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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

#81

Post by Dylan16807 »

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…

> You can't take orders on behalf of others

This law does not say that at all. It's completely silent on whether the platform can take orders. It prohibits a single specific action, and that action is arranging for the delivery of an order.

> you can freely arrange for someone in an app to "make an order" for you and then fetch the meal.

You can arrange for them to make an order if you want to. That's allowed. But "fetching" sure sounds to me like they are delivering the order. They can't deliver it unless they have the specific authorization from the restaurant.

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

#83

Post by [deleted] »

say_it_as_it_is wrote: post #76
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…

I don't understand how couriers are extracting any margin from restaurants.

[deleted]

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

#85

Post by remus »

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?

If everyone behaves then there is no problem with this setup, however if the middleman is improperly suggesting that y is buying directly from X when they are taking a cut then perhaps a reasonable solution is to ban middlemen altogether.

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

#86

Post by caf »

carbonx wrote: post #78
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?

I think the issues is a problem of transparency. I deliver for Postmates and I really think that most of the customers don't really understand that they might be ordering from a restaurant that isn't partnered with Postmates. The knock on effect is that often the menu isn't really correct, so the customer gets their order "wrong" and calls the restaurant to complain.

It seems like a form of passing-off, which has long been regarded as worthy of proscription.

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

#87

Post by devcpp »

ratww wrote: post #74
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?

I think the core issue here is that some platforms were creating websites and phone numbers to impersonate the companies. In practice it's a man-in-the-middle attack. This is what the law seems to intend to stop. I'm pretty sure that if I falsified a website to resell services or products on behalf of a larger company I would get slapped by a lawsuit, trademark or otherwise, but it seems that for small restaurants th…

Then why not make impersonation illegal? If they enforce making reselling illegal proactively they can enforce making impersonation illegal just the same.

This is overreach. I would be rightly pissed if I lived in CA.

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

#89

Post by ratww »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #81
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…

> You can't take orders on behalf of others This law does not say that at all. It's completely silent on whether the platform can take orders. It prohibits a single specific action, and that action is arranging for the delivery of an order. > you can freely arrange for someone in an app to "make an order" for you and then fetch the meal. You can arrange for them to make an order if you want to. That's allowed. But "f…

The text that has been quoted all over this thread does say "to take orders and deliver meals". Sure it could be better worded, but it seems that the intent here is quite clear: to stop the practice that was being done by DoorDash/Postmates.

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

#90

Post by [deleted] »

foobar1962 wrote: post #43
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.

The problem is that if food isn't handled correctly it makes people sick. This law is about food safety.

[deleted]
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