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

leginfo.legislature.ca.gov

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

#431

Post by Dylan16807 »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #328
ecf wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should regulation like this be enacted due to shitty consumer behavior that is evident everywhere, not just online reviews? I really don’t know who this is helping because I’m not going to start using a more inconvenient way of ordering because these restaurants want things their way. It’ll only result in these local businesses losing access to the $750 I pay in delivery each month.

> due to shitty consumer behavior This is not shitty consumer behavior. It is lying... a company pretending to be another company or a representative of another company... when they are not. If you buy a fake Toyota car and it sucks, do you blame Toyota then complain when a law is passed making this fraud illegal?

> is lying... a company pretending to be another company or a representative of another company... when they are not.

This law affects much more than that.

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

#433

Post by ghaff »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #386
CydeWeys wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also undeniably a good thing for customers as well. Using an unexpected intermediary in a transaction is a terrible experience. If I see a restaurant on GrubHub then I want to know that that restaurant wants orders coming through GrubHub. Otherwise, I'll be much better off calling up the restaurant directly. As it stands, I currently have to use Google Maps as my restaurant portal, using the restaurant's website…

Honestly, I had thought that it was a partnership. For one, only a rather small subset of the restaurants in my area show up on Grubhub. I imagined that outsourcing the delivery function of their business would be a net win.

Around where I live, the listed restaurants seem to be mostly chain fast food restaurants. The local pizza place I order from doesn't seem to be listed nor are most of the other local take-out restaurants I would recognize the names of from driving by. I've looked because one of my credit cards gave me a free DoorDash subscription and there's literally nothing I'm interested in.

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

#434

Post by nradov »

_huayra_ wrote: post #276
save_ferris wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Isn't part of being a successful business knowing where to put your energy as a business owner? You're saying that restaurants don't necessarily have the ability to make the best decisions for their business, therefore they should be able…

This is already the case with bigger companies. As is the usual case with a lot "disruptive" firms, that "growth hacking" comes from exploiting some regulatory loophole that no one else has seen yet (e.g. most things related to the "sharing economy"). I'm pretty sure if I just declared myself to be a sales partner (idk the term?) of Cisco, IBM, Oracle, etc and just resold their gear, I'd be in hot water legally becau…

There is nothing illegal about purchasing hardware products from those companies and then selling them on to other customers, even without a formal sales agreement in place. This is the first sale doctrine. However software is different and licenses can't necessarily be resold.

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

#435

Post by jdeibele »

listenallyall wrote: post #245
m3kw9 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my resturant didn’t sign up for a middle man, don’t force yourself in between. That seems reasonable

Careful there... Apple (or any manufacturer) could say the same thing about Ebay. Any sports team or band could say it about Stubhub. Nike could say it about StockX.

The First Sale Doctrine [1] is what prohibits Apple or any manufacturer from preventing me selling my Mac on eBay.

It used to be that you could buy or sell airline tickets to people. There used to be ads in the newspaper classifieds. The airlines are very happy that that's not possible now.

Absolutely many companies in many industries would be happy to prevent people from doing X, both from a quality control and profit-maximizing perspective.

But if I buy a ticket from StubHub or a scalper on the street, the experience should be the same. Having a delivery company insert themselves into the process means they make accept orders where they don't have enough drivers, have to transport it too far from the restaurant to the customer (many/most restaurants have limits on delivery area for time/quality), etc.

So this seems completely different because the delivery companies are inserting themselves into the process as though they were endorsed by the restaurant.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...

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

#436

Post by anticensor »

pseudalopex wrote: post #371
rattray wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Some delivery platforms masqueraded as restaurants to customers and customers to restaurants. How can they opt out if they don't know it's happening?

It reads like what dropshippers did.

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

#437

Post by whoisburbansky »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #429
ashtonkem wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m incredibly perplexed why people do this. Even pre pandemic it was patently obvious to anyone who paid attention that certain foods just don’t deliver well. Before the internet became a thing, the only places that regularly offered delivery were pizza joints and Chinese food, because both of those survive delivery well! I ordered delivery burgers once, from a restaurant close by, and learned my lesson that burgers…

> I ordered delivery burgers once, from a restaurant close by, and learned my lesson that burgers are best enjoyed immediately and not 10 minutes later. Weird. It takes me notably longer than that to eat a burger in a restaurant, and I never notice any quality problems over that period of time.

The ten minutes it spends on your plate is a very different ten minutes than those spent tightly wrapped in foil in a car; one makes the burger a lot soggier than the other.

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

#438

Post by retrac »

jimmaswell wrote: post #192
josefx wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal is to kill the competition, no local delivery service can compete with a few million in VC funding. Once you are the only delivery in town you can raise the prices all you want and force the local restaurants into one sided deals on your terms. It also has a rather questionable legality

> no local delivery service can compete with a few million in VC funding A simple ordering form on the restaurant's own website always gets preference from me and seems to usually end up being the first result on Google/Google Maps.

But people like you and me are in the minority.

Most young people I know, when they want to order takeout, go directly to their preferred delivery service on their smartphone, select from what comes up, and consider nothing else.

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

#439

Post by Dylan16807 »

ghaff wrote: post #272
AmericanChopper wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law prohibits a courier from being commissioned to place an order, collect it, and deliver it to you. It’s just criminalizing a perfectly legitimate form of arbitrage. The law isn’t about couriers impersonating restaurants either, because that’s just fraud and it’s already illegal. It’s just another example of a terrible law created at the behest of businesses that aren’t competent enough to keep up with changes…

None of these Uber-for-X things are an issue at small scale, like a courier or other type of shared assistant ordering and delivering a pizza for you. Absolutely no one cares no matter what the letter of the law is. (And it's not really a food delivery platform at that point anyway.) The problem is when it's a growth-oriented SV company.

Oh boy I love selective enforcement.

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

#440

Post by ghaff »

nradov wrote: post #434
_huayra_ wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is already the case with bigger companies. As is the usual case with a lot "disruptive" firms, that "growth hacking" comes from exploiting some regulatory loophole that no one else has seen yet (e.g. most things related to the "sharing economy"). I'm pretty sure if I just declared myself to be a sales partner (idk the term?) of Cisco, IBM, Oracle, etc and just resold their gear, I'd be in hot water legally becau…

There is nothing illegal about purchasing hardware products from those companies and then selling them on to other customers, even without a formal sales agreement in place. This is the first sale doctrine. However software is different and licenses can't necessarily be resold.

And, of course, many hardware products do have software components these days. But, yes, in general you can resell hardware without a formal agreement. You just can't claim to be an authorized partner or reseller given that implies certain training levels, etc.
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