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Comment by AnotherGoodName | Hacker News Reader

Doordash itself appears to add at least $1 to all menu items. Which is horrible for certain restaurants that do à la carte. Eg. My local indian place ends up with doubled/tripled prices on Doordash.

Eg. Papad = $0.49 each directly from my local Indian restaurants site (they sell by the single), Doordash gives a price of $1.50 per papad.

Likewise with Naans, dips, etc. All have $1 added. Which can make a $10 lunch ~ $25.

I believe it's Doordash doing this. What gets really weird is Uber Eats and Grubhub seem to match prices and charge exactly the same as Doordash.

For anyone to repeat this. Look up your local indian places actual menu. You'll likely need to use Google images for the name of the restaurant to find an actual picture of a physical menu. Now look up any of the online services, they all seem to price match each other and they'll all have doubled prices for things like naan or roti.

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I work for a POS company, I can assure you it's the restaurants doing this. They often have different menus with different prices for UberEats/Doordash/etc. One abstraction company I've worked with (You push your menu to them and they push it out to multiple providers then route the orders back to you), even provides tools to be able to increase all your menu items by a set % rounding to the nearest 5/10/25-cents.

The UberEats/Doordashes/etc of the world all charge pretty high fees so this is one way the restaurants can recoup some of that.

Also, I spend way too much time pricing out Doordash vs Official App (normally using Doordash for delivery) vs Pickup just to see what the spread is.

Just curious, is the company NCR?

Nope, I work for Touchpoint https://www.touchpoint.io/

> I can assure you it's the restaurants doing this.

> The UberEats/Doordashes/etc of the world all charge pretty high fees so this is one way the restaurants can recoup some of that.

Are you blaming the restaurants or the ride share services? I can't tell...

I’m not “blaming” anyone really. I don’t fault the restaurants for raising prices to cover the costs. I don’t love how opaque the whole thing is but I understand both sides.

It’s all a shell games so that they can say “free delivery” and/or not have to call out “this item is $5 but you will pay a 20% more to get it delivered through DoorDash”. They just hide that “fee” in the item price.

My read of the comment wasn't that he was "blaming" either, but explaining where the fees come from.

It sounds like the direct increase to the consumer's prices is done by the restaurant itself, but the reason the restaurant is charging higher prices are to make up for the fees they're charged by UE/DD.

In other words, UE/DD restaurant-side service fees eat into the restaurant's profit margins, so the restaurant passes on the cost increases to the consumer to get them back.

To be clear, no idea about how closely these statements correspond to the world, just that this seems to be OP's claim.

Funny enough, in another top level thread, there's a chain of people claiming it's Uber Eats that adds the 25% and that the restaurant needs to opt out to stop adding the cost.

> Uber Eats and Grubhub seem to match prices and charge exactly the same as Doordash.

https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

  Price fixing is an agreement (written, verbal, or inferred from conduct) among competitors to raise, lower, maintain, or stabilize prices or price levels. Generally, the antitrust laws require that each company establish prices and other competitive terms on its own, without agreeing with a competitor. 

  When purchasers make choices about what products and services to buy, they expect that the price has been determined on the basis of supply and demand, not by an agreement among competitors. When competitors agree to restrict competition, the result is often higher prices.

Unfortunately, you're not gonna successfully nail a BigCo with a legal team using an "inferred from conduct" clause. That's the kind of thing your municipal or state enforcers use to threaten a peasant into settling.

How about algorithmic collusion? https://consumerlaw.berkeley.edu/news/california-slams-door-...

> I believe it's Doordash doing this

Restaurants set the menu prices higher on delivery platforms to recoup the money lost in fees. They also pay fees to DoorDash, Uber, etc...

Consider talking to your local restaurant owner about implementing a lunch special that includes naans, dips, etc. priced somewhere between $10-25. If this is totally on the delivery apps, you'll both get what you want :)

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