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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

#471

Post by wpietri »

ashtonkem wrote: post #316
wpietri wrote: post #309

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…

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…

Before VCs started trying to buy delivery market share and take a slice of restaurant profits, the restaurants that offered delivery were the ones that were well suited for it. Others would offer take-out, but there it was up to customers to solve the travel-time problem, so people generally got take-out from nearby restaurants.

Now, though, consumers are being offered the food they love delivered to their door, with no hint that it might be a bad idea. I'm not surprised at all that they are unhappy that the thing they were sold turned out to be disappointing. I agree that if one understands all the logistical, marketplace, and culinary factors, it doesn't make much sense to blame the restaurant. But one of the glories of capitalism is that purchasers don't have to understand a thing. They just have to have money and a desire.

I think the real bad actors here are the delivery companies here, not the consumers. The delivery companies are selling something they really can't deliver. It shouldn't be up to consumers to figure all this out on an order-by-order basis.

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

#472

Post by wasdfff »

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…

It may hurt future competitors but the law is still good because it protects the reputation of local businesses. This is like complaining that its illegal to pollute the local river. Or those arguments from backwards nations that they should be allowed to pollute like the western world did in the 1900s. Yes, that makes you money, but individual profits are rarely collectively beneficial.

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

#473

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

ashtonkem wrote: post #316
wpietri wrote: post #309

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…

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…

Ironically, the main reason pizza works so well for delivery is because the drivers have specialized boxes that hold in heat, maintains the right humidity conditions, and is easy to handle.

The third party app drivers don't have this, so pizza delivered from them often arrives cold and soggy, and sometimes even smashed to one side of the box.

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

#474

Post by wpietri »

ianhorn wrote: post #413
wpietri wrote: post #309

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…

Does delivery tend to be different from takeout in your experience? It does in mine. The gap between finishing prep and me eating it is much longer for delivery, except that the apps almost all lie about it. While your order is sitting there waiting for a driver for 10 minutes, they tell you, no way! It’s not our inability to get a driver there quickly! It’s the restaurant who is still wrapping up right now! If they…

That makes a lot of sense, but personally I wouldn't know. I refuse to use the delivery service apps. I despise them both for how they treat their workers and how they treat the restaurants. If a restaurant doesn't offer their own delivery (as e.g., pizza places used to), I'll pick it up myself.

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

#475

Post by wasdfff »

swyx wrote: 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…

If companies need to exploit small businesses to compete, they shouldn't be in business in the first place. Boo hoo to all the stillborn future door dashes who wont be able to exploit local businesses.

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

#476

Post by Melting_Harps »

It has to be said, that the combination of Delivery app incompetence and exploitative business models working in tandem with Government corruption and lack of aid for the Food Industry in the US its a fucking miracle it has lasted this long at all.

I'm afraid to say that the Industry to me will never be the same, and what it is today even as it defies Shutdown orders will not be enough for it to be close to what it was as the finance channels are breaking down before our eyes--take out models are less than ~10% of revenue from what a normal 100% service brought in. I always thought the Industry needed to be disrupted as it was wasteful, abusive and over all toxic in many ways. But the fact that so many are resrtin to Gofund me crowdsourcing then actual food sales screams that we've seen the same thing happen to the Restaurant Industry that happened to the Health Care Industry. I've been in both and the parallels are quite obvious to see.

But what we've seen with COIVD is the systemic take-down and consolidation of the Food Industry from both Private (and I use that word loosely) and Public sides which only really benefited the massive Corporate players who benefited from PPP and have the resources and financial and legal wherewithal that small private restaurant owners can't afford. Wallstreet and VC firms like Softbank also made out like bandits with such poor models like Doordash IPO.

I'm sad to say this but I think the US will be a culinary wasteland in all but the food truck and high end dining end points, everything in between will be sucked up by large corporations and Ghost kitchen models. We had made so much progress that one can't help but feel entirely dejected about it, especially now as Food Education is even more dire than ever as 70% of all Americans are classified as fat and obese [0].

I just hope people support their local farmers and begin cooking more at home then continue to pour money into what has clearly been a hi-jacking of small entrepreneurial people trying to advance the very low standard of culinary edification in the US in relation to Europe and Asia.

It's a sad situation, but I'm retired as a chef for good now I'm glad to say I exited at a high that I think will never be seen again.

0: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm

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

#477

Post by ryandrake »

imtringued wrote: post #457
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.

The difference being: Nintendo has entire buildings full of lawyers just waiting for the go-ahead to crush out your life with lawsuits, while Pam's House Of Burgers has trouble making payroll every week and has never hired a lawyer since its founding.

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

#479

Post by anandsuresh »

This law is dated September 24, 2020. If it has indeed been the law for around 3 months now, any ideas if/how much this impacts Doordash, Uber Eats and others? From my own research, it looks like these delivery companies do have a number of restaurants listed on their platform that they don't have any explicit agreements with, yet have not heard/read anything to the effect of litigations based on this law.

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

#480

Post by wpietri »

listenallyall wrote: post #341
wpietri wrote: post #309

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.

This restaurant is in a neighborhood. The reason they offer take-out at all was because neighbors just wanted to pick something up and eat at home. That's probably not 30 seconds, but it's way different than the amount of time a delivery company ads. It's also psychologically different if the consumer is the one in direct control of the delay.
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