In my area, an &Pizza is $12 on their App, $19 on Doordash (delivery or pickup). A Chipotle burrito is $9.50 vs $12.35 on doordash delivery (plus every addon is a $1 more expensive).
You can easily pay an extra $4/$5 (30%) per item you order on there.
One could argue it's best for the consumer to very clearly understand how much more they're paying. If not a service fee, here is our aggregate food markup, in plain sight. Transparency, in other words. Let's not borrow any ideas from the healthcare system.
Isn't this basically impossible to do legally in the U.S.? Wouldn't you run into trouble both with IP law and food safety laws around reselling prepared foods?
If it's illegal nobody cares.
Food safety? There might be some restrictions related to food handling, but to my understanding they're mostly pretty rote food handling safety training stuff that I'd hope delivery companies provide anyway.
It's called the First-Sale Doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
I can't count how many friends I have had to explain this to who don't understand they are paying 20-30% more even after getting "free delivery" than if they just ordered directly through the restaurant.
I'm not sure how UberEats/etc handle it but it's absolutely crazy how much of a markup there is to order through Doordash vs going to pick it up when you factor in Restaurant Upcharge + Doordash Fees + Tip. It's easy to have an $8 item suddenly cost $20 or more total out-of-pocket when all is said and done.
While that’s what you prefer, the market (most other users, including whale spenders) doesn’t care to know the actual cost.
That is what large corporations want and in the US especially they are the ones that write the laws.
But those online retailers are supplied by the same distributor who is supplied by the same manufacturer.
- ManufacturerA -> (Amazon|Walmart) -> Customer
- RestaurantA -> (Pickup|Doordash|Uber) -> Customer
> I'd prefer the overhead to show up as its own line item, rather than obscuring the actual cost of the service.
Me too. Especially that they already ALSO add a service fee in many (most?) locales, in addition to the delivery fee and the tip.
- Item priced 30% higher
- Delivery fee
- Service fee
- Tip
There is another analog for this, too, though: some retailers indeed would have more or less expensive prices for the same thing when ordering online versus in-store. I think the argument that it isn't unprecedented is pretty solid.
Despite not being entirely unprecedented, I'd still prefer to see this practice ended for food delivery services so it is easier to see the actual true overhead of food delivery services. It really does feel a bit manipulative the way it is right now.
I’d be very curious what the conversation is between them. I highly doubt DoorDash negotiates with every restaurant on their platform and wouldn’t be surprised to discover they just tack it on independently. I could see that raising some interesting questions.
All of this is predicated on “ifs” and assumptions, so feel free to throw it out. Just kind of musing here lol
That is not correct. Doordash takes a 20-30% commission on each sale, so businesses preemptively increase the prices to offset that. They're not forced to and doordash isn't doing it for them. But, you know, they're still effectively "forced" to if their in-store prices don't have great margins to begin with...
Customers are cheap and they're (partly) to blame. My theory is that Amazon conditioned people to view delivery as a free commodity and pizza places who had delivery baked into their model cemented it.
So if Doordash listed a delivery fee that covered their true cost of delivery, customers would balk. So they instead have to find creative ways to get enough. Maybe it's changed and Doordash cracked the secret, but when I'd looked into it years ago these companies barely got by — many of them actually losing money.