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Portland approves 10% cap on fees that food delivery apps can charge restaurants

oregonlive.com

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Re: Portland approves 10% cap on fees that food delivery apps can charge restaurants

#501

Post by AmericanChopper »

Spivak wrote: post #338
mardifoufs wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't the same argument be made for restaurants? If they can't afford delivery fees, or can't afford to make money without delivery they shouldn't be in business either.

This is true so long as you recognize that this is a change in the market that will make certain restaurants unprofitable. A restaurant that was financially well-off before the advent of 3rd party delivery apps may not be anymore because they have fiercer competition. Restaurants that can absorb the 25-30% hit, for whatever reason, now have an advantage over those that couldn't. The question becomes is this a market…

If you want to look at the poster child for holding back innovation in order to protect an outdated business model, then look no further than the film and TV industry. You could replace the restaurants in this story with the MPAA and the delivery apps with Netflix, and you’d have a story with exactly the same parameters, just with the heroes and villains of the narrative reversed.

If the apps charge too much the restaurants should leave. If that means they end up not delivering what consumers want then they should change their business model or go out of business. If the delivery apps can’t survive under those conditions then they should change their business model, or go out of business.

The hospitality industry has always been ultra-competitive and low margin. Bad restaurants go under all the time. The only thing that is different now is that they have somebody else to point the finger at. The other thing I think they all miss is that without these apps, most of the businesses would have had to immediately go under when Covid hit. Those services were the only thing that gave them a shot of keeping the lights on, and for the ones that can’t find a way to make things work, consumers can do without them.

Re: Portland approves 10% cap on fees that food delivery apps can charge restaurants

#502

Post by bluehatbrit »

chillwaves wrote: post #383
bluehatbrit wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're moving from an age of consumers going to the good/service and to the good/service going to the consumer. In particular younger generations see delivery as a norm. It's less about being lazy or having high expectations and more a case of it being baked into the culture of younger generations now. I work for a takewaway / food delivery company and it's facinating listening to what our customers are saying. I hear…

Sounds incredibly wasteful, no matter the economics involved.

I'm not defending it, it's just the trend I'm seeing.

Re: Portland approves 10% cap on fees that food delivery apps can charge restaurants

#503

Post by grumple »

crazygringo wrote: post #192

There are legitimate abuses of market power. But this is not one of them. Nobody's forcing restaurants to enter these partnerships, there's competition, and delivery people still need to be paid. There are two obvious outcomes here: either food delivery apps will restrict delivery to profitable orders only (stop working for some restaurants, require higher order minimums, etc.), or they'll stay to avoid bad press but…

> There are legitimate abuses of market power. But this is not one of them.

I’m curious. How long does a company need to lose money on each unit of work they do, funded by endless foreign vc money, before it’s clearly an abuse of their financial power and destructive for the market?

No company can compete fairly against people willing to lose billions just for market share.

Re: Portland approves 10% cap on fees that food delivery apps can charge restaurants

#504

Post by thaumasiotes »

ajzinsbwbs wrote: post #387
cromka wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont agree on the "faster" part. Uber or Doordash manage their own delivery people and they're vastly more efficient than the restaurants' own. If you look at Yelp or Seamlesss negative reviews, you'll notice that most of them complaint about delivery service. If there's one thing that the restaurants can benefit from when using Uber or Doordash is having their reviews on those platforms based solely on the quality…

When I order delivery from a restaurant, an employee (maybe the owner’s kid) comes and delivers the food directly to my house when it’s done. It‘s generally faster than the app model where you need to wait for the driver to go to the restaurant to pick up the food, then come to your house while possibly stopping at other restaurants and/or houses on the way. I could see how the restaurant delivery would be worse if t…

> the app model where you need to wait for the driver to go to the restaurant to pick up the food, then come to your house while possibly stopping at other restaurants and/or houses on the way

This is a weird set of complaints.

1. Usually, there would be some lag time between when you order the food, and when the restaurant finishes making it. This would overlap with the time required for the driver to go to the restaurant and pick up the food; the app model isn't actually introducing a delay there.

2. Restaurants that do delivery themselves also use the same driver to deliver multiple orders at once. You're definitely better off with a dedicated driver, but the restaurant is much worse off. Again, this would not appear to be related to the app model. We order pizza and pick it up ourselves, because if the pizza place delivers it, it arrives stale and we pay extra for delivery.

Re: Portland approves 10% cap on fees that food delivery apps can charge restaurants

#505

Post by Kiro »

ajzinsbwbs wrote: post #387
cromka wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont agree on the "faster" part. Uber or Doordash manage their own delivery people and they're vastly more efficient than the restaurants' own. If you look at Yelp or Seamlesss negative reviews, you'll notice that most of them complaint about delivery service. If there's one thing that the restaurants can benefit from when using Uber or Doordash is having their reviews on those platforms based solely on the quality…

When I order delivery from a restaurant, an employee (maybe the owner’s kid) comes and delivers the food directly to my house when it’s done. It‘s generally faster than the app model where you need to wait for the driver to go to the restaurant to pick up the food, then come to your house while possibly stopping at other restaurants and/or houses on the way. I could see how the restaurant delivery would be worse if t…

> It‘s generally faster than the app model where you need to wait for the driver to go to the restaurant to pick up the food

That's not how it works. I order a lot and the driver is always there to pick it up as soon as it's ready. The driver obviously gets notified about the delivery as soon as the restaurant confirms the order.

Re: Portland approves 10% cap on fees that food delivery apps can charge restaurants

#506

Post by Kiro »

slugiscool99 wrote: post #267
obibring wrote: post #39

This is the right move - local restaurants are hurting and, sadly, the internet is a place where big corps with large budgets have leverage over passionate little guys working their butts off. For those who want to help, I built a chrome extension similar to Honey that shows a local restaurant's direct ordering website as you're about to order from that restaurant thru a third party service. If direct ordering isn't…

Fantastic idea! If a restaurant offers delivery themselves, it's a no brainer to order directly from them. Usually it's cheaper and faster than ordering through an app. Hope this gains traction.

The best part about the app is able to see where the driver is on the map. I hate being in the unknown and not knowing what's going on with my delivery.

Re: Portland approves 10% cap on fees that food delivery apps can charge restaurants

#507

Post by cortesoft »

chillwaves wrote: post #386
cortesoft wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hate this sort of argument... that people who use the newer, more convenient, technology are just lazy and should keep using the old way of doing things. Why stop at delivery apps? Why are lazy people driving cars instead of just riding horses? Why are you ordering things online instead of just going to the store? Why are you farming using that tractor instead of a horse drawn plow? Small conveniences add up…

That's fine, just pay a fair price for the service.

I always tip well, and I am not going to pay Grubhub more than they charge... that isn't going to help the situation.

Re: Portland approves 10% cap on fees that food delivery apps can charge restaurants

#508

Post by obibring »

usehackernews wrote: post #490
obibring wrote: post #39

This is the right move - local restaurants are hurting and, sadly, the internet is a place where big corps with large budgets have leverage over passionate little guys working their butts off. For those who want to help, I built a chrome extension similar to Honey that shows a local restaurant's direct ordering website as you're about to order from that restaurant thru a third party service. If direct ordering isn't…

This is absolutely not the right move. This is you self promoting your app. Restaurants will pay more to market themselves, hire delivery drivers, and manage the logistics. Local restaurants are hurting because of COVID. They are blaming the delivery services, whose proprietary tech, marketing spend, logistics services are the only reason 90% could maintain any revenue stream.

This is a pretty cynical way to see things. I’m a restaurant lover who wants my local restaurants to survive the pandemic. Why is building a product to help them “not the right move?”

Re: Portland approves 10% cap on fees that food delivery apps can charge restaurants

#509

Post by hnick »

ajzinsbwbs wrote: post #387
cromka wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont agree on the "faster" part. Uber or Doordash manage their own delivery people and they're vastly more efficient than the restaurants' own. If you look at Yelp or Seamlesss negative reviews, you'll notice that most of them complaint about delivery service. If there's one thing that the restaurants can benefit from when using Uber or Doordash is having their reviews on those platforms based solely on the quality…

When I order delivery from a restaurant, an employee (maybe the owner’s kid) comes and delivers the food directly to my house when it’s done. It‘s generally faster than the app model where you need to wait for the driver to go to the restaurant to pick up the food, then come to your house while possibly stopping at other restaurants and/or houses on the way. I could see how the restaurant delivery would be worse if t…

The restaurant also has a more direct incentive to actually deliver.

One Friday night here in Sydney, it was raining like crazy - so we ordered in some food from one of the online groups. 2 hours later and multiple talks with support and they were still telling us stories about how it's nearly there.

We eventually called the restaurant directly and the food had been sitting ready for 90 minutes on the counter. The service just had all their gig-economy-staff decide this isn't the gig for them in bad weather, so no one was available to pick it up and deliver it. They said we could pick it up ourselves but we didn't really feel like old food at that point so we cancelled and drove out somewhere else. Being lied to was the most annoying part.

Re: Portland approves 10% cap on fees that food delivery apps can charge restaurants

#510

Post by [deleted] »

maltelandwehr wrote: post #71

Next week there will be complaints that food delivery services are no longer catering to certain areas. Instead of accepting that it is just not profitable for them, journalists will label it as backslash or an act of punishment. Same thing happened in others states/cities that implemented similar rules. The winners are people living in central areas of the city with lots of restaurants. The losers are the poorer out…

[deleted]
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