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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

#481

Post by wpietri »

amerkhalid wrote: post #362
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…

This is fair point but what stops these businesses from refusing to do food pick up. Especially, if they know food won't taste good if not consumed within a few minutes. I rather resturants remove to-go option instead of blaming delivery companies.

In my friend's case, it's because people in the neighborhood sometimes like to pick things up. Why should they penalize those people just because delivery companies have without their permission decided to start advertising their food?

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

#482

Post by wasdfff »

st1x7 wrote: post #478

Threads like this one remind me just how different the US is from Europe. It's astounding to think that it was even possible until now for delivery apps to operate in this way, or that this is somehow a controversial issue.

Thanks to the lobbying system, most laws and regulation in the US serve to protect and enrich moneyed interests beyond all else. If something is actually collectively beneficial to the wider populace, its a happy accident. Politics in the US make much more sense when understood through the lobbying lens.

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

#483

Post by mytailorisrich »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #462
mytailorisrich wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumers clearly don't think that these platforms are doing them any harm considering how popular they are. Consumers like to be able to order from home through an app from a wide range of restaurants. This is actually the problem restaurants are facing: How to adapt to change technology and consumers habits? A bit like traditional taxis were blown out of the water by Uber. Restaurants don't have to offer delivery/t…

I'd like to focus on this particular argument, because it's a fallacy I see a lot: > This is actually the problem restaurants are facing: How to adapt to change technology and consumers habits? The implication is that technology is an inevitable, uncontrollable force. But of course that's not true: we create technology and the laws around it. Restaurants only need to adapt because GrubHub, et al. have decided they wa…

That is not a fallacy. That what has been happening, is happening, and will happen. The world is always changing and this is indeed inevitable.

I am puzzled by you putting the blame on these platforms. As said consumers like the service, if they didn't these platforms would have been forgotten failed experiments by now.

Who are you to decide that this is wrong and that people should not be able to order food for home delivery?

You are also ignoring another already stated point: Restaurants are not required to offer takeaway. They do it if they so decide. If you're a restaurant owner and don't like takeaway then just don't offer it and focus on the 'traditional' experience.

It is quite neutral, really. Different, but not inherently better or worse than it was.

We should be careful not to make this an emotional and ideological issue.

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

#484

Post by RestlessMind »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #453
whoisburbansky wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not only about packing. If you take your first bite a minute after a dish is ready in the kitchen, it leaves a much different impression than the first bite you take after 10 minutes in a ride. The extra time spent in the delivery is always going to make a huge different in how the food tastes, at least for certain dishes (dumplings, e.g.).

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

#485

Post by AmericanChopper »

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.

Do you have a reason for why you think that is the problem?

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

#486

Post by wasdfff »

nojvek wrote: post #465

When I saw the YC post about praising DoorDash and Airbnb, it was clear that YC endorses doing borderline illegal things in the name of growth. Same with Pg’s posts of how to create billionaires. In a way he’s not wrong, about hacking taken to a whole new level of messing with entire cities and industries. But as a greater society, without proper regulation, we’ll have a dystopia. The rich are insanely rich while the…

It just blows my mind how, reliably, selfish people end up in positions of power. They then work the system to increase wealth or power as much as possible, everything else including the environment that we all live off of be damned, because you will be dead in 50 years anyway.

Where are the altruists? Chanting in some buddhist temple? Why are things so evil?

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

#487

Post by jakelazaroff »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #483
jakelazaroff wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to focus on this particular argument, because it's a fallacy I see a lot: > This is actually the problem restaurants are facing: How to adapt to change technology and consumers habits? The implication is that technology is an inevitable, uncontrollable force. But of course that's not true: we create technology and the laws around it. Restaurants only need to adapt because GrubHub, et al. have decided they wa…

That is not a fallacy. That what has been happening, is happening, and will happen. The world is always changing and this is indeed inevitable. I am puzzled by you putting the blame on these platforms. As said consumers like the service, if they didn't these platforms would have been forgotten failed experiments by now. Who are you to decide that this is wrong and that people should not be able to order food for home…

The world changing is inevitable, but the manner in which it changes is not — especially with regard to technology, which is created entirely by humans.

But that's not even the issue at hand. The actual technological change — aggregating restaurant menus and allowing consumers to order from them via one interface — is orthogonal to the discussion here. We're talking about the specific business practices that companies implementing that technology have settled upon.

I'm putting the blame on platforms because the change they're pushing involves predatory behavior without consent of the restaurants. That wasn't inevitable in any way — it was a deliberate choice made by delivery platforms to redirect money from restaurants to their investors.

> Who are you to decide that this is wrong and that people should not be able to order food for home delivery?

> You are also ignoring another already stated point: Restaurants are not required to offer takeaway.

These are both straw men. No one is saying that people shouldn't be able to order delivery. No one is saying that restaurants are forced to offer takeout. No one is even saying that delivery platforms shouldn't exist!

The point is that the onus should be on delivery platforms to get restaurants to opt in, not on restaurants to be vigilant against predatory middlemen moving in without warning. That's where this starts and ends.

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

#488

Post by ghaff »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #467
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…

A local (actual, not American) Chinese joint makes by far the best soup dumplings in town. During the pandemic they’ve understandably switched to takeout only, but now their reviews are filled with people that are disappointed by dumplings that aren’t steaming hot inside and have holes because they stick to the takeout containers. I feel really bad for the owners - they’re forced to choose between endangering the liv…

I can't imagine getting takeout soup dumplings. They're almost getting a little too cooled down by the time you finish them in a restaurant. Dumplings that you pan fry at home can work reasonably well but, of course, a product that you have to partially cook yourself is not what a lot of people are looking for in take-out.

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

#489

Post by danans »

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…

Who is old enough to remember the McDLT?

https://youtu.be/UTSdUOC8Kac

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

#490

Post by AmericanChopper »

ehnto wrote: post #77
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…

This is going to sound a bit curmudgeonly, but why should hospitality bend over to some tech middlemen? Not every industry needs to "innovate" their way into surviving the VC bubble's attempts to disrupt it. Hospitality is a fundamental service that's been provided for centuries, and is a cornerstone of the economy. Second to that, the law doesn't prohibit it, it just makes the delivery service seek an arrangement fi…

> This is going to sound a bit curmudgeonly, but why should hospitality bend over to some tech middlemen?

Because that’s what their customers want, and providing something that their customers want should probably be one of the most important things for a business to do.

The only genuine harm that can be caused to these businesses by the delivery companies, is if the delivery company is legitimately impersonating the restaurant. Which as I said, would already be illegal.

The actual “harm” that this law addresses is somebody making a profit of providing a service that the restaurants think they deserve a cut of (just because?...). Hilariously, this type of arrangement is the most beneficial thing the restaurants could have. Because they’ll find if they’d try and make one of the arrangements with a company like UberEats, that what actually happens is the delivery company will be demanding a cut of their revenue instead.

Criminalizing a type of customer based on whether they intend to on sell the product after purchase is just entirely stupid. It’s one of the many stupid laws we have that only seek to protect dead business models that consumers no longer want. Just like the DMCA and all of the car dealership laws we have.

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