This is a silly law. If someone feels like sending a courier to buy take away then that should be legal.
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
#42This 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.
> 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.
Nothing there is talking about apps or listings.
Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#43This 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
#44Why 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…
It puts the restaurants back in a position of control over their own business operations, I think that's fine. If you want to work with the business to draw value from them, you'll have to arrange it. People are looking at this like it's the customer versus the restaurants, it's not, it's about mediating the relationship between two commercial operations and the vast majority of law is about just that kind of thing.
Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm not sure I understand the suggestion. Why shouldn't a courier service be allowed to list a business to get something from. That's like saying "people can't use mapping services". This doesn't feel like exploitation to me but maybe I don't understand your position fully.
This might be accompanied by the service taking their cut out of every meal ordered through the site, forcing the restaurant to lose money on the orders.
That's not just listing, it's a racket.
GrubHub was caught doing this, I believe.
Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think sending someone to perform a task is the same as taking an order , though. The restaurant is still the one taking the order for the food itself in the case of a courier. Also the law seem to only include "food delivery platforms", which exclude couriers. (Of course, I might be wrong, but it seems that the intent of the law is to stop impersonation, not couriers).
Why can't I pay someone to place an order and pick it up for me? Can't I have someone go shop on my behalf at non-restaurant businesses? And if so, isn't it reasonable that a menu of options be shown with items and the costs? I agree that there should be transparency about who is delivering the food, there should be no impersonation of the restaurant, no false listing of phone numbers, and so on. But allowing restaur…
What I believe the law is forbidding is the lack of transparency, the false listing of phone numbers and taking orders on behalf of someone else.
EDIT: Btw, I'm not downvoting you as I can't downvote replies. I have upvoted to counter it.
Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The linked bill says > 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. Nothing there is talking about apps or listings.
Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did they made a profit off this?
Doordash priced the pizza at $16, but the pizza place charged $24. Presumably a 'growth hack' to get more users. The pizza place, seeing the difference, bought pizzas for $16 and received $24 from Door Dash, so for each purchase they were $8 better off. They also ordered plain pizza dough in larger quantities, for more profit. Presumably because they didn't have to actually make the full pizza.
Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#49For 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 hand, I don't think that tech companies are improperly classifying delivery people's labor as contract work and need to be stopped.
Maybe it's that the first is an involuntary participation without someone's agreement, while the 2nd is someone agreeing to work under given conditions?
My opinions are evolving still.
Re: California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement
#50always 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 th…