The Grubhubs and DoorDashes are not logistic services but also marketing services. Most companies sign a marketing agreement with them.
I think I remember reading that they often set all of this up prior to speaking with the owner / without getting their approval and then basically go to them after the fact and say "look how much traffic we've been bringing in for you" Edit: Ah, yup - see link to eater.com post elsewhere in the thread
In that case the owner is then getting the full price for the food though.
It's disheartening that there's so much due diligence required just to conduct the most basic transactions right now. I have a narrow list of vetted restaurants, where I understand the costs and to the business, the delivery model, the safety (food handling and Covid precautions), and I only take out from these particular places. I tried a new place recently, only to find out I had been duped by Grub-hub, even though…
The due diligence is because the restaurants offer a terrible experience. Most still do not have an independent online ordering function. They want me to call. Most still haven't set up meaningful profiles on Yelp and other review sites. So I would need to root around to find contact information. That is in addition to needing to give my credit card over the phone, not knowing how long the order will take, and needin…
I think the issue is restaurants need a 3rd party platform. They aren't in the tech industry and they aren't going to hire a developer to build their own system unless its a global franchise.
What we really need is for someone to build an open source / one time cost / subscription platform that gives restaurants the ease of using a premade system without the expense of having a per transaction fee.
> “If a customer calls to place a coffee order, we’re paying a $6.42 fee — for a coffee.” This is wrong ! Plain and simple. $6.42 is probably more than the cost of the coffee. Here are somethings you as a consumer can do to help, 1. If possible visit the restaurant personally, and order to go 2. Find the restaurant's phone number on their website / Facebook / Instagram / twitter page. 3. Leave a tip I've found that y…
Don't tip. They should have set their price at the cost they can afford to sell the item at.
I think I remember reading that they often set all of this up prior to speaking with the owner / without getting their approval and then basically go to them after the fact and say "look how much traffic we've been bringing in for you" Edit: Ah, yup - see link to eater.com post elsewhere in the thread
In that case the owner is then getting the full price for the food though.
It’s still destroying their reputation by charging more than the food is ‘worth’. Aka the expectation is higher for an 8$ burger than a 5$ one.
I think I remember reading that they often set all of this up prior to speaking with the owner / without getting their approval and then basically go to them after the fact and say "look how much traffic we've been bringing in for you" Edit: Ah, yup - see link to eater.com post elsewhere in the thread
In that case the owner is then getting the full price for the food though.
Except now grubhub et all basically controls their web presence through vastly superior SEO, and if they don't agree to grubhub's terms, they basically disappear off the internet.
It's possible to do this without resorting to the sleazy practices of Grubhub. I used to work for Slice, which provides order-taking (but notably not delivery) for mom-and-pop pizza shops. They don't add people to the platform without their permission. They only charge $1/order. They help restaurants digitize their menus, keep prices up to date, and they take orders digitally and over the phone. They have a large and…
People were previously claiming on Hacker News that Slice was registering websites on behalf of pizza shops, and then claiming the business as theirs on Google Maps [0]. Is this false? One user claimed that the businesses were not aware of this [1].
I beg to differ. None of the places I've placed orders with (and I've been doing it a lot what with quarantine) have ever asked for CC over-the-phone. Most just want my name, some a phone number. Ordering usually takes less time than it would to fiddle about with a bunch of dropdowns, even if it had my customer information already saved.
Speaking of information already saved, one of my favorite pizza places has my order history keyed to my phone number. Ordering ahead usually comes down to dialing them up, giving my name and phone number and telling them I'd like the same as last time. They read it off to me to confirm, quote me a waiting time, and that's that. Start to finish, the call is probably less than thirty seconds.
Exactly. For most of my usual spots, someone picks up on the first ring, I place my order, they ask my name, and that's it
> “If a customer calls to place a coffee order, we’re paying a $6.42 fee — for a coffee.” This is wrong ! Plain and simple. $6.42 is probably more than the cost of the coffee. Here are somethings you as a consumer can do to help, 1. If possible visit the restaurant personally, and order to go 2. Find the restaurant's phone number on their website / Facebook / Instagram / twitter page. 3. Leave a tip I've found that y…
> “If a customer calls to place a coffee order, we’re paying a $6.42 fee — for a coffee.” This is based on the contract the restaurant has with grubhub, uber eats, etc - if the terms are not favorable why not cancel the agreement ? Seems they want others to fix their self-inflicted damage
Restaurants want this service, they just want it at a fair price.
The argument isn’t so much “grubhub charges a fee” more that “grubhub uses its monopoly position in a local market to further monopolize distribution channels and thus charge monopoly prices“
The due diligence is because the restaurants offer a terrible experience. Most still do not have an independent online ordering function. They want me to call. Most still haven't set up meaningful profiles on Yelp and other review sites. So I would need to root around to find contact information. That is in addition to needing to give my credit card over the phone, not knowing how long the order will take, and needin…
They also make no attempts to keep their operating hours on Google Maps or Yelp up-to-date. Especially for holidays. Is keeping this stuff up to date actually difficult. I don't run a business, so I have no idea.
Running a small business is having lots of loose ends to manage by only one person. The restaurateur spends all day doing kitchen and front of house, closes the restaurant, and then looks forward to bookkeeping. They’re responsible for HR, payroll, scheduling, and marketing. They have to supervise repairs to the physical plant. Often, they forget which service you need to update to change the hours, they don’t realize that Yelp has changed their phone number to a GrubHub number until they’ve been receiving advertising bills, and even then maybe aren’t sure why it’s so expensive, etc. There are hundreds of companies trying to take advantage of you depending on the limited time you have to dedicate to everything. Why do I get so many “ads” that look like invoices? It must be an effective technique.