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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

#61

Post by ratww »

roenxi wrote: post #59
ratww wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unless there is some rather serious context I'm missing - and as I said in another comment - 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. I don't think you can use Apps to sen…

As I answered to another poster, I believe the keyword here is "take orders".

You can't take orders on behalf of others, but you can freely arrange for someone in an app to "make an order" for you and then fetch the meal. That's my interpretation.

Of course it could/should be better worded, though.

EDIT: Also, someone also mentioned that courier apps are not "food delivery platforms", so the first few words of the paragraph you quoted already excludes them.

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

#62

Post by roenxi »

Ekaros wrote: post #56
ehnto wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think key question here would be definition of "food delivery platform". Generic courier service or personal assistant or even taxi driver is likely not to qualify under such title.

The linked bill is not verbose, it is effectively 4 paragraphs.

> Food delivery platform” means an online business that acts as an intermediary between consumers and multiple food facilities to submit food orders from a consumer to a participating food facility, and to arrange for the delivery of the order from the food facility to the consumer.

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

#63

Post by whiddershins »

kome wrote: post #58
supernova87a wrote: post #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 han…

"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?" It's an old debate, the "lochner era" debate ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_era ). "Agreeing on conditions" is not enough to make something fair. You may agree because you are desperate and you need cash, you may go straight to voluntary serfdom... Society…

That’s an argument, but many think this doesn’t work in practice.

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

#64

Post by boomboomsubban »

roenxi wrote: post #9

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

> If someone feels like sending a courier to buy take away then that should be legal.

Should it be legal for a business to ban somebody for any non-protected reason?

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

#67

Post by roenxi »

ratww wrote: post #61
roenxi wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless there is some rather serious context I'm missing - and as I said in another comment - 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. I don't think you can use Apps to sen…

As I answered to another poster, I believe the keyword here is "take orders" . You can't take orders on behalf of others, but you can freely arrange for someone in an app to "make an order" for you and then fetch the meal. That's my interpretation. Of course it could/should be better worded, though. EDIT: Also, someone also mentioned that courier apps are not "food delivery platforms", so the first few words of the p…

So the argument is I should accept this silly law because I can get around it by handling all the coordination between Uber and the Restaurant to make it clear to both that I was the one who placed the order and Uber is acting strictly as a courier service with no extras?

That is silly. Uber can do the ordering and I can enjoy my evening without phoning people up.

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

#68

Post by dxgarnish »

WalterBright wrote: post #65

If a person decides to buy a pizza from X and then sell it to Y, don't they have a right to?

It's a good question. There's two parts to it, whether the law allows for that, and whether or not the law should allow for it?

There are certainly some classes of items/products/services that allow X to legally bar Y from selling it to Z: airline tickets, sub-leasing apartments, software etc.

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

#69

Post by ratww »

roenxi wrote: post #67
ratww wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I answered to another poster, I believe the keyword here is "take orders" . You can't take orders on behalf of others, but you can freely arrange for someone in an app to "make an order" for you and then fetch the meal. That's my interpretation. Of course it could/should be better worded, though. EDIT: Also, someone also mentioned that courier apps are not "food delivery platforms", so the first few words of the p…

So the argument is I should accept this silly law because I can get around it by handling all the coordination between Uber and the Restaurant to make it clear to both that I was the one who placed the order and Uber is acting strictly as a courier service with no extras? That is silly. Uber can do the ordering and I can enjoy my evening without phoning people up.

Uber Eats or Uber Taxi? Uber Eats doesn't engage in the practices this law is trying to curb since they already have agreements in place with the restaurants (AFAIK), so you won't have to phone up anyone if you use Uber Eats.

If you're taking about Uber the Taxi app, or some courier service, then this law doesn't apply to them since they're not "food delivery platforms", and you can just ask them to order on your behalf without phoning anyone.

EDIT: Btw I'm not making any argument in favour or against the law, I'm just doing my best and trying to interpret it.

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

#70

Post by th3iedkid »

If cloud-provider X is providing a managed-service A , which is otherwise available as an open-source project Y. Does X need an agreement from Y to run the managed service ? If X does a bad job of providing value from Y, isn't X showcasing Y in a bad-light as well?
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