There was a post a few months go about a pizza place that started getting customers complaining about their food arriving cold and damaged: except they didn't offer delivery. They discovered that a popular search engine was offering free delivery. The story ended with them ordering dozens of pizzas from themselves to themselves and making a nice profit.
California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
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Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#12There was a post a few months go about a pizza place that started getting customers complaining about their food arriving cold and damaged: except they didn't offer delivery. They discovered that a popular search engine was offering free delivery. The story ended with them ordering dozens of pizzas from themselves to themselves and making a nice profit.
How did they made a profit off this?
Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#13Why does this even have to be a law boggles my mind. I think there are laws against impersonation already. If I went around purporting to sell services in the name of Microsoft, their lawyers would act quickly. Not that I disagree with this new law
The law is not just about impersonation, it says the platform can't arrange for delivery of food without having an agreement with a restaurant. So if it's not impersonating anybody, and just orders food on your behalf with you knowing it's a middleman, that would still violate the law, if I understood correctly. I think that wouldn't normally be illegal because it's not generally illegal to do things on others' behal…
I think the intention though, is to stop say a Doordash from listing a restaurant's menu on its (DD's) website and making it seem like the restaurant is consenting to having delivery of its food with whatever margin DD feels like adding on top of it. (Also by the way, shadier practices too, like hijaking/publishing a false restaurant phone number that diverts to DD instead of the restaurant.)
Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#14This is a silly law. If someone feels like sending a courier to buy take away then that should be legal.
The problem is not sending a courier. You can use Apps to send someone there without a problem.
The problem is them impersonating the restaurant and giving customers the impression that the restaurant is offering the delivery service themselves.
Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#15always entertaining how regulation unintentionally acts to increase barriers to entry for incumbents. in this case closing the barn doors almost a decade after the horse left the stable. you couldn't pay politicians enough for the favors they perform in earnest.
edit:to elaborate, the growth hacks of the likes of Doordash and Postmates doing exactly this got them their start, now it will be illegal to compete with them using the same methods they used. I understand there are also brand protection concerns for the small restaurants. have to weigh the tradeoffs.
Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#16This is a silly law. If someone feels like sending a courier to buy take away then that should be legal.
What’s even sillier, every company doing this in California was getting consent from the restaurant to publish a number as if they were said restaurant BEFORE this law was even conceived. Of course, it was a click-wrap agreement that nobody read.
Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#17This is a silly law. If someone feels like sending a courier to buy take away then that should be legal.
You could still do that without the app listing the restaurants without their permission.
There is a clear exploitation happening here, I think it's right to find a way to stop it. We should get better at iterating on policy though, maybe this doesn't work out or stops some other kind of less exploitive business from operating and they need to adjust it.
Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#18There was a post a few months go about a pizza place that started getting customers complaining about their food arriving cold and damaged: except they didn't offer delivery. They discovered that a popular search engine was offering free delivery. The story ended with them ordering dozens of pizzas from themselves to themselves and making a nice profit.
How did they made a profit off this?
They delivered pizza base with no toppings. The base was just so the boxes weren't empty.
EDIT and Doordash got the price wrong (I forgot about that).
Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#19There was a post a few months go about a pizza place that started getting customers complaining about their food arriving cold and damaged: except they didn't offer delivery. They discovered that a popular search engine was offering free delivery. The story ended with them ordering dozens of pizzas from themselves to themselves and making a nice profit.
How did they made a profit off this?
[deleted]
Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#20This is a silly law. If someone feels like sending a courier to buy take away then that should be legal.
The problem is not sending a courier. You can use Apps to send someone there without a problem. The problem is them impersonating the restaurant and giving customers the impression that the restaurant is offering the delivery service themselves.
Someone else posted the below excerpt of the law that also prohibits couriers (who are not impersonating anyone) unless they have permission from the restaurant. That seems like a ridiculous restriction to me.
> 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.