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

leginfo.legislature.ca.gov

41–50 of 663 posts

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

#41
post #9

This is a silly law. If someone feels like sending a courier to buy take away then that should be legal.

On the one hand the law seems overly broad, on the other there was apparently no way for restaurant owners to protect their names against bad third party delivery services.

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

#42
post #17
post #9

This 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.

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

#43
post #14
post #9

This 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.

The problem is that if food isn't handled correctly it makes people sick. This law is about food safety.

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

#44

Why 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's not terribly difficult to put together the arrangements with businesses who are amenable. DD and friends are just annoyed they'll have to do some minor business relations work instead of drawing value out of a business and then palming customer support off to them, while they never knew they were ever part of the transaction in the first place.

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

#45
post #17

Earlier 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.

They've been known to go as far as buying domains for the restaurants and hosting the menus on them, basically inserting themselves as a middleman, then threatening the restaurant with consequences if they don't pay up for the favour.

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

#46
post #27

Earlier 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…

I think you misunderstood my reply: I don't think the law is forbidding someone making an order on your behalf and picking it up for you. I doubt it will affect normal courier services.

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

#47
post #42
post #17

Earlier 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.

That wording leaves room for personally arranged general couriers in my opinion, but that would end up getting defined in court at some point down the road.

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

#48
post #24

Earlier 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.

That makes more sense than someone just offering a free delivery.

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

#49
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 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

#50
post #15

always 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…

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