be $30, and if you were shopping by amount of money spent (as many people are) then the net result is $30 going to the restaurant instead of all $50 you were willing to spend.

Perhaps add a 30% markup fee for any grubhub customer or ubereats customer based on payment info or familiar faces/cars.

If it's such a bad deal, why is the restaurant continuing to service orders from the food delivery platform? It's not like they don't know who's placing the order.

Maybe there's more involved than getting "free advertising and new customers". As in, "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch."

Frustrated by people having terrible customer service experiences associated with their business but completely out of their control.

> The smart thing to do is krep taking

I think the smart thing to do is to trust that people who have spent years doing a thing have more insight into the topic than a random internet forum participant.

Perhaps frustrated that someone is doing business as them using their copyright and trademarks? These companies are basically commiting fraud, and any bad experience reflexts on the restaurant, not the delivery company.

Sometimes the restaurant doesn't know that something is being ordered via another channel and cannot add sufh a slip.

If my resturant didn’t sign up for a middle man, don’t force yourself in between. That seems reasonable

Careful there... Apple (or any manufacturer) could say the same thing about Ebay. Any sports team or band could say it about Stubhub. Nike could say it about StockX.

The First Sale Doctrine [1] is what prohibits Apple or any manufacturer from preventing me selling my Mac on eBay.

It used to be that you could buy or sell airline tickets to people. There used to be ads in the newspaper classifieds. The airlines are very happy that that's not possible now.

Absolutely many companies in many industries would be happy to prevent people from doing X, both from a quality control and profit-maximizing perspective.

But if I buy a ticket from StubHub or a scalper on the street, the experience should be the same. Having a delivery company insert themselves into the process means they make accept orders where they don't have enough drivers, have to transport it too far from the restaurant to the customer (many/most restaurants have limits on delivery area for time/quality), etc.

So this seems completely different because the delivery companies are inserting themselves into the process as though they were endorsed by the restaurant.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...

I think we can carve out an exception specifically for food and food services. Why? Because of the extremely limited shelf life of hot food. That’s what sets it apart from your other examples.

Your "why" is totally arbitrary. Shelf life? Why not dollars? Apple could say it should receive extra protection because it loses 1000+ dollars every time an unauthorized MacBook Pro or iPhone 12 is sold outside of the channels that it controls. (I don't believe that is entirely true, but it's how Apple would argue it) Whereas unauthorized food deliveries are dealing in the tens of dollars, and further, the restaurant is never totally cut out of the loop, since previously-consumed food can't be resold.

The distinctions are only arbitrary in the fantasy world where an iPhone is remotely similar to a burger.

Food products, especially restaurant foods, are regulated differently than non-food consumer goods. And have been for over a century. There are licensing requirements, safety requirements, and other rules that apply to restaurants that don't apply to other businesses.

And those "arbitrary" laws make all the difference in why unapproved middlemen should not be allowed for restaurant foods.

Lots of items have incredibly short shelf-lives as well. I spent nearly a decade in the live event ticketing industry so I'll focus on that.

A significant precent of ticket sales are last minute. A friend tagging a long or someone waiting for prices to drop. Food spoils and looses quality fast, but so do good from many industries. I think carving out an exception for food is potentially a slippery slope.

It would probably be better to carve out exceptions for any item that could potentially be worthless after some amount of time. Live event tickets, food, travel, etc.

Actually, Stubhub is a little complicated in that, for example, sports season tickets can have conditions attached to them. Stubhub has lost a couple of court cases around that.

The law does not set any health standards on food delivery platforms.

Restaurants will have to sign up with each delivery platform, and/or delivery platforms will have to sign up each restaurant. Either way, the net effect will be to protect the extant food delivery platforms from new competition.

It would be the same thing if the delivery company was operating as a resale marketplace for used food ;)

None of those examples claim to be, or otherwise tey to make you think they are, an official outlet for those goods.

Sure they do, of course ebay hosts used items but they also promote direct manufacturer-to-customer sales for many products. Stubhub actually does sell plenty of seats that were never otherwise available to the public, further, with their stadium maps and use of team names, etc, plenty of people might assume they are buying tickets via an official or authorized channel. StockX you likely have a point -- but it still doesn't mean that Nike approves of it and wouldn't try to shut it down if given some statutory assistance meant to target restaurants but written a bit too broadly.

I would argue that the average person would not consider ebay an official vendor for a brand like Amazon. Ebay is set up to make the seller prominent. (Moreso than amazon does, I would argue.)

I haven't used StubHub in a while, but if they have move to being a first party distributor in some cases, i could see some confusion arising for a consumer.

But they're not forcing themselves in between. All the customers you already had are still going directly to you. They're just widening the pool of potential customers.

By lying. In-N-Out is infamous for dealing with this. They sued one of the delivery sites for trademark infringement. “But why?” you might ask. Because customers are dumb sometimes and would blame In-N-Out when their food arrived cold of their milkshakes melted.[a]

Sure, In-N-Out was getting more money, but it was hurting their brand (which caused money loses). They never approved being on the site, but that didn’t stop the site from lying and pretending In-N-Out was a “partner”.

[a]: Think Amazon with the stupid 1-star reviews for being “late” or “shipping box damaged”. It hurts the brand of the product being sold.

Yes I don't see how this isn't 'passing off' in a trademark sense, when I hear about some of the worst offenders.

Sure, I completely agree. They shouldn't lie.

I was arguing that they're not "forcing" themselves in the middle of any transaction. They're a separate route for the transaction.

Seperate route for A transaction, not THE transaction.

The difference is setting expectations and how they are managed.

The restaurant is able to set and manage expectations when people deal with them. They are not able to do that with other agents, unless that relationship has been established and mutually agreed to.

If doing that came along with the outside service, such as what one might experience with a general courier or agent, it is not cheap.

And people get what they pay for and associate it with the restuarant, who did not set and manage expectations appropriately.

Total mess.

Unless you think GrubHub are forcing themselves in the middle of a transaction that was going to take place anyway, I don't think we disagree.

GrubHub are offering a service where they go and pick up your food for you from a place that offers takeaway but not home delivery.

That sounds fine, I can't imagine anyone having an objection with that service, even if the restaurant hasn't signed up for it.

The problem is that GrubHub are making people think they're dealing directly with the restaurant, not that GrubHub are picking up food from restaurants that didn't sign up for it.

The problem isn't that GrubHub are sitting in the middle of a transaction between a customer and a restaurant. The problem is that they're (maybe) lying about it.

I used to order directly from a local Chinese restaurant quite regularly, but when they appeared on Just Eat I ordered from there instead (convienence and laziness on my part). I never thought to ask if they'd actually joined or if Just Eat had added them without consent.

Totally agree.

And how about this: If you get food poisoning from a restaurant, you deal directly with them to resolve.

If the food has been delivered by a 3rd party, what rights to resolve would you then have?

Restaurants can simply state that the food was tainted after it left them, delivery firms can state the food from the restaurant was bad, etc etc.

I agree with the sentiment. But you basically have no recourse if you get food poisoning from a restaurant. Unless it’s a mass event, there’s no way for you to prove it was the restaurant, and even if you could prove it, your damages aren’t likely to be enough to sue.

Food poisoning has much slower onset than most people think, and, as I understand it, it’s very common to blame the wrong food.

I think it would be good to encourage everyone with food poisoning to notify a central authority to collect statistics, but blaming a specific restaurant from a single case is dicey at best.

It’s also worth noting that most people expect meat to be the riskiest type of food. In fact, lettuce is much more likely to cause food poisoning.

(Ground beef is indeed more dangerous than solid pieces, but most chain restaurants are pretty careful about their HACCP and are likely to cook it properly. Your average large burger chain won’t serve rare beef patties even upon request.)

Food poisoning usually takes 10-15 hours from meal to symptoms. That gives you only a couple of meals to consider.

About ten years ago one third of the office (50 people out of 150) called in sick, it was pretty clear which meal and which restaurant was the culprit.

Except when the food poisoning is due to toxins and not pathogens, e.g. scombroid poisoning.

Identifying the culprit is certainly easier when you have a whole group of victims.

I had an old roommate try to sue in-n-out after getting severe food poisoning. It actually went to court - the in-n-out attorney completely destroyed him, he was outgunned. They showed receipts for thousands of people who ate there that day and that there weren't any other cases reported.

Reporting food poisoning if it ever happens to you (even if minor) could be the difference between someone else being believed of being shut down.

Advice I wish I could give myself. Don't eat out if you can avoid it and if you do go in person, never order in.

In secret someone who cares less about your health than anyone you know prepares hundreds of meals a day and if they don't come in because they are sick they lose money. If they don't try to hide mistakes it will cost them. If they don't save the company money by picking up food off the ground or using yesterdays soup as a base for today's soup they are doing a poor job. There are very few ways a customer can prove these mistakes unless they are visible upon receipt. Poor reviews hidden from the public is the only recourse.

A worker coming in sick can be a safety violation if they don't wear the appropriate protective equipment (generally gloves and a mask). Picking food of the ground is a safety violation that could get a restaurant shut down, and moreover would open the restaurant up to civil torts. A restaurant is not going to risk permanent closure to save a few cents on food that falls to the ground, especially not in places where they grade restaurants on food safety.

As for using leftovers: this will shock you, but a large portion of menu items in even fine establishments use leftover items (that were not served to customers). Soups, stews, curries, etc., generally involve perpetually renewed bases, where the previous days leftovers "seed" the new day's mix. The meats in pastas and other starch-heavy dishes are usually trimmings from entrees in which the meat is the star. Meatloaves in restaurants always use leftover meats from the day before. Nearly all breads in bakeries involve the reuse of the sourdough starter, and indeed the concept of sourdough itself is premised on the reuse of the the dough.

> using yesterdays soup as a base for today's soup

That's not necessarily a bad thing. There is such a thing as a perpetual stew [0] in which a stew is replenished with ingredients over months or even years.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_stew

And it's not common at all in today's world, for a reason.

WTF?

Nothing of what you claim is normal or typical in food service.

Source: I've worked in food service. Everyone takes health, safety, and quality very seriously.

So your advice is basically to never patronize restaurants? Seems like an awful overreaction to something that almost never happens?

>They showed receipts for thousands of people who ate there that day and that there weren't any other cases reported.

It makes you wonder: did the lawyer call each one of those thousands of people, did anyone get sick but didn't realize it was the burger, time could be an issue too maybe a few lettuce leaves had listeria on them but it only grew to levels after a certain time and temperature.

If that’s the case and they did not consistently fail at food safety practices, just a one-off, then we can consider it an accident like any other and the restaurant is not culpable.

At the least, one can work the problem to a resturaunt. Not always possible, due to how these things can go, but more possible than when other parties are involved.

This is precisely why I do not use these services.

When I go get the food, I know what happened from pickup to plate. Given how health care works right now, I definitely want to know about all that.

This is going to happen too. Someone will push it, mistake made, lax process, something.

Why does that require anything other than enforcement of existing trademark law?

Creating and defending a trademark is very expensive.

Many restaurants would prefer not to spend this money just to prevent unauthorized listings.

They’d rather delegate the responsibility of preventing unauthorized listings to the state attorney who has more resources and expertise.

That's not true. A trademark costs around $300: https://www.uspto.gov/trademark/trademark-fee-information

Enforcing it is free: you can send your own cease and desist for free. The only time you need a lawyer is if they refuse and you want to sue them. If the court rules in your favor, you can even sue them for the legal costs and costs of damages.

Sorry for the cynicism, but I really don't understand why is it ok to ask small restaurants to spend $200-300 bucks and send a cease and desist letter, but it's not ok for the law to ask investor-backed startups to make a friendly contact to those same restaurants before using their brand.

In the end it's less work for the investor-backed business, since with the C&D route they would need to register domains or create pages for restaurants that don't want the service only for their (very expensive!) legal department to receive a letter so they can delete everything.

I mean just send an email to the restaurant so they can submit an authorization beforehand... tell them the advantages, let them make the decision...

And when the massive corporation that rose to dominance by ignoring local laws also ignores your DIY cease & desist letter, you're out $300. Heck, they'd ignore it if a lawyer wrote it too. Filing a lawsuit would be required, which they'd also ignore and delay as much as possible, far more than the local pizzeria can afford, until there was a class action.

I don't think Uber Eats has a support page that says "Submit your amateur cease and desist letters here". A $300 trademark is a cheap business expense, using it to scare away massive corporations is expensive.

> Enforcing it is free: you can send your own cease and desist for free.

Enforcing it is free if your time is free.

time, and knowledge of how to write such a letter in a way to seem "serious legal threat"

Is this something you have personally done? Because this sounds like an internet fantasy to me.

But suppose we indulge your fantasy. A restaurant owner, who is already incredibly busy, decides to figure out how to register a trademark and sends the cease and desist. The venture-backed startup's in-house counsel looks at it, sees that it was written by an amateur, and just laughs. Now what?

You're getting downvoted because somehow people think that restaurant owners shouldn't have to handle basic aspects of operating a business such as establishing a trademark to operate their business under. Without a trademark, what are they going to do if, say, another restaurant opens up a few blocks away with the same name?

(And as I understand it, you get some trademark rights just by establishing a business, so you don't have to register the trademark to sue UberEats or Grubhub or whoever)

> Enforcing it is free:

Are you proposing to do the work of writing up and sending C&Ds for these restaurants personally gratis? That's the only way it's "free".

Despite the downvotes -- I think there is a genuine question here. There isn't the need for more laws just enforcement of existing ones.

Purporting to represent someone elses business is an egregious infringement of trademark.

The answer is likely that our legal system is too expensive for local restaurant owners to afford the cost of suing a grubhub sized company. Restaurants are a business notoriously prone to failure and low margins. Maybe a class action lawsuit would work in this case, but mostly it’s just another case where the legal system needs to be fixed to rely less on having money for justice to occur.

Two things which would help are:

1) Allow both private and public right-of-action for most laws. If the AG is busy, I should be able to sue. If I can't afford to sue, an AG should be able to take it up on my behalf.

2) Go back to circa 1800 style courts, where you don't need a lawyer to represent you. You both make your case to the judge. Not too much procedure. Perhaps extending small claims court up to $100,000 would do much of the same.

This is what Class Actions, and Business organizations are suppose to be for

Also nothing is stopping the AG of the state from forming a Fraud case agaist the major players.

The excuse of "well the courts cost too much money" is not abated by creating even more complex laws that will still require an expensive lawyer to enforce

in reality this law is designed to protect those companies that already made billions on abusing trademark laws by making it seem like what they did was legal, a "loophole" in the law that is now "closed" for new competitors

Expect class action obviously does not work, because is not like existing laws have stopped it. But yes, the solution might not be more laws but rather overhaul of the legal system to make it possible to enforce existing laws.

Do you think there is a trademark police force that you can call to enforce your trademark? Trademark is a civil matter and realitively pretty expensive to pursue. If you're a restaurant who just laid off half your staff due to COVID, how do you engage a trademark lawyer?

It's not a genuine question.

Companies shouldn't have to manufacture lawsuits every time a hostile third party wants to screw over their customers.

This law is both pro-business AND pro-transparency.

I would guess that most non-chain restaurants don't own a trademark for their name. It's an expensive process that many likely can't afford.

In CA the business will get common law trademark rights in their geographical area just by virtue of doing business under that name, but they would still need to sue the delivery companies which have in house counsel for these kind of things.

In the US you are not required to register your trademark in order to enforce it. However, you do get some additional protections. The cost is $225 and it is good for 10 years

How does it violate trademark law to say that “we will deliver food from restaurant X”? It seems clear to the customer who is providing the goods vs the service. What’s not clear is if there is an agreement, which is what this new law makes clear.

The problem doesn't seem that related to trademarks to me. These app delivery platforms are impersonating companies, not selling their own products under someone else's brand. The food comes from where they claim it did. The issue with impersonation is that customers who got worse experience (cold food, long delivery, etc.) end up blaming the restaurant for it, even though the restaurant had nothing to do with it.

How is trading under the cover of someone else’s mark not a trademark issue? If I’m representing myself as selling “TeMPOral Pizza” for delivery, the fact that I’m actually delivering pizza made at the TeMPOral Pizza Shop isn’t entire cover.

If I opened up a shop in the mall with giant lit white Apple logos, the fact that I sold genuine Apple product inside would not absolve me of trademark infringement.

(Trademark violations are more than just counterfeit items.)

Yeah, if you try that with a megacorp, they'll drag you up and down the courts until you give up:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/09/pirate-trader-...

It isn’t working. This isn’t a hypothetical problem.

Because civil laws only protect people rich enough to hire lawyers.

This should not be down voted. The idea that a popular little family owned and operated Indian restaurant named "Bombay Curry" and still reeling from COVID-19 restrictions can some how sue Skip the Diehes or Uber Eats for Trademark infringement is absolutely ludicrous.

Yeah, Uber is a company which is involved in legal battles with governments all over the world. I am sure they would make it a real pain to sue them. The idea of restaurants prusuing trademark cases against Uber is ridiculous.

Yeah, this is the legal system in a nutshell. Don't think you're safe in any meaningful way because the law says so. At the end of the day you would have to litigate it yourself and that is usually not worth it unless the offense is truly egregious.

Against an adversary with deep pockets like a corporation, you can lose even if you win. This is how patent trolls extort companies, litigating a patent suite is usually a seven figure endeavor. And there's no guarantee you win. It's cheaper to pay the licensing free from the trolls, who are smart enough to make sure it's always less than the cost of litigating.

I don't know why this is getting down voted, its absolutely naive to assume this isn't how it plays out in the real world.

It’s getting downvoted because it seems to be phrased in a deliberately inflammatory way. You can (and others downthread have) express the same idea that many restaurants can’t afford the expense in a manner more likely to lead to productive discussion.

Because most restaurant owners want to be in the business of running a restaurant, not litigating some out-of-state entities with billion-dollar warchests.

Doing the former is working two full-time jobs, as is.

People tend to forget how critical resources are in our country to rights. You often need time, money, expertise, etc. to enter legal battles and if the costs of those resources outweigh the benefits, you often allow your legal rights to be infringed. Pursuit of some rights are cost prohibitive because everything in the US is so tightly tied to finances.

Many of your rights in the US are directly tied to your financial resources, not only in the sense that you have the resources to litigate or absorb failed litigation but even in the sense that those with massive financial resources essentially buy their own rights through legislation.

Let's not pretend the justice system doesn't have underlying flaws that allow justice to skew one way or another from money alone because it does. If you're on trial for a serious offense, you're probably not going to use a public appointed attorney if you can avoid it because we know how the legal system works and how financial incentives will attract better legal representation in the private sector than those for public appointment.

This idealized and fictionalized system where I can walk into a court of law and defend myself or use a public appointed counsel and 'win' as long as I've done nothing illegal or unjust is a laughable joke for many legal battles, especially those of more significance.

Them not wanting to handle their own problems is not a reason for the State to subsidize solutions for them.

The entire purpose of legislature is to legislate solutions to problems that society faces.

Not to legislate solutions to private businesses' disputes.

Business disputes are handled through the legal system.

1. The legal system is a direct product of legislature, as are the rules that it enforces.

2. It is absolutely the legislature's responsibility to step into systemic, one-to-many disputes, especially when there is a gross power imbalance between the two sides.

The app could say "we deliver from the Greek place on Main Street" to avoid using the trademark, but still be in violation of the new law.

Also, many restaurants can't get a trademark. My favorite local place is "Joe's Pub" but I don't imagine that's a unique name.

Because many restaurant owners don't even think about trademarks, or their names are too "generic" to be allowed to trademark.

The usual exception are the franchise operations (mcdonalds, BK, subway, kfc, ...) because these are thought from the start to be exclusive.

Why enforce existing law, we can you use this opportunity to create ever more complex laws to ensure stake holders that already abused to the condition the law is purporting to address can maintain their advantage and ensure no new entrants to the market

That is all this does, it protect GrubHub, DoorDash and other large players from competition

How, specifically, does this protect GrubHub/DoorDash/etc?

this law is designed to protect those companies who already made billions on abusing existing laws by making it seem like what they did was legal, a "loophole" in the law that is now "closed" for new competitors

They are not "new entrants" in the market, they have a network effect now so it will be preferable to them to sign exclusive deals with restaurants to further ensure there can not be any competition

So the alternative should be that we should continue to funnel VC money into every new predatory impersonation business?

Sometimes it really is a loophole that is now closed, and the government can’t subsequently dissolve all companies they’ve used it, they can only ask companies to stop.

I don't understand why trademarks are insufficient to prevent this. Why didn't restaurants file a class action lawsuit against food delivery services to stop misusing their names?

I think this law is great, but it kind of legitimises impersonation unless explicitly banned by law.

I think this is just a practical matter: the legal system is not as accessible as you might hope it is.

Not to mention the delivery apps dishonestly jack up listed prices, as seen on these 2 screenshots taken within the same hour: https://i.imgur.com/2HVXhvZ.png

Then they have the guts to charge: - delivery fees ON TOP of that - then a service fee (WTF? you just charged for delivery service) - then a CA driver benefits of exactly $2.00 (why is it an exact whole number? is every cent of that going toward health insurance?) - small order fee - rush hour fee ...

The key issue around all of this is transparency. Itemize costs, be clear how much money goes to each party, and state up front if you’re not affiliated.

It's very much deniable.

This now forces restaurants to sign an agreement and start paying a commission. Previously, they got a free delivery service at no cost to them. Now they either have to pay or lose business. This is bad for the majority of restaurants.

While I do agree with the original post, I don't like the verbiage "undeniably a good thing" as they are saying there is no denying that what I am saying is true. And to think you know everything about an issue means you aren't willing to listen to different view points. Nothing I ever say is undeniable.

I seem to remember that back in the sweet usetobe before the internet one of the big catsup companies (Heinz? Hunts?) started suing restaurants for the common practice of watering down their catsup bottles that sat at the customer table. The catsup company was worried about people forming a negative intial impression of their product based on the watered down bottles. The restraunts argument was that once they bought the catsup bottle they were free to do what they wanted with it.

Don't know how that suit came out but this seems like the same deal here.

Yeah it's extremely weird. Nintendo will call lawyers on you if there is even a hint of a trade mark violation yet when restaurants are directly being defrauded there is no recourse.

The difference being: Nintendo has entire buildings full of lawyers just waiting for the go-ahead to crush out your life with lawsuits, while Pam's House Of Burgers has trouble making payroll every week and has never hired a lawyer since its founding.

We're at the onset of some kind of disruption of this norm around IP: If it's possible to automatically detect copyright violations, it's also within reach to give users tools that procedurally generate an infininum of infringing content, none of which can be litigated profitably by the corporation("swarm of bees" effects).

"This is undeniably a good thing if you put yourself in the shoes of the restaurant."

Maybe. I have no idea.

What I do know is, the following statement is 1A protected free speech:

If you pay me enough money, I will drive to the Novato In'N'Out and buy a cheeseburger and deliver it to you.

I offer this delivery service to anyone who wishes to negotiate my (extremely high) delivery rates.

This is posted in a public place (is a listing) and I have no relationship with In'N'Out and no plans to establish one.

Now what ?

You are clearly not a "food delivery platform" which this explicitly concerns. Obviously you can pay people to run errands for you, including picking up food and people can advertise their services.

Yes, of course that is the case but a "real" delivery service is only one or two contortions away from "publishing" their "listings" in a way that is just like what I wrote.

Then you’ll be breaking the law, as I understand it. Not every statement is protected under free speech.

If a private pilot asks his friend if she wants to go on a trip and split costs, that’s legal. If he posts the offer in a public place, it’s illegal. There is a ton of precedent for this type of restriction of speech.

This law only applies to online businesses. So while this effectively stops businesses from providing this service without permission it does not prevent what you describe.

Apple is a private company, not a public entity. AFAIK, your "free speech" is not protected here.

Companies are people too.

Was impersonation legal in California before this law?

No, but this protects small restaurant owners regardless if they are a legal entity with trademarks to protect.

Oddly, that bill says nothing about impersonating restaurants online. Looks like the delivery services are still free to squat on restaurant web space and perhaps helpfully point out that delivery is not available (when in fact it is, just not from that service). That's an interesting way of forcing an owner into "agreeing" with the delivery service.

What if I put myself in the shoes of the consumer?

Now if a restaurant doesn't offer delivery, can I still get delivery?

In n Out has been a notable hold out from delivery apps for this reason.

You are skipping quite a few steps here by jumping to "impersonating a business online", which I suspect is already illegal.

This bill says that it would be illegal to pick food on behalf of someone else without the restaurant's agreement (if you're an online platform). The is no question of dishonesty or impersonation, just of offering this service.

This is quite an extreme restriction, IMHO, and seems to be a kneejerk and simplistic response to a perceived problem.

On the other hand, the problem of online reviews is separate and should be addressed specifically, IMHO. At the moment it's the wild West and a breeding ground for defamation. Maybe regulating this should get more attention from lawmakers (though I realise that in the US the 1st Amendment may make this difficult).

Why? The practice involved is in response to the absolute garbage of misrepresentation of a restaurant's telephone number to be intercepted by your own call centre's.

> Why? The practice involved is in response to the absolute garbage of misrepresentation of a restaurant's telephone number to be intercepted by your own call centre's.

Sure, that's bad and that should be banned. But that's not the practice banned. What got banned is me paying someone to pick up my food for me.

I could still run a website that misrepresents the restaurant's telephone number and intercepts your calls. I can take your order (at a mark-up) and relay that order to the restaurant. They'd just make me pick it up.

You could ask why would I use that service. Maybe for the convenience of being able to order from any restaurant from a single website. Maybe I wouldn't. Maybe they give me rewards points. Maybe there's a discount and they just want to harvest my data.

But really. it's irrelevant why/if I'd use the service. The problem is that the law doesn't address the one thing you've pointed out as absolute garbage. It only bans the part that isn't terrible.

That’s not what the law does. It addresses the problem GP pointed out, and it bans the service you’ve described as well. It also doesn’t forbid you from paying someone to pick your food up for you.

Here’s the relevant text:

> 22599. A food delivery platform shall not arrange for the delivery of an order from a food facility without first obtaining an agreement with the food facility expressly authorizing the food delivery platform to take orders and deliver meals prepared by the food facility.

That says that I can't arrange for delivery without approval to take orders and provide delivery. It doesn't imply that I need approval to take orders if I'm not providing delivery.

Why should a restaurant be allowed to ban me from hiring someone to deliver for me?

Are you a delivery platform? The law only applies to delivery platforms. If you want to hire an individual contractor(or just casually pay your buddy 3$ to pick up a pizza for you) you can still do so.

Who's going to setup a food pickup business in 2021 without being an online business? "please fax your order and card details"?

This bill does not require restaurants' permission if you're not an online business, that's true, but in practice that's not really any use to avoid having to get permission.

I don’t understand what you’re getting at. The entire point of this law is to make online delivery platforms get permission from restaurants before taking orders on their behalf.

Because if would like to have a honest delivery service that is not faking some restaurant, with the new law you will not be able to provide such service.

It will be a lot more hassle to pick up something.

I don't think it is anyway unreasonable for such service to come to agreement with the restaurant. And absolutely beneficial for both parties.

The question is whether it should be required.

If a restaurant welcomes takeaway orders then whether you order and collect in person or hire someone to do it on your behalf is irrelevant.

That's why I think this bill is ill-thought-out.

If there are shady practices taking place then they should be dealt with with existing legislation and, if needed, with new legislation specifically targeting these practices. Instead, I suspect this will only restrict services and competition, which ultimately won't be beneficial for consumers and restaurants alike.

> If a restaurant welcomes takeaway orders then whether you order and collect in person or hire someone to do it on your behalf is irrelevant.

This is a big if, because existing outcry already belies that this assumption is actually not reality.

Besides, if that’s the case it should be super easy to call the restaurant and ask to be a partner. You can mail them stickers to advertise for your delivery platform by pasting it on their doors/windows. “Official GrubHub partner” could even be a badge of legitimacy because GrubHub needs to protect their reputation as a source of good restaurants.

All they have to do is get permission from the restaurants.

That's an extra amount of work that keeps new, small players from entering the field. As with a lot of regulation, this is designed in a way that favors large incumbents.

Eh, food delivery is a pretty local business. In fact, if I wanted to compete with these VC-backed companies, I'd probably do something like partner with local restaurants whose food traveled well, come up with some good packaging, etc. Of course, that's not scalable and disruptive.

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