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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

#631

Post by sandworm101 »

cannaceo wrote: post #627
sandworm101 wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> were pizza joints and Chinese food Don't forget indian food. Much of that cuisine was specifically developed for delivery. The multitude of cultures and eating habits (vegetation, Muslim etc) in modernizing india meant that housewives would prepare hot lunches for their husbands away at work, food which was delivered by the famed Dabbawala network. Some modern restaurants are so proud of this that they deliver foo…

Amusingly, Indian food isn’t well suited for restaurant-style eating. The meal prep takes too long forcing restaurants to cut corners. It only works well with a limited, set menu.

Depends on how the chef runs the place. Indian food is difficult if one sticks to western notions of "made to order", each meal being started only after ordering. But a curry house will prep things like the curry base before opening, doing maybe 75% of the work before the first orders arrive. Then it goes quickly. In western cooking the skill is in the actual cooking, with indian food the skill comes in the non-cooking prep work.

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

#632

Post by behnamoh »

wutbrodo wrote: post #628
traceddd wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think delivery choices really have anything to do with someone’s intelligence. Some of the most intelligent people I know have horrible diets, some to the point of nearly refusing to eat anything but a few select dishes, others just extreme laziness when it comes to food. It’s a total afterthought. In this situation, I think it’s more that when you really want a burger, Chinese food just isn’t going to cut it…

The claim is not that you have to be dumb to want a suboptimal burger over optimal Chinese food. It's that it doesn't make sense to do so and then blame the restaurant for the burger not being as fresh as it would be if you got it in-person. Also note that I'm not claiming that this is simply due to people being dumb. It's just my experience that, in the absence of an explanation for why someone does something "obvio…

I know people have different degrees of intelligent judgment, but you should also consider the fact that people who order online have already accepted the absurd fees and taxes imposed by the app (19% fee on Doordash, 16% on Grubhub, + tips + taxes). If you're willing to pay extra money in order to get your desired food while you're busy doing your own work, isn't it reasonable to get mad at the restaurant and the app for handling the food poorly?

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

#633

Post by wutbrodo »

behnamoh wrote: post #632
wutbrodo wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim is not that you have to be dumb to want a suboptimal burger over optimal Chinese food. It's that it doesn't make sense to do so and then blame the restaurant for the burger not being as fresh as it would be if you got it in-person. Also note that I'm not claiming that this is simply due to people being dumb. It's just my experience that, in the absence of an explanation for why someone does something "obvio…

I know people have different degrees of intelligent judgment, but you should also consider the fact that people who order online have already accepted the absurd fees and taxes imposed by the app (19% fee on Doordash, 16% on Grubhub, + tips + taxes). If you're willing to pay extra money in order to get your desired food while you're busy doing your own work, isn't it reasonable to get mad at the restaurant and the ap…

> people who order online have already accepted the absurd fees and taxes imposed by the app (19% fee on Doordash, 16% on Grubhub, + tips + taxes).

Is this absurd? You have to balance it against the service you want, which is having someone drive to an arbitrary burger joint, wait for your order, and then drive it to your door. That's such an inefficient use of someone else's time that I'd expect to pay a lot for it. It's not clear to me that 15-20% is somehow "absurd". I get mild sticker shock on the few occasions I order delivery, but the sticker shock is directed at my own laziness, not price-gouging. Wasn't there an article on HN just yesterday calling these companies "parasites" for screwing investors, drivers, and restaurants, all in the name of delivering unreasonably low consumer prices?

> If you're willing to pay extra money in order to get your desired food while you're busy doing your own work, isn't it reasonable to get mad at the restaurant and the app for handling the food poorly?

Those standards don't extend infinitely. As the original comment I replied to says, some foods don't deliver well. If you get a burger delivered, it's probably not going to be as good as in the restaurant. This isn't just common sense; it's the type of common sense that a sufficiently intelligent person is usually not going to be able to avoid thinking about. As an upthread comment says, it's fine if you want a soggy burger, but expecting it to taste fresh off the grill is almost physically impossible.

The only way for the restaurant to get around this is by leaving items off of their delivery menu. But this would be a terrible idea: if I felt like a delivery burger, I wouldn't want a restuarant deciding for me that it's too low-quality to even be an option.

Fundamentally,the act we're talking about is complaining in a review that a (subsidized) delivered burger tastes like a delivered burger. It seems pretty irreducibly dumb to me.

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

#634

Post by Dylan16807 »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #624
Dylan16807 wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bad for the restaurant to be harmed this way, of course. But it's not a choice between "do nothing" and "force them to ask permission". Under this law, a restaurant might refuse permission for other reasons. And some of those reasons would be bad for consumers. If a similar rule was applied to non-food items, it could be a very harmful blow to the first sale doctrine.

> And some of those reasons would be bad for consumers. Can you give an example?

> Can you give an example?

Of a bad reason or a bad effect?

Bad reasons are a dime a dozen. Maybe they just don't want to. They don't like the idea, and they're stubborn. Or they made a deal with one or two companies and don't want to allow others, even though some customer would really prefer the disallowed ones or can't get service from the allowed ones.

For bad effects, it means that the customer can't get the food they want, even with 100% knowledge that it's a third party picking it up, and that the quality will be imperfect in a way that's not the restaurant's fault.

Here, let me quote someone else from this same comment page: "Last night I wanted w bottle of alcohol for new years celebration. I already had a few drinks so I didn't want to drive. Unfortunately no delivery service had an agreement with any local liquor stores."

And, I mean, for non-food items imagine how bad it would be if you needed explicit permission from the manufacturer to sell something on ebay. Food's not that different.

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

#635

Post by cutemonster »

souprock wrote: post #618
DangitBobby wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is pretty strange given that you see can see clearly a vast spectrum of different mental capabilities (from handicap to genius) your entire life. I guess it flies in the face of cultural virtues about how hard work will set you free.

People are kept separate. In first grade, I was in the "green" reading group, with just 4 or 5 out of about 30 kids. Nothing was ever said about abilities. I just assumed that the groups were random. I was the best in the green group by far, so it seemed that I was experiencing the other extreme of mental abilities. Late in the year, something inadvertently revealed to me that "green" was the best. To this day, I hav…

> People are kept separate

Good point. And they "self segregate" themselves too? If there're two kids, and one is a lot brighter than the other, i think both of them will tend to get frustrated when playing together or deciding what to do -- so they'll find others to play with.

Maybe this a bit applies to emotional intelligence too.

One's whole life, one a bit chooses people with similar "capabilities", without thinking about it?

And then, from time to time, one sees in the newspapers what the vastly different people do, and get surprised: can there really be such people, where are all those people

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

#636

Post by ashtonkem »

ghaff wrote: post #561
wutbrodo wrote: post #557

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. I don't say this with any malice, but a lot of people are just not that bright. Things that you think are "perplexingly obvious", to the point that you can't conceive of not thinking about them, just aren't to them.

More charitably. A lot of people really wanted food delivery in the pandemic who had never use it much before. And discovered, to their disappointment, that a lot of food deliveries were pretty bad.

There’s certainly something to that. Before the pandemic, I would have never thought to order a burger for delivery because that’s just not what one does. If I wanted delivery, I’d go for pizza or Thai food.

But during the pandemic I wanted a burger, and getting my car out sucked (yay city living), so I ordered a delivery burger. Immediately after that subpar experience I thought “oh, that’s why ordering delivery burgers isn’t the norm” and went back to ordering noodles and pizza instead.

It’s the leap from “culturally this isn’t a common thing to do (order a delivery burger), so obviously it’s the restaurants fault that my experience wasn’t as good as it would be in store” that I don’t get.

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

#637

Post by wan23 »

kuang_eleven wrote: post #549
bobthepanda wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually the Postmates business model; they hire a delivery person to go to a restaurant, stand in line, and make the order. At no point does the restaurant know of the buyer’s existence. Well, minus the clear disclaimer, and also minus tipping people at the restaurant (tip goes to courier)

With any luck, this will kill Postmates. That business model is deceitful at best, actively a scam more likely.

Postmates is so useful though. I think it's pretty clear in its marketing that it is a service that will go to a store or restaurant and buy the things you ask for, similar to the way Instacart works. Doordash on the other hand will sometimes do this without making clear which restaurants it has a relationship with or not. That causes all types of problems.

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

#638

Post by wpietri »

amerkhalid wrote: post #537
wpietri wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Agreed, and this reminds me of friend who started to carry foldable chairs and table in their car during lockdown. They would, sometimes, set those up in the parking lot of the restaurant and eat there. However, perhaps a solution might be a labeler that prints a label with consume by time and attach the label to carryout container. Or some other kind of disclaimer on the containers. Yes, this adds burden on the rest…

Or we could place the burden correctly on the delivery company, and require them to work with the restaurant to create the optimal delivery experience. Say, by mandating that delivery companies actually have to get a restaurant's agreement before advertising their food.

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

#639

Post by wpietri »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #595
colejohnson66 wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If DoorDash can’t be arsed to ask for permission from whoever to deliver, then maybe it’s for the better that they don’t deliver that place. Sure, it costs more than just adding the place to their site, but the restaurant is having their image harmed by soggy food. If that restaurant doesn’t want to allow delivery, they should have that option.

It's bad for the restaurant to be harmed this way, of course. But it's not a choice between "do nothing" and "force them to ask permission". Under this law, a restaurant might refuse permission for other reasons. And some of those reasons would be bad for consumers. If a similar rule was applied to non-food items, it could be a very harmful blow to the first sale doctrine.

A restaurant is already allowed to refuse to sell arbitrarily. They have the right to freedom of association, just like anybody else, with narrow exceptions when it's targeted at protected classes. And restaurants are already allowed to do all sorts of things may depart from the gospel of revenue maximization.

This is the sort of thing we expect to be taken care of by the free market. If signing up with a delivery service is truly in their interest and aligns with what they want their business to be, they mostly will. And if not, that's fine.

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

#640

Post by hnick »

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…

Yes I don't see how this isn't 'passing off' in a trademark sense, when I hear about some of the worst offenders.
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