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

leginfo.legislature.ca.gov

341–350 of 663 posts

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

#341
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…

> some consumers will still tend to blame Sally's Piping Hot Burgers when their burger arrives soggy and cold A friend who manages an excellent restaurant says that this is indeed a problem. One of their signature dishes is fried chicken, and it is glorious. They optimize everything about the meal with the understanding that it's 15-30 seconds from the kitchen to the table. But those are the wrong choices for 15-30 m…

Seems the remedy is simply to not offer fried chicken for takeout, end of story. A customer picking up his/her own order to take home is certainly not arriving in 30 seconds either.

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

#343
post #304
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On other hand should then the bad behaviour be allowed to continue forever? Isn't something late better than never?

Yes but if you don’t also punish the companies who did the bad thing then you end up just giving them a moat. I’m of two minds about our legal system in this regard. It’s nice that you don’t really ever have to be worried about getting punished for things you did in the past suddenly being declared illegal but in doing so it rewards entities who have no conscience. And large groups of people acting together are quite…

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

#344
post #124

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…

I went to pickup a take out order for my wife the other day and the cashier asked if this was a personal order? I was so confused I didn't even know how to answer and just asked "personal order meaning what". She answered, "I mean you're not with door dash or something right, you personally made the order?". It was a pretty baffling exchange and maybe this misrepresentation speaks to some of that.

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

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because civil laws only protect people rich enough to hire lawyers.

This should not be down voted. The idea that a popular little family owned and operated Indian restaurant named "Bombay Curry" and still reeling from COVID-19 restrictions can some how sue Skip the Diehes or Uber Eats for Trademark infringement is absolutely ludicrous.

Yeah, Uber is a company which is involved in legal battles with governments all over the world. I am sure they would make it a real pain to sue them. The idea of restaurants prusuing trademark cases against Uber is ridiculous.

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

#347
post #124

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…

This is actually the Postmates business model; they hire a delivery person to go to a restaurant, stand in line, and make the order. At no point does the restaurant know of the buyer’s existence.

Well, minus the clear disclaimer, and also minus tipping people at the restaurant (tip goes to courier)

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

#348
post #97

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.

They could simply make a single pizza, and then deliver it to themselves N times.

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

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some consumers will still tend to blame Sally's Piping Hot Burgers when their burger arrives soggy and cold A friend who manages an excellent restaurant says that this is indeed a problem. One of their signature dishes is fried chicken, and it is glorious. They optimize everything about the meal with the understanding that it's 15-30 seconds from the kitchen to the table. But those are the wrong choices for 15-30 m…

Seems the remedy is simply to not offer fried chicken for takeout, end of story. A customer picking up his/her own order to take home is certainly not arriving in 30 seconds either.

So there's nothing wrong with takeout; during COVID you might buy it takeout, and eat it at a nearby table. Even outside of COVID, you might eat it in your car. This law is to ensure the restaurant has control over whether it's the customer taking it out (and it's then up to them how long they wait to eat it), or a third party (and the customer has no control over how long it waits before they eat it).

Because otherwise, there is nothing preventing Doordash or similar from adding the location to their app. The restaurant may not offer them favorable terms, or otherwise work with them, but even without official support, Doordash interopts with the restaurant's online ordering system for pickup (or even involves a human to call it in), sends a driver to pick it up ("Here to pick up an order for Steve"), and then delivers it. Nothing the restaurant can do to prevent it.

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

#350

I admit that I have yet to reconcile my own somewhat conflicted feelings about these recent bills (e.g. the one voted on in Nov 2020 about drivers as contractors, versus this one). For example, I'm in favor of regulating tech companies from misrepresenting restaurant menus as their own, and extracting a hefty margin off restaurants' barely-surviving profits by merely being a middleman aggregator. Yet on the other han…

I don't understand how couriers are extracting any margin from restaurants.

The courier price (in the app) isn't the same price as the one when you physically go into the restaurant. IIRC its 25~35% higher.

Source - good friend is a restaurant owner.

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