California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement • Hacker News Board

Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement

#251

Post by roywiggins » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #203

TeMPOraL wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem doesn't seem that related to trademarks to me. These app delivery platforms are impersonating companies, not selling their own products under someone else's brand. The food comes from where they claim it did. The issue with impersonation is that customers who got worse experience (cold food, long delivery, etc.) end up blaming the restaurant for it, even though the restaurant had nothing to do with it.

How is trading under the cover of someone else’s mark not a trademark issue? If I’m representing myself as selling “TeMPOral Pizza” for delivery, the fact that I’m actually delivering pizza made at the TeMPOral Pizza Shop isn’t entire cover. If I opened up a shop in the mall with giant lit white Apple logos, the fact that I sold genuine Apple product inside would not absolve me of trademark infringement. (Trademark v…

Yeah, if you try that with a megacorp, they'll drag you up and down the courts until you give up:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/09/pirate-trader-...

Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement

#252

Post by ciabattabread » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

rattray wrote: post #189

ramphastidae wrote: post #105

This is undeniably a good thing if you put yourself in the shoes of the restaurant. Imagine if someone went around impersonating your business online, leveraging the good name you have built for yourself over the decades. They create ads offering your expert development services, ostensibly competing with your existing website, but with intentionally slashed pricing and a ‘creatively’ misrepresented offering (aka gro…

IDK, this seems more like a mixed-bag to me on account of being opt-in instead of opt-out. Absolutely I agree that businesses should be able to easily opt out of being listed on a given delivery platform if/when it causes problems for them. But on the flip side, I've observed a lot of restaurant owners not having the time, energy, or know-how to set up even basic online things that could really boost their business.…

> Going straight to opt-in seems like it could hurt some businesses.

So, Facebook is indeed right when they say Apple’s opt-in tracking prompt will hurt small businesses?

Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement

#253

Post by SamoyedFurFluff » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #213

novia wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now restaurants are in a damned if you do damned if you don't situation with the various delivery services out there. If the restaurants explicitly agree to do business with grubhub and the like, they have to give the delivery service a 10% cut. The delivery service also takes a percentage cut on the customer side. I think there's the expectation that the restaurants keep charging the delivery service the same…

So in the second scenario, you get to keep on selling food for full price and the delivery companies generate business for you for free, but it's a bad deal because .. a few people might leave bad reviews on yelp when something is clearly DoorDash's fault? It sounds like a good deal to me. You get bad reviews from idiots no matter what anyway.

> a few people might leave bad reviews on yelp when something is clearly DoorDash's fault?

If you don’t have a good set up for delivery, the bad reviews will not be “a few” and it will certainly be more than what you would’ve otherwise had. There are examples of restaurants receiving literally dozens of negative reviews from this in a short period of time.

Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement

#254

Post by rainbowzootsuit » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

Slartie wrote: post #97

frombody wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically they didn't have to make any pizzas at all. I always felt like the story about the dough was embellished a little bit to avoid being charged with fraud.

They had to produce something that could legally be called a pizza to at least fulfill the purchase contract with DoorDash and avoid making themselves legally liable. But what would probably have worked would be to pull this off with two restaurants, each ordering pizzas from the other, with them sending the same physical pizzas around all the time. Cold and old pizza is still legally a pizza, just a bad one.

That reminds me of the Raines sandwich. "Minimum viable sandwich"

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/raines-sandwich

So this is "Minimum viable pizza"

Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement

#255

Post by tw25601814 » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #124

ramphastidae wrote: post #105

This is undeniably a good thing if you put yourself in the shoes of the restaurant. Imagine if someone went around impersonating your business online, leveraging the good name you have built for yourself over the decades. They create ads offering your expert development services, ostensibly competing with your existing website, but with intentionally slashed pricing and a ‘creatively’ misrepresented offering (aka gro…

The misrepresentation would seem to be the big thing. Someone, let's call them Joe, publishes a list of restaurants online with links to their menus and offers to deliver for the price of the order with tip plus a $10 delivery fee. And has a clear disclaimer that they're not affiliated with the businesses. That seems pretty unobjectionable. And how would the restaurant even know? [ADDED: Subject of course to any heal…

> But that, of course, is not what any of these services do.

Likely because customers don't care. Nor does this law introduce such a requirement. Instead it increases the cost of entering the delivery market, thus it protects extant delivery services from new competitors.

> So Sally should maybe have a right to refuse to sell to anyone other than the end consumer.

They can already do that; restaurants know which delivery services are placing the order.

Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement

#256

Post by kaslai » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #226

jiofih wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, part of the problem here is that the big delivery company will always win in SEO.

It doesn't in my experience. Google Five Guys near you, the actual first result ignoring ads will almost certainly be their website or even its order form. Same for every local restaurant with an order form I've tried it on.

A lot of "local restaurant order forms" are actually sites set up by the likes of GrubHub, Uber Eats, etc. Not all of them, but it's one of the sneaky ways they use to insert themselves.

Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement

#257

Post by lmilcin » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #210

lmilcin wrote: post #137

Only problem with this is definitions. Why does it need to refer to "online delivery platforms" when it could refer to anybody that poses to deliver the food for you without express permission of the business owner? I mean, if the worry is that the owner should be able to have say in how the food is to be delivered, it should not matter how the actual order was made, whether it was through online platform, by phone,…

It’s trying to avoid rolling in other small scale activity that should be allowed. If I tell my kids’ soccer team that I’ll pick up 15 McDonalds burgers for them, I’ve “arranged for the delivery of an order” under the law’s definition, so I’m in trouble unless the definition of “food delivery platform” exempts me.

Are you commercially providing a service of picking up burgers? There is already a clear distinction in law between commercial and non-commercial activity.

Obviously my single sentence isn't yet enough to be standalone law. But you rightly pointed non-commercial activity could be exempt from this restriction.

I can imagine somebody picking up burgers and delivering them to homeless people. I believe this could be exempt as non-commercial activity.

There are again questions, what if Uber decides to pick up burgers and deliver them to homeless? One could say that even if deliver it for free it is still commercial activity (because they obviously stand to gain PR which has a value). Also they can just ask a burger place for permission to buy burgers from them for homeless people, I see no problem with that.

Also all attempts at distinction of small and large scale seem to have issues with them. First is the arbitrary definition of what small and large scale is.

Then what if you are wealthy man and decide to feed all homeless in LA for Christmas? I guess you could try to get permission from the owner of the establishment but I don't see why you shouldn't just be able to decide, in a spur of the moment, to send a dozen of your minions to various establishments and just buy the stuff.

What then if Uber decides that their minions who deliver goods are actually small businesses providing the service on its own and use Uber's platform as a service to coordinate them with buyers? How would large/small scale operation be defined?

To summarize, I think:

- commercial / non-commercial distinction is better than large/small "scale" (however defined),

- non-commercial organizations and private individuals should not be subject of this law

- commercial activity most likely is calculated to gain something from this whether the delivery is or isn't paid for by the consumer and so I think it should not be exempt,

- "small scale" commercial activity can probably be perverted by corporate lawyers.

- if the law is restricted to online platforms, there is possibility corporations are going to work around it so that it does not meet the criteria of online platform.

Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement

#258

Post by loceng » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #218

ghaff wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The misrepresentation would seem to be the big thing. Someone, let's call them Joe, publishes a list of restaurants online with links to their menus and offers to deliver for the price of the order with tip plus a $10 delivery fee. And has a clear disclaimer that they're not affiliated with the businesses. That seems pretty unobjectionable. And how would the restaurant even know? [ADDED: Subject of course to any heal…

> And has a clear disclaimer that they're not affiliated with the businesses. This isn’t actually clear. GrubHub’s about page: “ Grubhub is a leading online and mobile food-ordering and delivery marketplace with the largest and most comprehensive network of restaurant partners. ” This tells me as a customer that the restaurant is a consenting partner. This is a lie. EDIT: a commentor below had issue with my use of th…

No, you're misinterpreting it - they don't claim all of the restaurants are partners, just that they have the most comprehensive network of restaurant partners.

Edit: -4 downvotes so far for highlighting a person's bad logic - good start to the New Year for critical thinking on HN; I'll assume they're projecting their anger for the topic onto me, their emotion overriding their logic.

Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement

#259

Post by mytailorisrich » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #204

lkbm wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? The practice involved is in response to the absolute garbage of misrepresentation of a restaurant's telephone number to be intercepted by your own call centre's. Sure, that's bad and that should be banned. But that's not the practice banned. What got banned is me paying someone to pick up my food for me. I could still run a website that misrepresents the restaurant's telephone number and intercepts your calls.…

That’s not what the law does. It addresses the problem GP pointed out, and it bans the service you’ve described as well. It also doesn’t forbid you from paying someone to pick your food up for you. Here’s the relevant text: > 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 del…

Who's going to setup a food pickup business in 2021 without being an online business? "please fax your order and card details"?

This bill does not require restaurants' permission if you're not an online business, that's true, but in practice that's not really any use to avoid having to get permission.

Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement

#260

Post by SamoyedFurFluff » Fri, Jan 01, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

DGAP wrote: post #190

HN is so strangely anti tech and anti startup at this point. I'm not sure exactly who's on the platform at this point. Unemployed OSS devs bitter that everyone else in the valley is making more money than them?

How is this anti-tech or anti-startup? This doesn’t have anything to do with tech at all. I would welcome talking about purely technical subjects, like distributed database innovation. There’s nothing technical about impersonating a restaurant?