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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

#451

Post by rsync »

ghaff wrote: post #445
rsync wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is undeniably a good thing if you put yourself in the shoes of the restaurant." Maybe. I have no idea. What I do know is, the following statement is 1A protected free speech: If you pay me enough money, I will drive to the Novato In'N'Out and buy a cheeseburger and deliver it to you. I offer this delivery service to anyone who wishes to negotiate my (extremely high) delivery rates. This is posted in a public pl…

You are clearly not a "food delivery platform" which this explicitly concerns. Obviously you can pay people to run errands for you, including picking up food and people can advertise their services.

Yes, of course that is the case but a "real" delivery service is only one or two contortions away from "publishing" their "listings" in a way that is just like what I wrote.

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

#452

Post by DevKoala »

wskinner wrote: post #415
DevKoala wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? In this case small businesses were being abused by delivery apps. Once these apps captured the customers of the small business, they converted the customers to their alternative offering restaurant. This is a good piece of legislature unless I am missing something.

DoorDash and Postmates would deliver from every restaurant, whether or not they had a relationship with that restaurant. This helped them grow quickly. A DoorDash competitor that started today would not be able to grow that way because it is now illegal to deliver from a restaurant without the restaurant’s consent. DoorDash is already large and has a well known brand, so this doesn’t hurt them. It does hurt future co…

That makes sense, I see that point, but I think that stopping the bleeding is more important. Moreover the new set of rules can also benefit small competitors in the delivery space by allowing them to sign exclusive agreements with small businesses.

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

#453

Post by Dylan16807 »

whoisburbansky wrote: post #437
Dylan16807 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So the problem is how it's packed, and delivery could be done correctly. Okay, that makes sense.

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

#454

Post by ghaff »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #439
ghaff wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Scale does matter. There are a ton of things that people can and do do for a bit of cash under the table like give a haircut even though they don't have a license, rent out an apartment to a friend of a friend for a few weeks because you'll be traveling, etc. And those same things would probably be a problem if they were pursued as an ongoing business. Which, the general silliness of some occupational licensing aside, I don't really have a problem with.

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

#455

Post by jiofih »

cleak wrote: post #289
jiofih wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That “free” advertising is competing with your own channels (without the 30% commission). Also there are uncountable reports of them fucking up the delivery itself by not having appropriate containers, when the restaurant they are dealing doesn’t actually do deliveries. That will lose you customers and hurt your brand.

I’m confused. How is GrubHub getting a 30% commission out of restaurants that don’t actively partner with them?

They only do this ruse for a while, then after controlling a good chunk of the business they “sell” their services officially to the restaurant, including commission. It’s not a charity.

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

#456

Post by jstanley »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #382
jstanley wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they're not forcing themselves in between. All the customers you already had are still going directly to you. They're just widening the pool of potential customers.

By lying . In-N-Out is infamous for dealing with this. They sued one of the delivery sites for trademark infringement. “But why?” you might ask. Because customers are dumb sometimes and would blame In-N-Out when their food arrived cold of their milkshakes melted.[a] Sure, In-N-Out was getting more money, but it was hurting their brand (which caused money loses). They never approved being on the site, but that didn’t…

Sure, I completely agree. They shouldn't lie.

I was arguing that they're not "forcing" themselves in the middle of any transaction. They're a separate route for the transaction.

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

#457

Post by imtringued »

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…

Yeah it's extremely weird. Nintendo will call lawyers on you if there is even a hint of a trade mark violation yet when restaurants are directly being defrauded there is no recourse.

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

#458

Post by akrymski »

Yet another law to reduce competition in the delivery space and help existing monopolies. I'm sure GrubHub and DoorDash are cheering.

Indexing and aggregating data is already covered by numerous laws. If Google can aggregate restaurant listings without permission then why can't others? Linking is ok, showing a call button is ok, but delivering isn't?

The law around copyright is clear: you can't copy a restaurants menu without permission the same way you can't copy someone's blog post. This should be enough.

If I want to pay a service to drive, purchase and deliver something for me it should be a human right, the same way that anyone should be able to walk into a restaurant and order without being refused service.

Why don't restaurants want delivery companies doing this? The typical argument is bad Yelp reviews. Instead of blaming delivery companies why not blame Yelp for not authenticating their reviews? Same way that you shouldn't be able to leave an Amazon review without buying the product you shouldn't be able to leave a yelp review without booking a table at the restaurant. It's Yelp's fault for not authenticating reviews. Restaurants should be benefiting from delivery companies distributing their products, and there is nothing preventing them from offering direct to consumer deliveries themselves

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

#459

Post by cleak »

radlad wrote: post #444
rsync wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is undeniably a good thing if you put yourself in the shoes of the restaurant." Maybe. I have no idea. What I do know is, the following statement is 1A protected free speech: If you pay me enough money, I will drive to the Novato In'N'Out and buy a cheeseburger and deliver it to you. I offer this delivery service to anyone who wishes to negotiate my (extremely high) delivery rates. This is posted in a public pl…

Apple is a private company, not a public entity. AFAIK, your "free speech" is not protected here.

Companies are people too.

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

#460

Post by imtringued »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #431
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It doesn't because you can always ask for permission.
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