[HN Gopher] California law bans delivery apps from listing a res...
___________________________________________________________________
California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without
an agreement
Author : supernova87a
Score : 981 points
Date : 2021-01-01 08:49 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (leginfo.legislature.ca.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (leginfo.legislature.ca.gov)
| foobar1962 wrote:
| There was a post a few months go about a pizza place that started
| getting customers complaining about their food arriving cold and
| damaged: except they didn't offer delivery. They discovered that
| a popular search engine was offering free delivery. The story
| ended with them ordering dozens of pizzas from themselves to
| themselves and making a nice profit.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Reminds me of the story of Don Johnson, a professional
| blackjack player who made $6,000,000 in one night.
|
| Because he is a known high stakes player, the Tropicana casino
| in Atlantic City invited him over and gave him a discount
| ("loss rebate") on chips.
|
| Because of this 10% rebase on loss, even when his blackjack
| win-rate was below 50%, he would still make more money that
| what he lost.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/the-man...
| joubert wrote:
| The story:
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/18/21262316/doordash-pizza-p...
| dogma1138 wrote:
| How did they made a profit off this?
| foobar1962 wrote:
| They delivered pizza base with no toppings. The base was just
| so the boxes weren't empty.
|
| EDIT and Doordash got the price wrong (I forgot about that).
| [deleted]
| ljm wrote:
| Doordash priced the pizza at $16, but the pizza place charged
| $24. Presumably a 'growth hack' to get more users.
|
| The pizza place, seeing the difference, bought pizzas for $16
| and received $24 from Door Dash, so for each purchase they
| were $8 better off.
|
| They also ordered plain pizza dough in larger quantities, for
| more profit. Presumably because they didn't have to actually
| make the full pizza.
| frombody wrote:
| Technically they didn't have to make any pizzas at all.
|
| I always felt like the story about the dough was
| embellished a little bit to avoid being charged with fraud.
| Slartie wrote:
| They had to produce something that could legally be
| called a pizza to at least fulfill the purchase contract
| with DoorDash and avoid making themselves legally liable.
|
| But what would probably have worked would be to pull this
| off with two restaurants, each ordering pizzas from the
| other, with them sending the same physical pizzas around
| all the time. Cold and old pizza is still legally a
| pizza, just a bad one.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| They have to claim that they made something that met the
| definition of pizza, but with the "buyer", driver, and
| store colluding they could just lie.
| Slartie wrote:
| The first buyer is DoorDash however, and if they somehow
| want to take vengeance on you after you managed draining
| their funds in an otherwise perfectly legal way, they
| might just use the non-fulfillment of their initial
| purchase contracts as a wedge to take you to court (of
| course this assumes they somehow learned about that
| detail of your plan). I don't know if they would have any
| luck with that, but it's easy to prevent this from
| happening by actually delivering something that's
| basically a minimally viable pizza.
| Balgair wrote:
| Reading through the article again, it is strongly implied
| that a _lot_ of stores may have a similar arbitrage issue
| and the DD os getting taken to the cleaners over it. That
| and I don 't think there are any legal issues over this
| as there were no contracts signed. If anything DD is the
| one in legal trouble over it.
| rainbowzootsuit wrote:
| That reminds me of the Raines sandwich. "Minimum viable
| sandwich"
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/raines-sandwich
|
| So this is "Minimum viable pizza"
| rrjjww wrote:
| Before clicking on this I thought it was going to be
| about Cuomo's order in this summer that all restaurants
| offering drinks had to be served with food. I went to at
| least a couple outside bars that were serving half a
| piece of white bread with a slice of American cheese on
| it for your "meal"
| Mokosha wrote:
| They could simply make a single pizza, and then deliver
| it to themselves N times.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| That makes more sense than someone just offering a free
| delivery.
| mrweasel wrote:
| How would is that ever going to work long term? Most pizza
| places I frequent offer free delivery, or very cheap
| delivery once you get pizza for two people. The "growth
| hack" will never work when you compete with your supplier.
|
| Even if this was somehow going to work, once Doordash has
| pushed others out of the market, then they would need to
| raise the price significantly, pushing many to just do
| pickup themselfs.
|
| More suprising, to me, is that it was ever legal to list
| resturants without and opt in.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| josefx wrote:
| The goal is to kill the competition, no local delivery
| service can compete with a few million in VC funding. Once
| you are the only delivery in town you can raise the prices
| all you want and force the local restaurants into one sided
| deals on your terms. It also has a rather questionable
| legality
| jimmaswell wrote:
| > no local delivery service can compete with a few million
| in VC funding
|
| A simple ordering form on the restaurant's own website
| always gets preference from me and seems to usually end up
| being the first result on Google/Google Maps.
| jiofih wrote:
| No, part of the problem here is that the big delivery
| company will always win in SEO.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| It doesn't in my experience. Google Five Guys near you,
| the actual first result ignoring ads will almost
| certainly be their website or even its order form. Same
| for every local restaurant with an order form I've tried
| it on.
| kaslai wrote:
| A lot of "local restaurant order forms" are actually
| sites set up by the likes of GrubHub, Uber Eats, etc. Not
| all of them, but it's one of the sneaky ways they use to
| insert themselves.
| retrac wrote:
| But people like you and me are in the minority.
|
| Most young people I know, when they want to order
| takeout, go directly to their preferred delivery service
| on their smartphone, select from what comes up, and
| consider nothing else.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It's not clear how that'll work in the long run, since
| there's no protective moat to protect GrubHub once they've
| outspent their competitors. Pizza companies can re-hire
| delivery drivers if GrubHub tries to charge monopoly
| prices, and the bigger chains are fully capable of making
| their own ordering apps.
|
| At this point I currently order my takeout through at least
| 3 separate small competitors to GrubHub. That these exist
| while GrubHub is still trying to use VC funding to push
| everyone out of the market makes me doubt that they'll be
| able to recoup their investment without new competitors
| arriving.
| tt433 wrote:
| When it's goods and not services (delivery is the service
| here, I guess, not the food as a good), usually it's termed
| dumping, and I'm fairly sure it's illegal. I don't know if
| that language ever gets used for services.
| amingilani wrote:
| Similar story but with Door Dash. Explanation: Door Dash
| charged lower than actual price, so owner placed an order and
| sent just plain dough. Their profit was higher than cost of
| making the pizza.
|
| https://themargins.substack.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitra...
| 1-6 wrote:
| Now that's what I call making dough!
| bshep wrote:
| for even more profit become a doordash driver and exclusively
| 'deliver' these pizzas.
| powerapple wrote:
| lol. That's nice. I can see from the trademark point of view,
| it makes sense to stop other people from listing your business
| in their list, brands should be protected. But providing a
| service for customer should be legal. It would be the same as
| Taxi drivers should be able to pick you up from your home to a
| business without the permission of the business.
| minot wrote:
| But I bet I can't start a taxi service and call it Uber
| Shuttle Service for job applicants and build a website with
| Uber logo, phone number, and everything and when job
| applicants call me I pretend to be Uber?
|
| Hey why stop there? maybe I can ask the job applicants for
| their personal information letting them believe they are
| talking to Uber and if they look like good candidates, I can
| build a website with information I gathered from them and
| start my own employment agency, call it quadruple bites or
| something and then call FAANG companies and offer to place
| candidates...
|
| I think a big part of the problem is the
| misrepresentation/false advertising.
|
| However, the goal I think is more sinister. For example, I
| believe Walmart decides how much it wants to pay suppliers
| who want to have their stuff sold at Walmart. If a delivery
| app is big enough, it can dictate the prices and terms of
| sale with a restaurant and demand deep discounts and forbid
| restaurants from making the deal public. The challenge is how
| does a delivery app become big enough to do that? Feels like
| a chicken and egg problem.
| powerapple wrote:
| Yes. That's unfortunately how internet business work these
| days, use 'strategy' to dominate the market, and it has the
| power to dictate terms and profit from it. Although Walmart
| market dominance are protected with the shops and locations
| they own, apps such as Uber or Doordash where it is mainly
| a utility, the market dominance is not protected in any
| way. Once they start to charge more to make a profit,
| consumer can always go for an alternative app for it.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| The difference between what delivery services like Doordash
| and what Taxi companies are doing is that Doordash is holding
| themselves out to _be_ the company.
|
| There's several instances where Company A has had Service
| Provider B set up a website in the name of Company A, update
| Google Listings to replace the Phone number and website of
| Company A with their own version of the site.
|
| Then when an unwitting customer calls the number given,
| they're actually talking to Service Provider B, not Company
| A.
|
| Taxi services don't hold themselves out as the personal
| driver service for the company you're going to.
| powerapple wrote:
| I totally agree with you. The business of Doordash should
| be legal while the exact practices you described above are
| illegal.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| The problem is how to allow the former while preventing
| the latter, in a way that is reasonable for small
| businesses.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Just prosecute the fraudulent misrepresentation of the
| restaurant.
| balls187 wrote:
| Lawsuits aren't cheap both in terms of time and money.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The state prosecutes crimes.
| balls187 wrote:
| Not if there isn't a law that is being broken.
| gwright wrote:
| You mean like "fraudulent misrepresentation"?
| ecf wrote:
| What's exactly the issue here?
|
| In my eyes, I'm paying for a service that does the ordering as
| well as delivery of food.
|
| What's the difference between me calling in and having to
| physically drive to a location to pick it up and doordash doing
| the ordering on my behalf and then having one of their drivers
| get it for me?
| roenxi wrote:
| This is a silly law. If someone feels like sending a courier to
| buy take away then that should be legal.
| ratww wrote:
| 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.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Someone else posted the below excerpt of the law that also
| prohibits couriers (who are not impersonating anyone) unless
| they have permission from the restaurant. That seems like a
| ridiculous restriction to me.
|
| > 22599. 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.
| ratww wrote:
| I don't think sending someone to perform a task is the same
| as _taking an order_ , though. The restaurant is still the
| one _taking the order_ for the food itself in the case of a
| courier.
|
| Also the law seem to only include "food delivery
| platforms", which exclude couriers.
|
| (Of course, I might be wrong, but it seems that the intent
| of the law is to stop impersonation, not couriers).
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Why can't I pay someone to place an order and pick it up
| for me? Can't I have someone go shop on my behalf at non-
| restaurant businesses? And if so, isn't it reasonable
| that a menu of options be shown with items and the costs?
| I agree that there should be transparency about who is
| delivering the food, there should be no impersonation of
| the restaurant, no false listing of phone numbers, and so
| on. But allowing restaurants to deny a courier without
| prior agreement seems like a government overreach.
| ratww wrote:
| I think you misunderstood my reply: I don't think the law
| is forbidding someone _making_ an order on your behalf
| and picking it up for you. I doubt it will affect normal
| courier services.
|
| What I believe the law is forbidding is the lack of
| transparency, the false listing of phone numbers and
| _taking_ orders on behalf of someone else.
|
| EDIT: Btw, I'm not downvoting you as I can't downvote
| replies. I have upvoted to counter it.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| I disagree with this law, like I've disagreed with many laws
| before it: the creation of a specific law implies that what
| came before was not fraud. It was fraud. Prosecute it as
| such.
|
| Offering to courrier food from place A to B, including
| ordering the food from place A, should not be illegal.
| Pretending to be A to engage in that business is fraud,
| because you pretended to be A. It's that simple. This law is
| a giveaway to the companies that have already engaged in
| fraud.
| ratww wrote:
| Good point, I agree with you.
| foobar1962 wrote:
| The problem is that if food isn't handled correctly it makes
| people sick. This law is about food safety.
| [deleted]
| lkbm wrote:
| Sure would be nice if the law mentioned something about
| impersonating the restaurant rather than merely adding
| restrictions on who can be a courier.
| roenxi wrote:
| 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 send someone there without
| a problem. They have to get 'express authorisation' from the
| restaurant before they can accept your order. That is silly.
| ratww wrote:
| 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.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > 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.
| ratww wrote:
| 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.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Look at how the law is formulated: "A food delivery
| platform shall not X without Y."
|
| X is the action the law allows or prohibits.
|
| Y decides whether the action is allowed or not.
|
| If "authorization to take orders and deliver meals"
| exists, then they can deliver. If "authorization to take
| orders and deliver meals" does not exist, then they
| cannot deliver.
|
| "take orders" does not appear in the law anywhere else.
| It's only in the phrase "authorization to take orders",
| and in that context the law is _only_ checking if that
| authorization exists. This particular law does not say
| when taking orders is allowed or prohibited. This law
| does not care if a platform is taking orders. It cares
| about whether the platform delivers, and it cares about
| whether the platform has "authorization to take orders
| and deliver meals".
|
| -
|
| Edit: Pretend for a second the law said "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 own puppies and deliver meals
| prepared by the food facility."
|
| Would that law have any effect on whether the food
| delivery platform can own puppies? Nah. The restaurant
| has to say "you are allowed to own puppies" before the
| platform can deliver, but that law is not imbuing the
| puppy clause with any other power. It neither allows nor
| disallows actual puppy ownership.
|
| -
|
| So my main point is not that a platform should get cheeky
| by trying to take orders but not deliver, or something.
|
| It's that even if they're not taking orders, this law
| blocks them from delivering. If they don't have the
| authorization, they can't deliver, end of story. The
| restaurant didn't say they can have a puppy, so they
| can't deliver, and it doesn't matter whether there
| actually is a puppy.
| ratww wrote:
| Like I already said, _it could be better worded, but_ ,
| to me, its _intent seems to be quite clear_. You make
| good points, but I still have a different interpretation.
| roenxi wrote:
| 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.
| ratww wrote:
| 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.
| roenxi wrote:
| > Uber Eats doesn't engage in the practices...
|
| Doesn't change the fact that the law is silly. Every time
| I leave the house I wear closed in shoes. A law
| forbidding me from leaving the house unless I'm wearing
| closed in shoes would be silly.
|
| This is a law that is arbitrarily preventing people from
| doing something that is _perfectly reasonable_ - acting
| on behalf of a third party to order food. If legislators
| want to ban something objectionable they should ban it
| directly, not indirectly through making it illegal to do
| something reasonable.
| ratww wrote:
| The general agreement here is that the law was made
| because Doordash/Postmates were impersonating restaurants
| without authorization from them and taking orders in
| their behalf, so it's not exactly similar to your shoes
| examples.
|
| Most people find the impersonation and lack of
| transparent unreasonable. Whether the law is the best
| tool to fix it or whether it will have side effects is
| what's in debate, but the _main intention_ of the law
| seems pretty clear to everyone.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| What's even sillier, every company doing this in California was
| getting consent from the restaurant to publish a number as if
| they were said restaurant BEFORE this law was even conceived.
| Of course, it was a click-wrap agreement that nobody read.
| ehnto wrote:
| You could still do that without the app listing the restaurants
| without their permission.
|
| There is a clear exploitation happening here, I think it's
| right to find a way to stop it. We should get better at
| iterating on policy though, maybe this doesn't work out or
| stops some other kind of less exploitive business from
| operating and they need to adjust it.
| darawk wrote:
| What is the exploitation exactly?
| throway1gjj wrote:
| People making money by providing a valued service
| yeskia wrote:
| Exploiting the customer my misrepresenting a restaurant as
| a partner when they are not.
| ehnto wrote:
| The delivery platform represents a business relationship
| with a restaurant that doesn't exist, and uses it to pull
| value out of the services the restaurants offer. As a
| business you get to choose which other businesses you work
| with, and on what terms. In this case they haven't given
| the restaurant the opportunity to negotiate terms.
|
| It's new ground sure, but I think it's pretty clear that
| the delivery platform is a service provider to the
| restaurant and as such the restaurant should have some
| negotiating power. What if they want a cut of the delivery
| fee, or guaranteed delivery windows for their customers?
| Probably wouldn't get it, but that's a negotiation they
| should be able to have.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand the suggestion. Why shouldn't a
| courier service be allowed to list a business to get
| something from. That's like saying "people can't use mapping
| services". This doesn't feel like exploitation to me but
| maybe I don't understand your position fully.
| danielheath wrote:
| A courier can still collect food. They can't impersonate
| the restaurant anymore.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| 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 in the market.
| But why would they bother when they can just seek a
| legislative solution?
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Do you have a reason for why you think that is the
| problem?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Oh boy I love selective enforcement.
| ghaff wrote:
| Scale does matter. There are a ton of things that people
| can and do do for a bit of cash under the table like give
| a haircut even though they don't have a license, rent out
| an apartment to a friend of a friend for a few weeks
| because you'll be traveling, etc. And those same things
| would probably be a problem if they were pursued as an
| ongoing business. Which, the general silliness of some
| occupational licensing aside, I don't really have a
| problem with.
| [deleted]
| ehnto wrote:
| 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 first. I
| am not terribly saddened by the fact that the delivery
| platforms have to do some groundwork instead of just web
| scraping a bunch of menus and making money off splitting
| all the risk between restaurants and customers.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| > 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| If these companies provide _such_ a valuable service for
| people who can 't get up from their computers to get or
| cook food, I'm sure restaurants will be lining up to sign
| up for their services.
| danielheath wrote:
| In practice, every single one of these services has
| impersonated restaurants and harmed many of their
| reputations by doing so.
|
| Perhaps the law is poorly written. That happens
| sometimes; more often when you behave in a way that
| invites regulation.
| Lucasoato wrote:
| Well, it should be clear that the restaurant has nothing to
| do with the delivery service.
|
| You shouldn't be able to exploit the restaurant brand, logo
| and reputation without their consent, otherwise they
| wouldn't have any mean to protect themselves from bad
| reviews that would damage their image even in other
| platforms.
| sumthinprofound wrote:
| This happened to a friend of mine who is a restaurant
| owner. One day he gets a call for take out, for "Jeff"
| lets say $60. A DoorDash courier shows up (nothing
| indicating they are from DoorDash, restaurant assumes
| this is the customer) and attempts to pay with a credit
| card. Credit card comes back declined. Courier mentions
| he's going to step outside to get the issue resolved and
| will be right back. Half an hour goes by, another call
| comes in for the exact same order, $60. Another courier
| comes in, acts like he placed the order, tries to pay
| with a similar looking credit card, gets declined. 2nd
| courier leaves without the food. The owner thinks its
| some time of scam. When the _third_ exact same order
| comes in via phone, the owner starts asking questions.
| All three were for the same DoorDash customer, all called
| in on the phone by DoorDash assuming the identity of the
| customer who placed the order via the DoorDash website
| using a menu that DoorDash just found online and posted
| on their website. It was an outdated menu with outdated
| prices. Apparently DoorDash would load their credit cards
| with the exact amount for the purchase (based on outdated
| prices) so both couriers cards were declined for the
| purchases. Meanwhile, the actual customer is waiting over
| an hour and a half for their order to be delivered and
| the restaurant owner has to eat 2 $60 sales because the
| food is no longer presentable. Owner was never contacted
| in advance by DoorDash regarding any business
| relationship, they just found a menu and included it on
| their site. Ultimately I believe they covered the cost of
| their screwup, and the restaurant owner required they pay
| over the phone when calling in the order before any food
| was made. I would absolutely consider this exploiting the
| restaurant brand and reputation without consent.
| ljm wrote:
| They've been known to go as far as buying domains for the
| restaurants and hosting the menus on them, basically
| inserting themselves as a middleman, then threatening the
| restaurant with consequences if they don't pay up for the
| favour.
|
| This might be accompanied by the service taking their cut
| out of every meal ordered through the site, forcing the
| restaurant to lose money on the orders.
|
| That's not just listing, it's a racket.
|
| GrubHub was caught doing this, I believe.
| roenxi wrote:
| 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.
|
| Nothing there is talking about apps or listings.
| ehnto wrote:
| 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.
| Ekaros wrote:
| 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.
| roenxi wrote:
| 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.
| foobar1962 wrote:
| Say you're the restaurant, I'm the delivery guy. I pickup your
| meals and deliver them to your customers. On the way the meals
| go cold (or hot) and get damaged. Your customers aren't happy
| and want their money back.
|
| My actions have made your service look bad, your customers
| unhappy and cost you money. You didn't know I was delivering
| your food!
| jopsen wrote:
| Isn't this exactly the kind of thing trademark laws is
| supposed to cover?
|
| I'm pretty sure that if you tried to resell food at scale
| from a major fast food franchise without proper licensing,
| you would get sued.
| toast0 wrote:
| Trademark law could prevent me from pretending to be the
| restaurant. If they had a defensible trademark and time and
| money to litigate.
|
| It doesn't really prevent me from acting as a middle man.
| I'd need to be careful about using their trademarks and
| making it clear that I'm not connected.
|
| The concept of first sale certainly applies, although
| health code makes it complex. There's also the concept of
| the right to refuse service.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| The major fast food franchises aren't the people this law
| is protecting, its Joe Blow's Pizza Shack that can't afford
| a lawsuit against Doordash.
| kflzufkrbzi wrote:
| As someone who is working on food delivery in Europe it's
| weird to even consider someone delivering food without the
| restaurants approval. I guess it's the only way to scale
| extremely fast but still it seems counterproductive to me.
| josefx wrote:
| On the one hand the law seems overly broad, on the other there
| was apparently no way for restaurant owners to protect their
| names against bad third party delivery services.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| > 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?
| nrmitchi wrote:
| This feels kind of like some sort of regulatory capture by
| DoorDash, etc now that they are big enough.
|
| Is there any way that this wouldn't stifle any new competition?
| granzymes wrote:
| This was my thought too. This law is a huge barrier to entry
| for any new delivery apps in California.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| 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
| ramphastidae wrote:
| 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 growth hacking). Then they
| subcontract the job to some crappy outsourcing firm that bungles
| it, but who cares, they got their cut and you signed the TOS.
|
| Now bad reviews are piling up online about the bad experiences
| people had with your business, your reputation is destroyed, and
| your business is next.
|
| I know it's not a perfect analogy but try to empathize with the
| restaurants here.
| ghaff wrote:
| The misrepresentation would seem to be the big thing. Someone,
| let's call them Joe, publishes a list of restaurants online
| with links to their menus and offers to deliver for the price
| of the order with tip plus a $10 delivery fee. And has a clear
| disclaimer that they're not affiliated with the businesses.
| That seems pretty unobjectionable. And how would the restaurant
| even know? [ADDED: Subject of course to any health regulations
| that might apply to food delivery.]
|
| But that, of course, is not what any of these services do.
|
| There is still an argument that some foods just aren't a good
| match for delivery and, disclaimer or not, some consumers will
| still tend to blame Sally's Piping Hot Burgers when their
| burger arrives soggy and cold (or, worse, because of
| mishandling someone gets sick) rather than think that maybe
| they should have just gone and picked it up themselves or just
| not gotten burger take-out. So Sally should _maybe_ have a
| right to refuse to sell to anyone other than the end consumer.
| But that seems trickier.
| 34679 wrote:
| I should never be able to force Sally to make me a
| cheeseburger. Therefore, Sally should have the right refuse
| to sell to anyone. No maybe.
| j45 wrote:
| It's a form of domain squatting if someone lists as you,
| above you in search, leaving some customers frustrated and
| likely picking someone else, forever.
| [deleted]
| chrischen wrote:
| Using the restaurant's logo and name and in general
| masquerading as the restaurant's official website pretty
| clearly crosses the line.
| jxramos wrote:
| I went to pickup a take out order for my wife the other day
| and the cashier asked if this was a personal order? I was so
| confused I didn't even know how to answer and just asked
| "personal order meaning what". She answered, "I mean you're
| not with door dash or something right, you personally made
| the order?". It was a pretty baffling exchange and maybe this
| misrepresentation speaks to some of that.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| There's reports of delivery sites trying to hide that
| they're delivery sites when they pick up the order.
| Normally a DoorDasher uses a DoorDash bag (it seems), but
| supposedly they don't use it inside, and then put the order
| in the DoorDash bag in the car. Not sure how true it is
| though (it could just be people not wanting to hold up the
| line)
| tw25601814 wrote:
| > But that, of course, is not what any of these services do.
|
| Likely because customers don't care. Nor does this law
| introduce such a requirement. Instead it increases the cost
| of entering the delivery market, thus it protects extant
| delivery services from new competitors.
|
| > So Sally should maybe have a right to refuse to sell to
| anyone other than the end consumer.
|
| They can already do that; restaurants know which delivery
| services are placing the order.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| 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)
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| It's probably because some restaurants have "banned"
| delivery app people. So, in this instance, the Postmate
| person can feign ignorance and act like they're just
| ordering for a friend (which is a common thing).
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| > And has a clear disclaimer that they're not affiliated with
| the businesses.
|
| This isn't actually clear. GrubHub's about page:
|
| " Grubhub is a leading online and mobile food-ordering and
| delivery marketplace with the largest and most comprehensive
| network of restaurant partners. "
|
| This tells me as a customer that the restaurant is a
| consenting partner. This is a lie.
|
| EDIT: a commentor below had issue with my use of the word lie
| here. To clarify, I meant that this is not a clear
| disclaimer.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > But that, of course, is not what any of these services
| do.
| loceng wrote:
| No, you're misinterpreting it - they don't claim all of the
| restaurants are partners, just that they have the most
| comprehensive network of restaurant partners.
|
| Edit: -4 downvotes so far for highlighting a person's bad
| logic - good start to the New Year for critical thinking on
| HN; I'll assume they're projecting their anger for the
| topic onto me, their emotion overriding their logic.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Been here 11 years, things have oddly gone off a cliff in
| the comments over the past 6 months - year: if you're not
| agreeing with the first-order conclusion, you're down-
| voted through the floor. sorry about that :/
| loceng wrote:
| And any attempt to discuss the voting mechanism to
| require more qualitative responses instead of a quick
| dopamine hit for clicking a single object, one needs to
| tread carefully - a rule that artificially oppresses
| conversation on the topic - so how important of an issue
| it is will be skewed due to the threat of being silenced.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Lol I'm at -7 now, cheers my friend
| nirushiv wrote:
| There are different types of lies. A lie of commission
| would be like Grubhub saying "All restaurants are our
| partners". The second case (which applies here) is a lie
| by omission. They are withholding very important
| information in an intentional way.
|
| Since we're on the topic of food: It's like if someone
| asked, "Hey did you eat the whole pizza?" and you reply
| "I ate my three slices". That's true, except you also ate
| the other nine slices. Lie of omission.
|
| It's not bad logic. It's you failing to recognize a basic
| tactic used by companies and four year olds and everyone
| in between.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Nowhere on their about page do they make it clear that
| they _also have restaurants who are not their partners
| listed on their platform_.
|
| The given ask that there is a clear disclaimer. I'm
| saying it's not clear at all, and therefore the
| hypothetical has deviated from reality so much that it's
| useless.
| loceng wrote:
| No, you're just not accepting in the statement you wrote
| what you claim it means is incorrect - you're now trying
| to double down that it's not clear but it is clear,
| you're just seeming to want them to spell it out
| completely as your argument point but through
| extrapolation it's not necessary, assuming you're able
| to/have learned how to extrapolate.
|
| You really want everyone everywhere on the internet to
| spell out the complete logic, when the full logic can be
| understood simply by extrapolating, coddling people in
| the process?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| > you're just seeming to want them to spell it out
| completely
|
| Yes because that's what "clear disclaimer" means, which
| was the ask. I'm really baffled that this line of logic,
| because the post I was responding to said "clear
| disclaimer", when I'm pointing to something that requires
| second-order interpretation and therefore by definition
| can't be a clear disclaimer. (I mean you yourself said
| that it's understood by extrapolation. Requiring
| extrapolation =! clear disclaimer imo. I would in fact
| expect a clear disclaimer to require no extrapolation,
| and be so dumbly explained that anyone who can read at at
| teen level can understand it.)
| loceng wrote:
| You're changing the goal posts of your argument now. You
| claimed the statement was a lie, it wasn't - that is all
| I argued.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Oh, okay, I've edited my post to say that "this is not a
| clear disclaimer".
| refulgentis wrote:
| Please try to avoid dragging interlocutors through long
| threads, knowing they'll be downvoted at each step - it
| was extremely clear from step 1 what they meant, you
| didn't need it clarified over several comments to reach
| this conclusion.
| [deleted]
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| These are often termed lies of ommission, where details
| are left out to make what is said appear to be the full
| truth, and not just a slice of it. By only stating that
| they work with partners, they imply that they only work
| with partners.
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| "Partner" implies agreed upon consent. The assumption
| from the grub hub text is that all restaurants on their
| platform are "partners" and have therefore consented.
|
| The two possible omissions are: 1) "partners" does not
| actually mean consent. 2) They have other restaurants on
| their platform who are not "partners", but they have the
| largest "partner" network even without those unconsenting
| restaurants.
|
| Both are deceitful of the common reading of the language
| which implies both consent and that their platform serves
| only the group mentioned.
|
| It's leveraging omission and ambiguity to communicate a
| false hood. 90% of people read it they way grub hub is
| not using the phrasing.
| loceng wrote:
| No, you're making an assumption and misinterpreting the
| sentence as well - they're not saying all restaurants on
| their platform in the statement we're referencing are
| partners.
|
| I agree them saying there are partners doesn't define
| what that means, nor if they said they "work with
| restaurants." That still doesn't mean it's valid to
| believe assumptions are truth when you don't know the
| answer.
| wpietri wrote:
| > 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 minutes of travel time. You'd be better off just
| getting Popeye's. But who gets the negative review on Yelp?
| Not the delivery company.
| amerkhalid wrote:
| 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.
| wpietri wrote:
| 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?
| Akronymus wrote:
| Legally the only way to acquire restaurant food over here
| atm is takeout or delivery. They can't just not offer it.
| listenallyall wrote:
| so the remedy is to implement a law that will live
| forever, even as we expect covid to (hopefully) recede
| this year?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| This is removing to-go option. There are apps that claim
| to offer delivery from a restaurant not intending to
| provide it.
| ianhorn wrote:
| 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 even tell you that. Then they drop off a
| few other orders on the way. You end up with food you think
| came off the stove 13 minutes ago that actually came off
| like 40 minutes ago. And then you think it came out of the
| oven worse because the app puts all the blame and
| uncertainty on the restaurant.
| notlion wrote:
| Ordering for pickup has gotten so much easier this year.
| Restaurants usually will hand me my food at the door, so
| I only need to spend a few seconds waiting, and the food
| is just in way better condition when I carry it home
| myself.
| klyrs wrote:
| I've been ordering in way more than I would have been
| comfortable with pre-covid. I never blame the restaurant,
| especially when I see the driver taking a circuitous
| route, indubitably filling multiple deliveries on the
| way. And I don't really blame the drivers, either,
| because of how their pay structure translates to
| incentives.
| wpietri wrote:
| 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.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| 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 are best enjoyed
| immediately and not 10 minutes later. Why should I blame
| the restaurant for that?
| joering2 wrote:
| After seeing a one-star negative review for a mosquito
| electric zapper because it didn't get rid of their
| roaches problem, nothing people do or say on internet
| will ever surprise me again.
| danans wrote:
| Who is old enough to remember the McDLT?
|
| https://youtu.be/UTSdUOC8Kac
| btilly wrote:
| I am.
|
| And it was dropped because when McDonalds stopped using
| styrofoam they couldn't make it work any more.
|
| There is an irony in that. We went from a society that
| uses styrofoam to paper cups. Never mind that styrofoam
| is one of the most easily recycled substances we have,
| while the wax on paper cups makes them destined for the
| landfill.
| kibibyte wrote:
| > styrofoam is one of the most easily recycled substances
|
| Is that actually true? I've always heard to put styrofoam
| in trash rather than recycling.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Dropping the McDLT was what started me on the road to not
| try 'new' items from fast food places very much. If I
| _like_ the new offering, it 's going to be cut, just like
| the McDLT. McDLT was my all time favorite fast food
| burger from the 80s.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > I ordered delivery burgers once, from a restaurant
| close by, and learned my lesson that burgers are best
| enjoyed immediately and not 10 minutes later.
|
| Weird. It takes me notably longer than that to eat a
| burger in a restaurant, and I never notice any quality
| problems over that period of time.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| 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.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| So the problem is how it's packed, and delivery could be
| done correctly. Okay, that makes sense.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| 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.).
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| 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 lives of their
| workers or offering a subpar product.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| cforrester wrote:
| I think it's a matter of expectation more than anything.
| Someone who orders food from a restaurant might expect
| that the restaurant has recipes designed for delivery. I
| wouldn't expect a top quality restaurant burger when I
| order delivery, but I'd still be disappointed if it were
| a soggy mess instead of the 5-8/10 I've come to expect
| from decent delivery options.
| ghaff wrote:
| One of the problems is that, with some exceptions, if a
| restaurant offers take-out at all, they probably offer
| their whole menu. If I look at the menu for my local
| Greek pizza place, I can pretty much guarantee you that
| their pizzas, Veal Parmesan, and salads are going to
| stand up to take-out (AFAIK you can't get delivery)
| better than their burgers, meatball subs, or calzones.
| lostcolony wrote:
| I think it IS a matter of expectation, yes.
|
| If I go and pick up something that doesn't sit around at
| room temperature well (let's say a milkshake), and drive
| 20 minutes home before eating it, I'm not going to ding
| the restaurant for the fact it's melted.
|
| If, however, milkshakes are offered for takeout
| (reasonable), but then a third delivery party gets
| involved and starts offering them for delivery, anyone
| ordering it will have the impression of "I ordered a
| milkshake. It arrived to my hand melted! 1-star, bad!"
| Since they clearly aren't thinking enough to -not order
| the milkshake in the first place-.
|
| Milkshake is an extreme example to demonstrate the point,
| but applies to anything that doesn't sit well (previously
| mentioned burger included), with the added trouble that
| customers are less likely to know what will sit well.
| cforrester wrote:
| The quality of the food really isn't a binary state,
| though. I think most people get the idea that delivery
| food isn't going to be as good as having it at a
| restaurant, but they're expecting a middle ground if the
| item is offered for delivery.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Funny fact, one of the best deliveries I've gotten this
| year was ice cream. The local creamery[0] has an option
| to sign up for weekly deliveries. They obviously bring
| the equipment to keep it properly frozen (easier than a
| milkshake I know), and check IDs for their alcoholic ice
| creams. I suspect that if they wanted to, they could have
| pulled off milkshake deliveries, although the logistics
| wouldn't scale.
|
| 0 - https://ilovethestil.com/
| AareyBaba wrote:
| local = Boise Idaho. If you were wondering
| grogenaut wrote:
| I know a few people who own top quality restaurants. They
| spent a shit ton of time figuring out delivery. One in
| chicago does it for reheat with nice instructions on
| everything. Like a blue apron style setup. A bbq place
| just won't sell certain items ever togo. Heck maggianos
| obviously spent time in their take home setup.
| ghaff wrote:
| A couple of times I've been tempted to order from Five
| Guys with one of the services I have a promo with. But
| then I remember that said Five Guys is far enough away
| that I wouldn't want to drive to it and, best case, what
| I receive is not going to be great. Better to grill it
| myself.
| wpietri wrote:
| 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.
| asddubs wrote:
| I've had some ok delivery burgers, but it was the actual
| burger place doing the delivery
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Because more people than you think do not understand this
| and how delivery platforms work (ie. that restaurants do
| not control them)
|
| If you're a restaurant and some of your dishes do not
| handle delivery well then you should not sell them as
| delivery/takeaway but only on premises. Otherwise you'll
| have to accept that some customers will be unhappy and
| leave a bad review.
|
| I think this is a learning curve for many restaurants
| that are not used to this business model. Certainly in
| Europe it was not usual for restaurants to offer
| delivery/takeaway, which was only done by some pizzerias
| for a long time. Now these platforms are booming and the
| pandemic has made them critical.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| 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.
| ecf wrote:
| Why should regulation like this be enacted due to shitty
| consumer behavior that is evident everywhere, not just
| online reviews?
|
| I really don't know who this is helping because I'm not
| going to start using a more inconvenient way of ordering
| because these restaurants want things their way.
|
| It'll only result in these local businesses losing access
| to the $750 I pay in delivery each month.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > due to shitty consumer behavior
|
| This is not shitty consumer behavior. It is lying... a
| company pretending to be another company or a
| representative of another company... when they are not.
|
| If you buy a fake Toyota car and it sucks, do you blame
| Toyota then complain when a law is passed making this
| fraud illegal?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > is lying... a company pretending to be another company
| or a representative of another company... when they are
| not.
|
| This law affects much more than that.
| imtringued wrote:
| It doesn't because you can always ask for permission.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Forcing companies to ask for permission changes a lot. In
| _general_ , it's usually bad for market competition.
| listenallyall wrote:
| 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.
| wpietri wrote:
| 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.
| lostcolony wrote:
| So there's nothing wrong with takeout; during COVID you
| might buy it takeout, and eat it at a nearby table. Even
| outside of COVID, you might eat it in your car. This law
| is to ensure the restaurant has control over whether it's
| the customer taking it out (and it's then up to them how
| long they wait to eat it), or a third party (and the
| customer has no control over how long it waits before
| they eat it).
|
| Because otherwise, there is nothing preventing Doordash
| or similar from adding the location to their app. The
| restaurant may not offer them favorable terms, or
| otherwise work with them, but even without official
| support, Doordash interopts with the restaurant's online
| ordering system for pickup (or even involves a human to
| call it in), sends a driver to pick it up ("Here to pick
| up an order for Steve"), and then delivers it. Nothing
| the restaurant can do to prevent it.
| daveFNbuck wrote:
| Wouldn't this be a problem for any takeout order? I know
| some restaurants don't offer takeout for this reason.
| powersnail wrote:
| Some food are really good for takeout. The extreme
| example would be Japanese Bento box. Delicious even after
| hours.
| ghaff wrote:
| Some foods definitely work better than others. As others
| have noted, pizza usually does. And Asian stir fry type
| dishes are mostly pretty decent. Basic fried chicken (or
| rotisserie chicken) are fine too actually. They're not
| totally top drawer fried chicken like you get at a good
| restaurant that specializes in it but it's pretty good
| heated up in the oven. Soups. Etc.
|
| And then there are a lot of foods that just aren't going
| to be good. Basically, if it's something that either cold
| or that you would normally consider reheating in the oven
| or microwave it's probably OK. Otherwise, not.
|
| And, as others have noted, take-out you have more control
| over. There are some sandwiches I'll order from a local
| place and pickup given that I know I'll be home in less
| than 10 minutes. I'd be less tempted if I knew it might
| be sitting in a delivery car for an hour.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Fried chicken delivers great if you leave the box open so
| it can vent. I tell the bar by my house this every order.
| The paper boxes that are standard for fried chicken are
| terrible for it. They work for fast food chains because it
| goes under the hot light to steam out for 5 minutes before
| going in the box. Fryer to box immediately makes a literal
| sauna.
| [deleted]
| rsync wrote:
| "This is undeniably a good thing if you put yourself in the
| shoes of the restaurant."
|
| Maybe. I have no idea.
|
| What I do know is, the following statement is 1A protected free
| speech:
|
| If you pay me enough money, I will drive to the Novato In'N'Out
| and buy a cheeseburger and deliver it to you.
|
| I offer this _delivery service_ to anyone who wishes to
| negotiate my (extremely high) delivery rates.
|
| This is posted in a public place (is a listing) and I have no
| relationship with In'N'Out and no plans to establish one.
|
| Now what ?
| johnmaguire2013 wrote:
| Apple is a private company, not a public entity. AFAIK, your
| "free speech" is not protected here.
| cleak wrote:
| Companies are people too.
| ghaff wrote:
| You are clearly not a "food delivery platform" which this
| explicitly concerns. Obviously you can pay people to run
| errands for you, including picking up food and people can
| advertise their services.
| rsync wrote:
| Yes, of course that is the case but a "real" delivery
| service is only one or two contortions away from
| "publishing" their "listings" in a way that is just like
| what I wrote.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| This law only applies to online businesses. So while this
| effectively stops businesses from providing this service
| without permission it does not prevent what you describe.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Then you'll be breaking the law, as I understand it. Not
| every statement is protected under free speech.
|
| If a private pilot asks his friend if she wants to go on a
| trip and split costs, that's legal. If he posts the offer in
| a public place, it's illegal. There is a ton of precedent for
| this type of restriction of speech.
| [deleted]
| anticristi wrote:
| I don't understand why trademarks are insufficient to prevent
| this. Why didn't restaurants file a class action lawsuit
| against food delivery services to stop misusing their names?
|
| I think this law is great, but it kind of legitimises
| impersonation unless explicitly banned by law.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I think this is just a practical matter: the legal system is
| not as accessible as you might hope it is.
| rattray wrote:
| IDK, this seems more like a mixed-bag to me on account of being
| opt-in instead of opt-out. Absolutely I agree that businesses
| should be able to easily opt out of being listed on a given
| delivery platform if/when it causes problems for them.
|
| But on the flip side, I've observed a lot of restaurant owners
| not having the time, energy, or know-how to set up even basic
| online things that could really boost their business.
|
| I would expect that many restaurants really benefited from
| Doordash adding their menu to their website without their
| knowledge (even if some have, in net, suffered).
|
| Going straight to opt-in seems like it could hurt some
| businesses.
|
| Not to mention, of course, any new entrants! This law will make
| it much harder to compete with "the next Doordash".
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| > Not to mention, of course, any new entrants! This law will
| make it much harder to compete with "the next Doordash".
|
| Well of course the law will make it much harder to compete to
| be the next predatory, deceitful company that pretends to be
| small businesses! That's the whole point of this law. Some
| business practices are unethical and relying on them to grow
| should be made illegal.
| blackearl wrote:
| Will there be a "next DD"? It seems that they were hard
| pressed to make money despite the pandemic. Who wants to
| pick up the baton and continue losing money?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| What I don't understand is: Uber at least had a vision
| (self driving) that VC could look forward to. What's the
| end goal of these delivery apps that just bleed money?
| rattray wrote:
| Yeah, like I said, restaurants should absolutely have easy
| and fast recourse against predatory platforms.
|
| The heuristic, "but will restaurant owners ask to be
| delisted because of this?" should be a powerful force for
| keeping overly aggressive product managers in check.
|
| I worry that the bill misses the point that these platforms
| can also be a free or low-cost source of new business. As a
| small business owner myself (albeit e-commerce), free new
| customers doesn't sound so bad. (Obviously, for many
| established businesses, it's just cannibalization of their
| existing base - but that's not true for _all_ businesses).
| imtringued wrote:
| >The heuristic, "but will restaurant owners ask to be
| delisted because of this?" should be a powerful force for
| keeping overly aggressive product managers in check.
|
| You can just build a second or third site and relist the
| restaurant thereby avoiding the opt out law. Finally you
| can build an aggregator that allows customers to search
| all of your sites at once. The room for loopholes is too
| big.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| It's true that these platforms can also be free or low
| cost sources of new business. GrubHub et al can still
| mail/call/etc. them an offer to become a partner, with
| stickers and a "congratulations we'd love to do business
| with your business".
| rattray wrote:
| Totally. That's what'll have to happen instead. But it's
| more expensive (cost to restaurant ultimately goes up)
| and annoying.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| If it's costs more for the restaurant to do business with
| GrubHub then now they have the law on their side to
| decline to do business with GrubHub on account of it
| being too expensive.
| tw25601814 wrote:
| I think your anger is blinding you to the fact that this
| law doesn't actually address any of those concerns.
| rattray wrote:
| Now that I think about it, I think this law could also hurt
| competition even amongst established players, allowing them
| to squeeze restaurants even harder.
|
| Imagine platforms A, B, and C. Platform A approaches Daisy's
| Cafe offering an amazing deal on a delivery partnership, as
| long as the Cafe agrees not to use any other delivery
| companies. Daisy asks around and hears great things about
| Platform A, so she says yes - what a win!
|
| Months later, the quality of Platform A starts going way down
| - food is delivered to the wrong addresses, delivered cold,
| etc. All of the restaurants in Daisy's area also deliver with
| Platform A, so the local customers don't use other platforms
| - she's stuck. If she switches, she'll lose almost all her
| delivery traffic overnight.
|
| Now imagine if Platform C did delivery for her without an
| agreement signed. Daisy isn't breaking the agreement with
| Platform A when customers order through Platform C! She'll
| still lose business when she stops working with Platform A,
| but not as much, so it's an easier choice to make.
|
| In this scenario, predatory platforms are more likely to
| squeeze restaurants if agreements must be signed, because
| exclusivity can be enforced.
|
| Of course, the simple patch here is to disallow exclusive
| delivery platform contracts, but I don't see that in this
| bill.
| propogandist wrote:
| We're at a point with this pandemic that those who will
| purchase with delivery platform have likely developed some
| form of affinity towards a preferred vendor or two.
|
| A bigger issue is that few restaurants will survive through
| the extended statewide shutdowns. Delivery is meant to be a
| small route of generating revenue, rather than the sole
| revenue stream. The overhead costs of a retail storefront
| and operations will destroy most restaurants, if it hasn't
| already.
|
| Separately, these delivery apps and services are terrible,
| unprofitable businesses. None of the platforms have turned
| a profit despite the once in a lifetime opportunity with
| all customers being locked inside... all these platforms
| are optimized to run on VC money as they are garbage
| ventures that cannot make money. The IPOs are rushed to
| give VC money a way out of the ticking timebomb.
| ghaff wrote:
| Unless you think the pandemic has created a significant
| shift in consumer behavior with respect to takeout--like
| it probably has with grocery delivery--it's hard to see
| how delivery companies unable to make money over the past
| year will do so in the future. And I'm not sure why
| people would change. The overall take one hears is nice
| to have (even essential in some views) during pandemic,
| but expensive and unreliable.
|
| The fact is that mainstream, even upper middle class,
| consumers won't en masse pay enough for some sorts of
| services to work when extended beyond the niches when it
| already does work.
| r00fus wrote:
| What's preventing them from doing this today?
| rattray wrote:
| I'm definitely under the impression that exclusivity
| agreements exist in this industry today. But the fact
| that some delivery apps list restaurants that haven't
| signed up with them reduces the power of the exclusivity
| (since some delivery traffic is coming from these other,
| "unofficial" apps).
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Some delivery platforms masqueraded as restaurants to
| customers and customers to restaurants. How can they opt out
| if they don't know it's happening?
| anticensor wrote:
| It reads like what dropshippers did.
| ciabattabread wrote:
| > Going straight to opt-in seems like it could hurt some
| businesses.
|
| So, Facebook is indeed right when they say Apple's opt-in
| tracking prompt will hurt small businesses?
| zepto wrote:
| Can you explain how this has anything to do with tracking?
| analog31 wrote:
| I realize you're not suggesting this, but it unnerves me that
| the way to deal with a weak link in a business is to
| commandeer that business and blow it out of the water. That's
| the whole "disruption" culture. All it shows is that a weak
| business can be destroyed, not that a strong one can be built
| up.
|
| For a restaurant to work, those basic online things have to
| be coupled to the production and delivery subsystems. The
| whole machine has to work. This can only be tested by
| building a working restaurant.
| bpicolo wrote:
| How is a business to reasonably identify all the different
| platforms listing their info without their permission? Opt
| out isn't a good model.
|
| There's also a _ton_ of these businesses that aren't tech
| savvy. It's way too big an ask
| brandall10 wrote:
| If they don't have the time/skill/capital to handle online
| business on their own, then they can set up a partnership
| with these companies. That is a minimal effort, no?
|
| The key thing is this deals with a predatory practice.
| save_ferris wrote:
| > But on the flip side, I've observed a lot of restaurant
| owners not having the time, energy, or know-how to set up
| even basic online things that could really boost their
| business.
|
| Isn't part of being a successful business knowing where to
| put your energy as a business owner? You're saying that
| restaurants don't necessarily have the ability to make the
| best decisions for their business, therefore they should be
| able to opt-out and not opt-in. The flip side of this
| argument is that these apps can cause undeserved damage to a
| restaurant's reputation. How do you know what's best for
| restaurants?
|
| You're arguing that the onus should be on the restaurant to
| opt out whenever a delivery platform causes problems, but the
| onus should be on the delivery platforms to create a product
| that restaurants, not just consumers, want to use.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| This is already the case with bigger companies. As is the
| usual case with a lot "disruptive" firms, that "growth
| hacking" comes from exploiting some regulatory loophole
| that no one else has seen yet (e.g. most things related to
| the "sharing economy").
|
| I'm pretty sure if I just declared myself to be a sales
| partner (idk the term?) of Cisco, IBM, Oracle, etc and just
| resold their gear, I'd be in hot water legally because my
| actions would reflect on them.
| jldugger wrote:
| >I'm pretty sure if I just declared myself to be a sales
| partner (idk the term?) of Cisco, IBM, Oracle, etc and
| just resold their gear, I'd be in hot water legally
| because my actions would reflect on them.
|
| This is pretty much how local governments buy IT gear.
| Put out a "I want a router" low volume RFP that the tech
| companies don't want to bother with, and some local
| vendor will resell to you. Ideally, they're getting a
| volume discount and sharing some of it with you at least.
| nradov wrote:
| There is nothing illegal about purchasing hardware
| products from those companies and then selling them on to
| other customers, even without a formal sales agreement in
| place. This is the first sale doctrine. However software
| is different and licenses can't necessarily be resold.
| ghaff wrote:
| And, of course, many hardware products do have software
| components these days. But, yes, in general you can
| resell hardware without a formal agreement. You just
| can't claim to be an authorized partner or reseller given
| that implies certain training levels, etc.
| rattray wrote:
| > Isn't part of being a successful business knowing where
| to put your energy as a business owner?
|
| If you own a small restaurant... are you really in it to be
| a tycoon of industry? Or are you passionate about the food
| and the community?
|
| I know I want to spend as little time as possible thinking
| about sales and marketing, and just focus on improving my
| product and making my customers happy.
| save_ferris wrote:
| > I know I want to spend as little time as possible
| thinking about sales and marketing, and just focus on
| improving my product and making my customers happy.
|
| That's fine and understandable, but you also have to
| weigh the risks of delegating those responsibilities to
| external parties that don't necessarily care about your
| success because they have thousands if not millions of
| customers. Not to mention the restaurants that don't want
| any part of the delivery platforms altogether because
| they don't like what they're seeing.
|
| In an opt-out model, the restaurant has to take time to
| deal with (and possibly remove themselves) from a
| platform that didn't ask for their business, potentially
| dealing with upset customers along the way. Wasn't the
| whole point of this idea to reduce time and energy spent
| on these kinds of activities to focus on the food and the
| community? If you had no idea that you were on one of
| these platforms and an angry customer reaches out to you,
| how does that benefit the restaurant?
|
| It's really strange to see a collectivist for-the-
| greater-good argument being applied in a business sense
| here because it's based on two incorrect underlying
| assumptions: that every business owner wants the same
| thing (automated marketing and logistics services handled
| by one provider), and that platforms will always act in
| the best interests of their users. As a hypothetical
| business owner, shouldn't I have the right to prevent
| delivery platforms from using my restaurant without my
| permission? Say I get a bad experience with a delivery
| platform once, and I remove myself. Now I have a keep a
| lookout for any other platform that wants to use my name,
| all because those platforms made the argument that they
| know what's best for the restaurants and then didn't
| measure up. The road to hell is paved with good
| intentions.
| rattray wrote:
| > As a hypothetical business owner, shouldn't I have the
| right to prevent delivery platforms from using my
| restaurant without my permission?
|
| > The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
|
| We certainly agree on both of these counts!
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Most small restaurants fail within a year of opening.
| It's a very tough business.
|
| Some app claiming that you are partnering with them for
| delivery when that is not the case is not necessarily
| positive for a business given potential reputational
| risk.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Most small restaurants fail within a year of opening.
| It's a very tough business.
|
| Why is that? Seems straightforward - exchange food for
| money. Why's that so difficult to make work?
| jldugger wrote:
| As far as I can tell, every home for sale or rent in
| america requires a kitchen. So basically everyone is in
| competition with them.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| 1. there's lots of competition. restaurants are an
| extremely common business in existence and to start.
|
| 2. product market fit. you think your cooking is good. Do
| other people think your cooking is good? Do other people
| think your cooking is worth coming back for in a week, a
| month, or a year? You can try and do trendy things in
| food but these trends come and go quickly.
|
| 3. Rent and capital costs. It is expensive to fit a space
| for a kitchen, so you probably took a loan for that.
| Landlords are trying to squeeze every dollar they can out
| of you. There may be cheaper options than a leased space
| like a food truck or a sidewalk stand, but if they're
| even legal where you are the permits aren't cheap and
| there's usually a long waitlist. And better locations
| with more foot traffic cost more money.
|
| 4. Labor & management. Most people do not have experience
| running a restaurant's operations, which have to be
| tightly managed to both keep expenses down and keep
| service at decent levels. Bad service will turn customers
| away for good and bad word of mouth can snowball.
|
| 5. Margin. The tendency for new restauranteurs is that
| they underestimate their expenses and how much margin
| they need to be making. Prices need to be right for the
| market you're trying to serve, but you also need to not
| scare away too many customers. What pencils out in a home
| kitchen is not necessarily what pencils out in a
| restaurant.
| tzs wrote:
| Opt-in doesn't mean the delivery business has to just sit
| around hoping that restaurants will reach out to opt-in. A
| delivery business can contact the restaurants to ask them to
| opt-in.
| bitlevel wrote:
| Totally agree.
|
| And how about this: If you get food poisoning from a
| restaurant, you deal directly with them to resolve.
|
| If the food has been delivered by a 3rd party, what rights to
| resolve would you then have?
|
| Restaurants can simply state that the food was tainted after it
| left them, delivery firms can state the food from the
| restaurant was bad, etc etc.
| learc83 wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment. But you basically have no
| recourse if you get food poisoning from a restaurant. Unless
| it's a mass event, there's no way for you to prove it was the
| restaurant, and even if you could prove it, your damages
| aren't likely to be enough to sue.
| amluto wrote:
| Food poisoning has much slower onset than most people
| think, and, as I understand it, it's very common to blame
| the wrong food.
|
| I think it would be good to encourage everyone with food
| poisoning to notify a central authority to collect
| statistics, but blaming a specific restaurant from a single
| case is dicey at best.
|
| It's also worth noting that most people expect meat to be
| the riskiest type of food. In fact, lettuce is much more
| likely to cause food poisoning.
|
| (Ground beef is indeed more dangerous than solid pieces,
| but most chain restaurants are pretty careful about their
| HACCP and are likely to cook it properly. Your average
| large burger chain won't serve rare beef patties even upon
| request.)
| bonzini wrote:
| Food poisoning usually takes 10-15 hours from meal to
| symptoms. That gives you only a couple of meals to
| consider.
|
| About ten years ago one third of the office (50 people
| out of 150) called in sick, it was pretty clear which
| meal and which restaurant was the culprit.
| amluto wrote:
| Except when the food poisoning is due to toxins and not
| pathogens, e.g. scombroid poisoning.
|
| Identifying the culprit is certainly easier when you have
| a whole group of victims.
| newman8r wrote:
| I had an old roommate try to sue in-n-out after getting
| severe food poisoning. It actually went to court - the in-
| n-out attorney completely destroyed him, he was outgunned.
| They showed receipts for thousands of people who ate there
| that day and that there weren't any other cases reported.
|
| Reporting food poisoning if it ever happens to you (even if
| minor) could be the difference between someone else being
| believed of being shut down.
| wolco2 wrote:
| Advice I wish I could give myself. Don't eat out if you
| can avoid it and if you do go in person, never order in.
|
| In secret someone who cares less about your health than
| anyone you know prepares hundreds of meals a day and if
| they don't come in because they are sick they lose money.
| If they don't try to hide mistakes it will cost them. If
| they don't save the company money by picking up food off
| the ground or using yesterdays soup as a base for today's
| soup they are doing a poor job. There are very few ways a
| customer can prove these mistakes unless they are visible
| upon receipt. Poor reviews hidden from the public is the
| only recourse.
| jfim wrote:
| > using yesterdays soup as a base for today's soup
|
| That's not necessarily a bad thing. There is such a thing
| as a perpetual stew [0] in which a stew is replenished
| with ingredients over months or even years.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_stew
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| And it's not common at all in today's world, for a
| reason.
| siltpotato wrote:
| Well, as parent's parent demonstrates, it _is_ common,
| just in a different way.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| A worker coming in sick can be a safety violation if they
| don't wear the appropriate protective equipment
| (generally gloves and a mask). Picking food of the ground
| is a safety violation that could get a restaurant shut
| down, and moreover would open the restaurant up to civil
| torts. A restaurant is not going to risk permanent
| closure to save a few cents on food that falls to the
| ground, especially not in places where they grade
| restaurants on food safety.
|
| As for using leftovers: this will shock you, but a large
| portion of menu items in even fine establishments use
| leftover items (that were not served to customers).
| Soups, stews, curries, etc., generally involve
| perpetually renewed bases, where the previous days
| leftovers "seed" the new day's mix. The meats in pastas
| and other starch-heavy dishes are usually trimmings from
| entrees in which the meat is the star. Meatloaves in
| restaurants _always_ use leftover meats from the day
| before. Nearly all breads in bakeries involve the reuse
| of the sourdough starter, and indeed the concept of
| sourdough itself is premised on the reuse of the the
| dough.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| So your advice is basically to never patronize
| restaurants? Seems like an awful overreaction to
| something that almost never happens?
| dghughes wrote:
| >They showed receipts for thousands of people who ate
| there that day and that there weren't any other cases
| reported.
|
| It makes you wonder: did the lawyer call each one of
| those thousands of people, did anyone get sick but didn't
| realize it was the burger, time could be an issue too
| maybe a few lettuce leaves had listeria on them but it
| only grew to levels after a certain time and temperature.
| jiofih wrote:
| If that's the case and they did not consistently fail at
| food safety practices, just a one-off, then we can
| consider it an accident like any other and the restaurant
| is not culpable.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| More pondering than a serious question; would it make a
| difference if they didn't rely on the original business name
| and reputation? For example, if I created a fictitious "Lucky
| Dog Chinese" and in fact delivered food provided by the "Lucky
| Cat Chinese" would that be disagreeable? Almost like
| dropshipping for restaurants.
| mysterydip wrote:
| This exact thing is happening to one of my favorite local pizza
| places. Very frustrating for them.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| They're frustrated by free advertising and new customers?
|
| The smart thing to do is krep taking the business and just
| put a leaflet in the pizza box/whatever saying ordering
| directly is cheaper/faster, if that's the case.
| wpietri wrote:
| > The smart thing to do is krep taking
|
| I think the smart thing to do is to trust that people who
| have spent years doing a thing have more insight into the
| topic than a random internet forum participant.
| vectorbunny wrote:
| Frustrated by people having terrible customer service
| experiences associated with their business but completely
| out of their control.
| danso wrote:
| Maybe there's more involved than getting "free advertising
| and new customers". As in, "there ain't no such thing as a
| free lunch."
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| Perhaps frustrated that someone is doing business as them
| using their copyright and trademarks? These companies are
| basically commiting fraud, and any bad experience reflexts
| on the restaurant, not the delivery company.
|
| Sometimes the restaurant doesn't know that something is
| being ordered via another channel and cannot add sufh a
| slip.
| jiofih wrote:
| That "free" advertising is competing with your own channels
| (without the 30% commission).
|
| Also there are uncountable reports of them fucking up the
| delivery itself by not having appropriate containers, when
| the restaurant they are dealing doesn't actually do
| deliveries. That will _lose_ you customers and hurt your
| brand.
| wolco2 wrote:
| Perhaps add a 30% markup fee for any grubhub customer or
| ubereats customer based on payment info or familiar
| faces/cars.
| cleak wrote:
| I'm confused. How is GrubHub getting a 30% commission out
| of restaurants that don't actively partner with them?
| CydeWeys wrote:
| They inflate menu prices and add additional service and
| delivery fees. You end up spending $50 on a meal that
| should be $30, and if you were shopping by amount of
| money spent (as many people are) then the net result is
| $30 going to the restaurant instead of all $50 you were
| willing to spend.
| cleak wrote:
| Sure, but that's not actually a commission from the
| restaurant. The restaurant earns the same amount
| regardless of if it was true takeout or GrubHub (for
| folks that haven't opted in to being partners).
| listenallyall wrote:
| sorry but at some point it's on the customer. if they are
| so price-insensitive that they are willing to pay $50 for
| $30 of food, they are too lazy to cross-reference the
| price, or shop around, or just go pick it up themselves,
| then I have no issue with the delivery service milking
| them for whatever the customer is willing to spend.
| nirushiv wrote:
| I think they mean that other partnered restaurants get
| 30%. I could be misreading it though.
| jiofih wrote:
| They only do this ruse for a while, then after
| controlling a good chunk of the business they "sell"
| their services officially to the restaurant, including
| commission. It's not a charity.
| cleak wrote:
| But it's up to the individual restaurants to agree to
| this. There's no automatic 30% commission. If a delivery
| company wants to burn their capital offering discounts,
| why stop them? The restaurant is under no obligation to
| sign a contract taking on the burden of kreping those
| discounts.
| jiofih wrote:
| Very naive view. They will be "strongly incentivized" to
| sign once the company can threaten to pull their listing
| off and vanish 50% of their customer base. Nothing new
| here, standard growth playbook.
| tw25601814 wrote:
| If it's such a bad deal, why is the restaurant continuing
| to service orders from the food delivery platform? It's
| not like they don't know who's placing the order.
| tempsy wrote:
| In n Out has been a notable hold out from delivery apps for
| this reason.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| It's also undeniably a good thing for customers as well. Using
| an unexpected intermediary in a transaction is a terrible
| experience. If I see a restaurant on GrubHub then I want to
| _know_ that that restaurant wants orders coming through
| GrubHub. Otherwise, I 'll be much better off calling up the
| restaurant directly. As it stands, I currently have to use
| Google Maps as my restaurant portal, using the restaurant's
| website or phone number to figure out how to place orders. Only
| if their website is or links out to a 3rd party like GrubHub do
| I then actually use GrubHub.
|
| But if GrubHub only showed restaurants that were actually
| delegating their delivery to GrubHub, then I could use it as a
| portal. Right now it's not trustworthy for that purpose.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Honestly, I had thought that it was a partnership. For one,
| only a rather small subset of the restaurants in my area show
| up on Grubhub. I imagined that outsourcing the delivery
| function of their business would be a net win.
| ghaff wrote:
| Around where I live, the listed restaurants seem to be
| mostly chain fast food restaurants. The local pizza place I
| order from doesn't seem to be listed nor are most of the
| other local take-out restaurants I would recognize the
| names of from driving by. I've looked because one of my
| credit cards gave me a free DoorDash subscription and
| there's literally nothing I'm interested in.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| What if I put myself in the shoes of the consumer?
|
| Now if a restaurant doesn't offer delivery, can I still get
| delivery?
| imtringued wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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.
| ummonk wrote:
| Why does that require anything other than enforcement of
| existing trademark law?
| [deleted]
| syshum wrote:
| Why enforce existing law, we can you use this opportunity to
| create ever more complex laws to ensure stake holders that
| already abused to the condition the law is purporting to
| address can maintain their advantage and ensure no new
| entrants to the market
|
| That is all this does, it protect GrubHub, DoorDash and other
| large players from competition
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| How, specifically, does this protect GrubHub/DoorDash/etc?
| syshum wrote:
| this law is designed to protect those companies who
| already made billions on abusing existing laws by making
| it seem like what they did was legal, a "loophole" in the
| law that is now "closed" for new competitors
|
| They are not "new entrants" in the market, they have a
| network effect now so it will be preferable to them to
| sign exclusive deals with restaurants to further ensure
| there can not be any competition
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| So the alternative should be that we should continue to
| funnel VC money into every new predatory impersonation
| business?
|
| Sometimes it really is a loophole that is now closed, and
| the government can't subsequently dissolve all companies
| they've used it, they can only ask companies to stop.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The problem doesn't seem that related to trademarks to me.
| These app delivery platforms are impersonating companies, not
| selling their own products under someone else's brand. The
| food comes from where they claim it did. The issue with
| impersonation is that customers who got worse experience
| (cold food, long delivery, etc.) end up blaming the
| restaurant for it, even though the restaurant had nothing to
| do with it.
| sokoloff wrote:
| How is trading under the cover of someone else's mark not a
| trademark issue? If I'm representing myself as selling
| "TeMPOral Pizza" for delivery, the fact that I'm actually
| delivering pizza made at the TeMPOral Pizza Shop isn't
| entire cover.
|
| If I opened up a shop in the mall with giant lit white
| Apple logos, the fact that I sold genuine Apple product
| inside would not absolve me of trademark infringement.
|
| (Trademark violations are more than just counterfeit
| items.)
| roywiggins wrote:
| Yeah, if you try that with a megacorp, they'll drag you
| up and down the courts until you give up:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/09/pirate-
| trader-...
| eli wrote:
| It isn't working. This isn't a hypothetical problem.
| sgustard wrote:
| The app could say "we deliver from the Greek place on Main
| Street" to avoid using the trademark, but still be in
| violation of the new law.
|
| Also, many restaurants can't get a trademark. My favorite
| local place is "Joe's Pub" but I don't imagine that's a
| unique name.
| vkou wrote:
| Because most restaurant owners want to be in the business of
| running a restaurant, not litigating some out-of-state
| entities with billion-dollar warchests.
|
| Doing the former is working two full-time jobs, as is.
| tylersmith wrote:
| Them not wanting to handle their own problems is not a
| reason for the State to subsidize solutions for them.
| vkou wrote:
| The entire purpose of legislature is to _legislate_
| solutions to problems that society faces.
| Frost1x wrote:
| People tend to forget how critical resources are in our
| country to rights. You often need time, money, expertise,
| etc. to enter legal battles and if the costs of those
| resources outweigh the benefits, you often allow your legal
| rights to be infringed. Pursuit of some rights are cost
| prohibitive because everything in the US is so tightly tied
| to finances.
|
| Many of your rights in the US are directly tied to your
| financial resources, not only in the sense that you have
| the resources to litigate or absorb failed litigation but
| even in the sense that those with massive financial
| resources essentially buy their own rights through
| legislation.
|
| Let's not pretend the justice system doesn't have
| underlying flaws that allow justice to skew one way or
| another from money alone because it does. If you're on
| trial for a serious offense, you're probably not going to
| use a public appointed attorney if you can avoid it because
| we know how the legal system works and how financial
| incentives will attract better legal representation in the
| private sector than those for public appointment.
|
| This idealized and fictionalized system where I can walk
| into a court of law and defend myself or use a public
| appointed counsel and 'win' as long as I've done nothing
| illegal or unjust is a laughable joke for many legal
| battles, especially those of more significance.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Because many restaurant owners don't even think about
| trademarks, or their names are too "generic" to be allowed to
| trademark.
|
| The usual exception are the franchise operations (mcdonalds,
| BK, subway, kfc, ...) because these are thought from the
| start to be exclusive.
| s_dev wrote:
| Despite the downvotes -- I think there is a genuine question
| here. There isn't the need for more laws just enforcement of
| existing ones.
|
| Purporting to represent someone elses business is an
| egregious infringement of trademark.
| kelnos wrote:
| I would guess that most non-chain restaurants don't own a
| trademark for their name. It's an expensive process that
| many likely can't afford.
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| In CA the business will get common law trademark rights
| in their geographical area just by virtue of doing
| business under that name, but they would still need to
| sue the delivery companies which have in house counsel
| for these kind of things.
| paul_f wrote:
| In the US you are not required to register your trademark
| in order to enforce it. However, you do get some
| additional protections. The cost is $225 and it is good
| for 10 years
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| The answer is likely that our legal system is too expensive
| for local restaurant owners to afford the cost of suing a
| grubhub sized company. Restaurants are a business
| notoriously prone to failure and low margins. Maybe a class
| action lawsuit would work in this case, but mostly it's
| just another case where the legal system needs to be fixed
| to rely less on having money for justice to occur.
| wegs wrote:
| Two things which would help are:
|
| 1) Allow both private and public right-of-action for most
| laws. If the AG is busy, I should be able to sue. If I
| can't afford to sue, an AG should be able to take it up
| on my behalf.
|
| 2) Go back to circa 1800 style courts, where you don't
| need a lawyer to represent you. You both make your case
| to the judge. Not too much procedure. Perhaps extending
| small claims court up to $100,000 would do much of the
| same.
| syshum wrote:
| This is what Class Actions, and Business organizations
| are suppose to be for
|
| Also nothing is stopping the AG of the state from forming
| a Fraud case agaist the major players.
|
| The excuse of "well the courts cost too much money" is
| not abated by creating even more complex laws that will
| still require an expensive lawyer to enforce
|
| in reality this law is designed to protect those
| companies that already made billions on abusing trademark
| laws by making it seem like what they did was legal, a
| "loophole" in the law that is now "closed" for new
| competitors
| jeltz wrote:
| Expect class action obviously does not work, because is
| not like existing laws have stopped it. But yes, the
| solution might not be more laws but rather overhaul of
| the legal system to make it possible to enforce existing
| laws.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Do you think there is a trademark police force that you can
| call to enforce your trademark? Trademark is a civil matter
| and realitively pretty expensive to pursue. If you're a
| restaurant who just laid off half your staff due to COVID,
| how do you engage a trademark lawyer?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| It's not a genuine question.
|
| Companies shouldn't have to manufacture lawsuits every time
| a hostile third party wants to screw over their customers.
|
| This law is both pro-business AND pro-transparency.
| kenjackson wrote:
| How does it violate trademark law to say that "we will
| deliver food from restaurant X"? It seems clear to the
| customer who is providing the goods vs the service. What's
| not clear is if there is an agreement, which is what this
| new law makes clear.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Because civil laws only protect people rich enough to hire
| lawyers.
| weego wrote:
| I don't know why this is getting down voted, its absolutely
| naive to assume this isn't how it plays out in the real
| world.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's getting downvoted because it seems to be phrased in
| a deliberately inflammatory way. You can (and others
| downthread have) express the same idea that many
| restaurants can't afford the expense in a manner more
| likely to lead to productive discussion.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| This should not be down voted. The idea that a popular
| little family owned and operated Indian restaurant named
| "Bombay Curry" and still reeling from COVID-19 restrictions
| can some how sue Skip the Diehes or Uber Eats for Trademark
| infringement is absolutely ludicrous.
| jeltz wrote:
| Yeah, Uber is a company which is involved in legal
| battles with governments all over the world. I am sure
| they would make it a real pain to sue them. The idea of
| restaurants prusuing trademark cases against Uber is
| ridiculous.
| eloff wrote:
| Yeah, this is the legal system in a nutshell. Don't think
| you're safe in any meaningful way because the law says so.
| At the end of the day you would have to litigate it
| yourself and that is usually not worth it unless the
| offense is truly egregious.
|
| Against an adversary with deep pockets like a corporation,
| you can lose even if you win. This is how patent trolls
| extort companies, litigating a patent suite is usually a
| seven figure endeavor. And there's no guarantee you win.
| It's cheaper to pay the licensing free from the trolls, who
| are smart enough to make sure it's always less than the
| cost of litigating.
| [deleted]
| MichaelApproved wrote:
| Creating and defending a trademark is very expensive.
|
| Many restaurants would prefer not to spend this money just to
| prevent unauthorized listings.
|
| They'd rather delegate the responsibility of preventing
| unauthorized listings to the state attorney who has more
| resources and expertise.
| kgantchev wrote:
| That's not true. A trademark costs around $300:
| https://www.uspto.gov/trademark/trademark-fee-information
|
| Enforcing it is free: you can send your own cease and
| desist for free. The only time you need a lawyer is if they
| refuse and you want to sue them. If the court rules in your
| favor, you can even sue them for the legal costs and costs
| of damages.
| ineedasername wrote:
| And when the massive corporation that rose to dominance
| by ignoring local laws also ignores your DIY cease &
| desist letter, you're out $300. Heck, they'd ignore it if
| a lawyer wrote it too. Filing a lawsuit would be
| required, which they'd also ignore and delay as much as
| possible, far more than the local pizzeria can afford,
| until there was a class action.
| ratww wrote:
| Sorry for the cynicism, but I really don't understand why
| is it ok to ask small restaurants to spend $200-300 bucks
| and send a cease and desist letter, but it's not ok for
| the law to ask investor-backed startups to make a
| friendly contact to those same restaurants before using
| their brand.
|
| In the end it's less work for the investor-backed
| business, since with the C&D route they would need to
| register domains or create pages for restaurants that
| don't want the service only for their (very expensive!)
| legal department to receive a letter so they can delete
| everything.
|
| I mean just send an email to the restaurant so they can
| submit an authorization beforehand... tell them the
| advantages, let them make the decision...
| wpietri wrote:
| Is this something you have personally done? Because this
| sounds like an internet fantasy to me.
|
| But suppose we indulge your fantasy. A restaurant owner,
| who is already incredibly busy, decides to figure out how
| to register a trademark and sends the cease and desist.
| The venture-backed startup's in-house counsel looks at
| it, sees that it was written by an amateur, and just
| laughs. Now what?
| Timpy wrote:
| I don't think Uber Eats has a support page that says
| "Submit your amateur cease and desist letters here". A
| $300 trademark is a cheap business expense, using it to
| scare away massive corporations is expensive.
| privong wrote:
| > Enforcing it is free: you can send your own cease and
| desist for free.
|
| Enforcing it is free if your time is free.
| novaleaf wrote:
| time, and knowledge of how to write such a letter in a
| way to seem "serious legal threat"
| dheera wrote:
| Not to mention the delivery apps _dishonestly_ jack up listed
| prices, as seen on these 2 screenshots taken within the same
| hour: https://i.imgur.com/2HVXhvZ.png
|
| Then they have the guts to charge: - delivery fees ON TOP of
| that - then a service fee (WTF? you just charged for delivery
| service) - then a CA driver benefits of exactly $2.00 (why is
| it an exact whole number? is every cent of that going toward
| health insurance?) - small order fee - rush hour fee ...
| cleak wrote:
| The key issue around all of this is transparency. Itemize
| costs, be clear how much money goes to each party, and state
| up front if you're not affiliated.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Was impersonation legal in California before this law?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| No, but this protects small restaurant owners regardless if
| they are a legal entity with trademarks to protect.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| You are skipping quite a few steps here by jumping to
| "impersonating a business online", which I suspect is already
| illegal.
|
| This bill says that it would be illegal to pick food on behalf
| of someone else without the restaurant's agreement (if you're
| an online platform). The is no question of dishonesty or
| impersonation, just of offering this service.
|
| This is quite an extreme restriction, IMHO, and seems to be a
| kneejerk and simplistic response to a perceived problem.
|
| On the other hand, the problem of online reviews is separate
| and should be addressed specifically, IMHO. At the moment it's
| the wild West and a breeding ground for defamation. Maybe
| regulating this should get more attention from lawmakers
| (though I realise that in the US the 1st Amendment may make
| this difficult).
| XorNot wrote:
| Why? The practice involved is in response to the absolute
| garbage of misrepresentation of a restaurant's telephone
| number to be intercepted by your own call centre's.
| ozim wrote:
| Because if would like to have a honest delivery service
| that is not faking some restaurant, with the new law you
| will not be able to provide such service.
|
| It will be a lot more hassle to pick up something.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I don't think it is anyway unreasonable for such service
| to come to agreement with the restaurant. And absolutely
| beneficial for both parties.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The question is whether it should be _required_.
|
| If a restaurant welcomes takeaway orders then whether you
| order and collect in person or hire someone to do it on
| your behalf is irrelevant.
|
| That's why I think this bill is ill-thought-out.
|
| If there are shady practices taking place then they
| should be dealt with with existing legislation and, if
| needed, with new legislation specifically targeting these
| practices. Instead, I suspect this will only restrict
| services and competition, which ultimately won't be
| beneficial for consumers and restaurants alike.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| > If a restaurant welcomes takeaway orders then whether
| you order and collect in person or hire someone to do it
| on your behalf is irrelevant.
|
| This is a big if, because existing outcry already belies
| that this assumption is actually not reality.
|
| Besides, if that's the case it should be super easy to
| call the restaurant and ask to be a partner. You can mail
| them stickers to advertise for your delivery platform by
| pasting it on their doors/windows. "Official GrubHub
| partner" could even be a badge of legitimacy because
| GrubHub needs to protect their reputation as a source of
| good restaurants.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| It is not an assumption. It is irrelevant to the
| restaurant. The "outcry" is not about that, it's about
| shady practices and some problems with online reviews,
| which partly stem from said shady practices, and partly
| because some people are not understanding the service
| (this bill won't change that).
| ghaff wrote:
| All they have to do is get permission from the
| restaurants.
| lkbm wrote:
| That's an extra amount of work that keeps new, small
| players from entering the field. As with a lot of
| regulation, this is designed in a way that favors large
| incumbents.
| ghaff wrote:
| Eh, food delivery is a pretty local business. In fact, if
| I wanted to compete with these VC-backed companies, I'd
| probably do something like partner with local restaurants
| whose food traveled well, come up with some good
| packaging, etc. Of course, that's not scalable and
| disruptive.
| wruza wrote:
| >food delivery is a pretty local business
|
| ?? Food is a pretty local business, but delivery is not.
| You could say that person delivery is local too, because
| people mostly transport locally, but e.g. Uber is still
| global.
| ghaff wrote:
| To a first approximation, I _only_ care about food
| delivery to my house. To a first approximation, I _only_
| use Uber for places other than around my house.
|
| I grant that there are some economies of scale to having
| an app that companies in different cities can make use
| of. But I don't see that as requiring a nationwide
| company for the actual food delivery.
| [deleted]
| lkbm wrote:
| > Why? The practice involved is in response to the absolute
| garbage of misrepresentation of a restaurant's telephone
| number to be intercepted by your own call centre's.
|
| Sure, that's bad and _that_ should be banned. But that 's
| not the practice banned. What got banned is me paying
| someone to pick up my food for me.
|
| I could still run a website that misrepresents the
| restaurant's telephone number and intercepts your calls. I
| can take your order (at a mark-up) and relay that order to
| the restaurant. They'd just make me pick it up.
|
| You could ask why would I use that service. Maybe for the
| convenience of being able to order from any restaurant from
| a single website. Maybe I wouldn't. Maybe they give me
| rewards points. Maybe there's a discount and they just want
| to harvest my data.
|
| But really. it's irrelevant why/if I'd use the service. The
| problem is that the law doesn't address the one thing
| you've pointed out as absolute garbage. It _only_ bans the
| part that _isn 't_ terrible.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| That's not what the law does. It addresses the problem GP
| pointed out, and it bans the service you've described as
| well. It also doesn't forbid you from paying someone to
| pick your food up for you.
|
| Here's the relevant text:
|
| _> 22599. 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._
| lkbm wrote:
| That says that I can't arrange for delivery without
| approval to take orders and provide delivery. It doesn't
| imply that I need approval to take orders if I'm _not_
| providing delivery.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Who's going to setup a food pickup business in 2021
| without being an online business? "please fax your order
| and card details"?
|
| This bill does not require restaurants' permission if
| you're not an online business, that's true, but in
| practice that's not really any use to avoid having to get
| permission.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I don't understand what you're getting at. The entire
| point of this law is to make online delivery platforms
| get permission from restaurants before taking orders on
| their behalf.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Everyone is an online business in 2021. This bill in
| effect requires all food order and pickup businesses to
| get permission from restaurants.
|
| Clearly this looks attractive to many commenters but it
| won't solve any of the problems, real or not, and will
| only raise barriers to entry and entrench incumbents
| without providing benefits to consumers or restaurants
| (apart from allowing restaurants to seriously limit the
| number of customers, which is their right and some do
| wish to do that)
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| You're phrasing it as if requiring all food delivery
| platforms to get permission from restaurants is an
| unintended side effect, but again, it's the _entire
| point_ of the law.
|
| As to the problem this solves, there are plenty of links
| on HN alone detailing the harm that these delivery
| platforms have done to consumers and restaurants both.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| 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/takeaway, and
| indeed traditionally they don't (at least in Europe).
| They'll have to decide how to adapt and that may include
| focusing on the in premises experience instead of chasing
| online sales.
|
| But, again, this bill does not solve problems, and may
| actually be counter-productive as already explained, and
| you're certainly not giving me an example to the
| contrary.
|
| As a side note, and something to consider: these
| platforms are very good for the taxman as they make tax
| evasion all but impossible (and I suspect that has a
| financial impact on more restaurants that they wish to
| admit).
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| 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 want to shape technology and consumer habits in a
| way that makes their VC investors money. It makes no more
| sense to ask restaurants to adapt than it does to tell
| tech companies that they can 't change technology like
| this.
|
| Put another way: delivery platforms are pissing on
| restaurants and telling them that it's raining. We can
| either tell restaurants to suck it up and carry umbrellas
| now, or we can tell delivery platforms to stop pissing on
| them. I'd prefer the latter.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| 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.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| 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.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Why should a restaurant be allowed to ban me from hiring
| someone to deliver for me?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Are you a delivery platform? The law only applies to
| delivery platforms. If you want to hire an individual
| contractor(or just casually pay your buddy 3$ to pick up
| a pizza for you) you can still do so.
| [deleted]
| m3kw9 wrote:
| If my resturant didn't sign up for a middle man, don't force
| yourself in between. That seems reasonable
| jstanley wrote:
| 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.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| 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 stop the site from lying
| and pretending In-N-Out was a "partner".
|
| [a]: Think Amazon with the stupid 1-star reviews for being
| "late" or "shipping box damaged". It hurts the brand of the
| product being sold.
| jstanley wrote:
| Sure, I completely agree. They shouldn't lie.
|
| I was arguing that they're not "forcing" themselves in
| the middle of any transaction. They're a separate route
| for the transaction.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Careful there... Apple (or any manufacturer) could say the
| same thing about Ebay. Any sports team or band could say it
| about Stubhub. Nike could say it about StockX.
| chongli wrote:
| I think we can carve out an exception specifically for food
| and food services. Why? Because of the extremely limited
| shelf life of hot food. That's what sets it apart from your
| other examples.
| zackkitzmiller wrote:
| Lots of items have incredibly short shelf-lives as well.
| I spent nearly a decade in the live event ticketing
| industry so I'll focus on that.
|
| A significant precent of ticket sales are last minute. A
| friend tagging a long or someone waiting for prices to
| drop. Food spoils and looses quality fast, but so do good
| from many industries. I think carving out an exception
| for food is potentially a slippery slope.
|
| It would probably be better to carve out exceptions for
| any item that could potentially be worthless after some
| amount of time. Live event tickets, food, travel, etc.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Your "why" is totally arbitrary. Shelf life? Why not
| dollars? Apple could say it should receive extra
| protection because it loses 1000+ dollars every time an
| unauthorized MacBook Pro or iPhone 12 is sold outside of
| the channels that it controls. (I don't believe that is
| entirely true, but it's how Apple would argue it) Whereas
| unauthorized food deliveries are dealing in the tens of
| dollars, and further, the restaurant is never totally cut
| out of the loop, since previously-consumed food can't be
| resold.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The distinctions are only arbitrary in the fantasy world
| where an iPhone is remotely similar to a burger.
|
| Food products, especially restaurant foods, are regulated
| differently than non-food consumer goods. And have been
| for over a century. There are licensing requirements,
| safety requirements, and other rules that apply to
| restaurants that don't apply to other businesses.
|
| And those "arbitrary" laws make all the difference in why
| unapproved middlemen should not be allowed for restaurant
| foods.
| ghaff wrote:
| Actually, Stubhub is a little complicated in that, for
| example, sports season tickets can have conditions
| attached to them. Stubhub has lost a couple of court
| cases around that.
| tw25601814 wrote:
| The law does not set any health standards on food
| delivery platforms.
|
| Restaurants will have to sign up with each delivery
| platform, and/or delivery platforms will have to sign up
| each restaurant. Either way, the net effect will be to
| protect the extant food delivery platforms from new
| competition.
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| None of those examples claim to be, or otherwise tey to
| make you think they are, an official outlet for those
| goods.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Sure they do, of course ebay hosts used items but they
| also promote direct manufacturer-to-customer sales for
| many products. Stubhub actually does sell plenty of seats
| that were never otherwise available to the public,
| further, with their stadium maps and use of team names,
| etc, plenty of people might assume they are buying
| tickets via an official or authorized channel. StockX you
| likely have a point -- but it still doesn't mean that
| Nike approves of it and wouldn't try to shut it down if
| given some statutory assistance meant to target
| restaurants but written a bit too broadly.
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| I would argue that the average person would not consider
| ebay an official vendor for a brand like Amazon. Ebay is
| set up to make the seller prominent. (Moreso than amazon
| does, I would argue.)
|
| I haven't used StubHub in a while, but if they have move
| to being a first party distributor in some cases, i could
| see some confusion arising for a consumer.
| listenallyall wrote:
| The funny thing is, Amazon is a terrible example, since
| lots of stuff there is actually being sold by 3rd
| parties, not by Amazon itself, and not with any
| authorization from the manufacturer.
|
| example: https://www.amazon.com/Rolex-
| Datejust-126303-Silver-Bracelet...
|
| would you shell out $13,000 for this watch from
| "AUTHENTIC WATCHES"? Are they authorized to sell Rolexes?
| Do they have any "arrangement" with Rolex? Would Rolex
| honor its warranty after this sale? Is the watch even
| new?
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| My point is that amazon makes it difficult to see who
| exactly youre buying from and to know that you're getting
| it from that seller under many circumstances.
|
| Also, there is the first sale doctrine, so they most
| likely do not need to be "authorized" to sell by Rolex
| unless you can only purchase a rolex by signing away the
| roght of first sale. (I'm not sure that's possible to do
| and am sure it's come up with Tesla, but haven't looked
| for any relevant cases.) (Whether or not you trust that
| seller enough to give them that kind of money is a
| separate issue; I do not.)
|
| This isn't about these companies reselling food, its
| about them acting as an agent of the restaurant when they
| are not. They're also not selling me a "cheese pizza" for
| delivery and giving me one from a local place, they're
| selling me "company X's cheese pizza" for delivery, when
| Company X may not want their pizza delivered and has no
| knowledge of their listing by this company acting as
| their agent.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| sammax wrote:
| It would be the same thing if the delivery company was
| operating as a resale marketplace for used food ;)
| jdeibele wrote:
| The First Sale Doctrine [1] is what prohibits Apple or any
| manufacturer from preventing me selling my Mac on eBay.
|
| It used to be that you could buy or sell airline tickets to
| people. There used to be ads in the newspaper classifieds.
| The airlines are very happy that that's not possible now.
|
| Absolutely many companies in many industries would be happy
| to prevent people from doing X, both from a quality control
| and profit-maximizing perspective.
|
| But if I buy a ticket from StubHub or a scalper on the
| street, the experience should be the same. Having a
| delivery company insert themselves into the process means
| they make accept orders where they don't have enough
| drivers, have to transport it too far from the restaurant
| to the customer (many/most restaurants have limits on
| delivery area for time/quality), etc.
|
| So this seems completely different because the delivery
| companies are inserting themselves into the process as
| though they were endorsed by the restaurant.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-
| manual...
| coding123 wrote:
| Great way to shut out any new competition in the space.
| st1x7 wrote:
| 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.
| wasdfff wrote:
| 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.
| anandsuresh wrote:
| 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.
| th3iedkid wrote:
| 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?
| paxys wrote:
| Depends on how Y is licensed. A lot of open source projects are
| now specifically adding clauses preventing AWS etc. from
| offering their product as a hosted service.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, pseudo-open source licenses. They're certainly not OSI
| approved, which is the benchmark most go by. And it's not
| really a "lot," in part because most organizations won't
| touch open source software that isn't on a usually fairly
| short list of licenses approved for use.
| frombody wrote:
| software licenses allow for this, so in this scenario there is
| generally already an agreement between the creators and the
| consumers / distributors over what uses of the product are
| considered fair.
| swyx wrote:
| 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 them using the same methods they used. I
| understand there are also brand protection concerns for the small
| restaurants. have to weigh the tradeoffs.
| wasdfff wrote:
| 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.
| wayne wrote:
| It does seem messed up that we see a bad behavior, create a law
| to ban that behavior, and the law's biggest beneficiary is the
| company doing the bad behavior.
| Ekaros wrote:
| On other hand should then the bad behaviour be allowed to
| continue forever? Isn't something late better than never?
| Spivak wrote:
| Yes but if you don't also punish the companies who did the
| bad thing then you end up just giving them a moat.
|
| I'm of two minds about our legal system in this regard.
| It's nice that you don't really ever have to be worried
| about getting punished for things you did in the past
| suddenly being declared illegal but in doing so it rewards
| entities who have no conscience. And large groups of people
| acting together are quite good at silencing individual
| consciences.
| swyx wrote:
| yea right now we are simply incentivizing going after
| unregulated space as aggressively as possible before laws
| are written for them. writing regulation after the deed
| is done tackles symptoms while fueling root cause.
| [deleted]
| DGAP wrote:
| Exactly. If I'm in California and I want to challenge the
| incumbents with my cool new idea about how to do delivery
| better, now I can't. There's no way to effectively scale a
| sales team in the beginning to reach out to all these
| restaurants. And as you said, all the successful incumbent
| players already used this strategy to become big, now this
| won't materially affect them. They already have sales
| agreements in place with all the biggest sellers on their
| platforms.
| tzs wrote:
| > There's no way to effectively scale a sales team in the
| beginning to reach out to all these restaurants.
|
| Sure their is. There's a whole system dedicated to it. You
| make a brochure describing the service you want to offer to
| the restaurants. There are then companies that will print as
| many copies of that brochure as you ask them to, put them in
| envelopes, and mail them to addresses on a list you provide.
| (There are companies that will make the list for you, too).
|
| Combine that with phone calls to the restaurants you think
| would be most beneficial to get on your service. Three
| salespeople using phones could contact 10% of the restaurants
| in Los Angeles in under a month, and all of them within a
| year.
|
| Restaurant delivery is local. You don't have to compete with
| the incumbents nationwide right from the start. You can do it
| one city at a time.
| criddell wrote:
| The incumbents spent a lot of investor money to get where
| they are today.
|
| DoorDash, for example, started in San Francisco with
| something like 75 restaurants. That feels doable even with
| this bill. Today DoorDash is worth something like $15
| billion. If you actually have a better idea and can execute,
| you will find investors.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| > Doordash and Postmates doing exactly this got them their
| start, now it will be illegal to compete with them using the
| same methods they used.
|
| Waiting for a company with even worse practices, to be able to
| compete most effectively, doesn't seem like a net win.
| throway1gjj wrote:
| >unintentionally
| DevKoala wrote:
| 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.
| wskinner wrote:
| 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 competitors, for whom the cost of developing a
| relationship with every restaurant is cost prohibitive.
| DevKoala wrote:
| That makes sense, I see that point, but I think that
| stopping the bleeding is more important. Moreover the new
| set of rules can also benefit small competitors in the
| delivery space by allowing them to sign exclusive
| agreements with small businesses.
| wasdfff wrote:
| 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.
| foogazi wrote:
| How were businesses being abused?
|
| Do you mean customers use the app to order from X-Pizza, the
| app then prominently lists Y-Pizza and now X loses customers?
| bombcar wrote:
| The main issue that I saw was:
|
| 1. Customer orders from Big Don's Pizza (but it's actual
| door dash) 2. Pizza arrives late, cold, and on fire. 3.
| Customer swears to and at Big Don that he'll never buy from
| them again. 4. Dominos wins.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Customer orders pizza from SmallCorp through BigCorp.
|
| BigCorp pizza arrives late, with wrong order because
| BigCorp transcribed it wrong, or because BigCorp's courier
| failed to double check all the items.
|
| Customer gets incorrect and incomplete order from BigCorp.
|
| Customer calls BigCorp to complain.
|
| BigCorp tells customer to contact SmallCorp if they have an
| issue.
|
| So now SmallCorp has an issue where even though they
| correctly fulfilled the order sent to them by BigCorp, the
| customer (who they have no record of) is unsatisfied.
|
| I've experienced this personally from both of the "red
| letter" food delivery apps.
|
| Just as bad is when they screw up and add "pick up" as an
| option for a company who never agreed to take pick up
| orders. Last week I ordered meals for my family, arrived at
| the place, they had no record of me placing the order
| because they did not do business with BigCorp.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > growth hacks
|
| Tech speak for: breaking the law.
|
| But hey, money, so who cares if we ruin a bunch of lives and
| make the world a worse place? Isn't that what technology is all
| about?
| smarx007 wrote:
| I think "growth hacks" are "anything goes short of breaking
| the law".
| tbrake wrote:
| Move fast and break people.
| [deleted]
| lesdeuxmagots wrote:
| Yea, I do wonder if this will shut the door on any future high
| growth independent startups in the space to be created locally.
|
| DoorDash started their business doing exactly this in Palo
| Alto, and likely wouldn't have been able to raise the funds or
| grow at the pace they did without this strategy.
|
| On one hand, you could say good, these sorts of businesses are
| exploitative. But I'm not sure that the industry is a net
| negative as a whole, and this law could shut the door on a more
| sustainable model.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It seems like an agreement or explicit description of what is
| happening (the delivery service is providing the food, not
| the restaurant) is going to be part of any sustainable model.
| kevingadd wrote:
| The barn door needs to be closed. I don't care if it means
| there won't be more doordashes if the only way those companies
| can exist is by scamming customers and exploiting restaurants.
| I don't see why this is a problem. They're called "growth
| hacks" for a reason. If your concern is that people won't be
| able to compete with DoorDash now without breaking the law,
| maybe DoorDash should be penalized for past misbehavior... If
| you follow this "but banning this will prevent competition!"
| logic to its conclusion now it's logically inappropriate to
| make all sorts of things illegal because fraudsters got rich
| doing them and it would prevent competition.
|
| Personally I think it's possible for delivery apps to succeed
| without breaking the law. Similarly I believe a cab-hailing app
| can succeed without breaking the law. The fact that the big
| players in both markets have made "regulatory arbitrage" and
| lawbreaking a core part of their business model (protected by
| massive amounts of venture capital and highly paid lawyers) is
| not a reason to get rid of the laws they broke.
| ghaff wrote:
| I agree with you on cab-hailing given that cabs were such a
| miserable experience in so many cases. (Though I expect usage
| will certainly go down as prices rise and coverage may get
| thinner as a result.)
|
| I don't know about prepared food delivery. Dominos makes it
| work well. A lot of Chinese restaurants do, usually for a
| pretty small delivery radius. But there are a lot of things
| that just don't have a critical mass of people willing to pay
| for what 30 minute delivery costs. (On the other hand, the
| consensus seems to be that grocery delivery, or just pickup,
| is going to stay fairly common going forward.)
| smarx007 wrote:
| I think it would have been much better to outlaw
| misrepresentation and advertising without prior agreement (ie the
| pizza place that did not agree to partnership should only pop up
| in the search results if the user searches for it) and there
| should be a warning mandated like "Startup Inc is not affiliated
| with the Moms and Pops Pizza. If you proceed, we will place your
| order by calling PHONE_NUMBER and pick up your order from
| ADDRESS". It should still be legal for the end users to have a
| service do chores for them including picking up food but only if
| there is no confusion on the side of the user what is happening
| here (incl. the fact the pizza may get cold through a no fault of
| Moms and Pops Pizza).
|
| Edit: oh, the law would also outlaw food picking apps from
| delivering from Walmart too ("The code defines food facility
| [...] as an operation that stores, [...] or otherwise provides
| food [...] at the retail level.")
| hedora wrote:
| Agreed. Misrepresenting the relationship with the restaurants
| is the problem, not the existence of the delivery service.
|
| As written, the bill seems so poorly thought out that I wonder
| if the authors has some alternate motive. Regulatory capture,
| maybe?
|
| Also, this doesn't ban setting up fake websites to take orders,
| and then forwarding them to hapless restaurant owners.
|
| Honestly, just enforcing existing trademark law would be more
| effective.
| smarx007 wrote:
| I think "shall not arrange for the delivery of an order" in
| SS 22599 pretty much bans taking orders.
|
| But yes, it does not ban setting up fake websites,
| unfortunately. So a food delivery service can still put up a
| fake website only to tell a user on a landing page "we are
| sorry, Moms and Pops pizza does not take orders online, how
| about a slice of Jack and Jill's pizza instead?"
| ip26 wrote:
| That's just fraud though, if they are representing
| themselves as Moms and Pops
| powersnail wrote:
| > the law would also outlaw food picking apps from delivering
| from Walmart too
|
| Only if Walmart doesn't consent.
| jedimastert wrote:
| I've noticed that Doordash can sometimes do the opposite: if I
| search for a particular dish or genre (pizza, grilled cheese,
| pasta, Chinese take out, etc.) I'll often get restaurants that
| I can't pull up by searching for the name. I thought they were
| punishing or something, I just now realized they might be doing
| it to hide from search results or to hid the fact that the
| restaurants are listed...
| tanilama wrote:
| Not that unreasonable I guess?
|
| Even an App is free, it doesn't mean you can distribute it
| without permission? I would say the case apply to restaurants as
| well. I can see good restaurants leverage this to negotiate
| favorable terms with platforms.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Reasonable in scope and protection. Unusual for California, but
| better for everyone involved. Great.
| j45 wrote:
| This is a good idea, I've heard how unscrupulous some apps have
| been to effectively hijack the identity and contact points of
| private businesses without consent.
|
| It's one thing to want to own the demand for food, it's another
| thing to take it away from small business owners.
|
| It's worth going out of your way to order by a verified phone
| number, or recommend small restaurants install their own
| affordable platform like gloriafoods and keep their margins
| during the pandemic.
| roamerz wrote:
| California got this right. Credit where credit is due.
| DGAP wrote:
| HN is so strangely anti tech and anti startup at this point. I'm
| not sure exactly who's on the platform at this point. Unemployed
| OSS devs bitter that everyone else in the valley is making more
| money than them?
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| anti tech... it's called fraud. The "We're just an app" excuse
| needs to die already. It has absolutely nothing to do with
| tech, everything to do with an unethical business model.
| Absolutely nothing to do with technology.
| Cyclone_ wrote:
| I don't really view this as anti-tech or anti-startup at all.
| These kind of laws make sense regardless of whether a small or
| large company is committing the offense.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| People sick of all the terrible, exploitative, world-worsening
| things that modern tech companies seems to be all about?
| bjornsing wrote:
| Yea I've noticed this too. HN is starting to feel more and more
| like my social surroundings here in Sweden.
|
| On the other hand my social surroundings are obviously picking
| up some aspects of HN. Maybe culture is converging globally in
| a lot of ways?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| How is this anti-tech or anti-startup? This doesn't have
| anything to do with tech at all. I would welcome talking about
| purely technical subjects, like distributed database
| innovation. There's nothing technical about impersonating a
| restaurant?
| umeshunni wrote:
| I find it especially true early in the US day, perhaps because
| the audience then is probably bitter Europeans?
| Lev1a wrote:
| Why would we be bitter? Here in Germany for example there is
| at least one example ( https://www.lieferando.de ) of a
| takeaway/delivery service that AFAICT operates only on
| official partnerships with restaurants etc.
|
| Just for the record, I'm not in any way affiliated with them
| or any other such business apart from ordering through once
| or twice a few years ago.
| tw25601814 wrote:
| Cheering for more anti-competitive laws. Do you never learn?
|
| This law does _nothing_ except increase the cost of entering the
| delivery market, thus acts to protect the extant delivery
| services from new competitors.
| nojvek wrote:
| 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 median has barely
| gone up. The pie is much larger compared to 10 years ago, but
| most of it is captured by a fair few.
|
| It is not a great world to be in if it continues for the next 100
| years, which it'll likely be as technology divides us into haves
| and have -nots.
| weaksauce wrote:
| in a lot of ways a lot of the billionaires are the robber
| barons of our times. having multiple billions in wealth doesn't
| seem to be compatible with a healthy society and seems to be a
| failure of that society. the sheer scale of even one single
| billion dollars compared to a million dollars is absurd. a
| million seconds of time is almost 12 days. a billion seconds is
| 32 _years_ of time.
| wasdfff wrote:
| 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?
| exabrial wrote:
| How about opt-in for _literally everything_? That's called
| consent, a concept Silicon Valley doesn't understand.
| ianhorn wrote:
| That's a good slogan but there needs to be delineation of who
| is and isn't involved. It turns out to be the central question.
| If I buy a book from Amazon and want to sell it on eBay, who
| needs to opt in? I certainly shouldn't need your permission as
| you're not involved. Is the paper manufacturer involved in me
| selling the book on eBay? Is the author? The publisher? Amazon?
| Me taking something I buy on Amazon and selling it on eBay has
| a pretty direct analogy here (sell what I buy from local pizza
| co to my app users). Asking for opt in is just a different way
| to phrase it, unfortunately.
|
| That said, I'm glad for this law. Maybe it's not perfectly
| worded but it's a net good. What the delivery companies were
| doing was such blatant exploitation of everyone involved and
| I'm glad to see it go.
| Giorgi wrote:
| Why though? Do we need government at this level in business?
| swalsh wrote:
| This is such a great law, I wish my State would enact something
| similar. The real link to my local chinese restaurant is the 3rd
| link down. The apps links are always first. The only way I know
| it's the real site is if "pick-up" is offered as an option. I'd
| much prefer the restaurant got the full margin, than some app.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| While I agree that impersonation or platforms showing up first
| in search results is bad, whether the restaurant gets the full
| margin is a separate issue and currently correlates
| _negatively_.
|
| A restaurant that's being impersonated without any
| agreement/permission will get the full margin, because the
| platform has to buy at retail prices.
|
| A restaurant only loses money to commissions when they have an
| agreement with the platform, and that agreement very often also
| _allows_ the platform to set up those pages that show up first.
|
| So a law requiring platforms to get permission to deliver might
| end up with _fewer_ restaurants getting full margin!
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Even then, I've caught Seamless showing restaurants as being
| closed or not having delivery when they're open and they do,
| just not through Seamless.
|
| I wasn't sure if this was sloppy or malicious, but it costs
| restaurants customers in a pandemic.
| akrymski wrote:
| Yet another law to reduce competition in the delivery space and
| help existing monopolies. I'm sure GrubHub and DoorDash are
| cheering.
|
| Indexing and aggregating data is already covered by numerous
| laws. If Google can aggregate restaurant listings without
| permission then why can't others? Linking is ok, showing a call
| button is ok, but delivering isn't?
|
| The law around copyright is clear: you can't copy a restaurants
| menu without permission the same way you can't copy someone's
| blog post. This should be enough.
|
| If I want to pay a service to drive, purchase and deliver
| something for me it should be a human right, the same way that
| anyone should be able to walk into a restaurant and order without
| being refused service.
|
| Why don't restaurants want delivery companies doing this? The
| typical argument is bad Yelp reviews. Instead of blaming delivery
| companies why not blame Yelp for not authenticating their
| reviews? Same way that you shouldn't be able to leave an Amazon
| review without buying the product you shouldn't be able to leave
| a yelp review without booking a table at the restaurant. It's
| Yelp's fault for not authenticating reviews. Restaurants should
| be benefiting from delivery companies distributing their
| products, and there is nothing preventing them from offering
| direct to consumer deliveries themselves
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Why don't restaurants want delivery companies doing this?
|
| Why can't delivery services ask for permission before listing
| food from restaurants first? Why do they feel the need to
| impersonate restaurants, steal their menu, their trademark
| while never disclosing to the client that the restaurant has
| absolutely no part in that deal? Why can't delivery services
| behave in an ethical fashion that doesn't involve fraud?
|
| When your business model is so rotten you need to lie on both
| ends to make money (restaurants and clients), well you
| shouldn't be in business at all.
| anandsuresh wrote:
| It is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it does make it
| harder for newer businesses to enter the space. However, from
| what I have been able to piece together, the real culprits here
| are DoorDash and GrubHub, by listing restaurants without
| permission/agreements in the first place, necessitating the
| creation of this law. You're probably right that GrubHub and
| DoorDash are cheering at the moment, unless the law gets
| applied retro-actively (though I highly doubt that).
|
| > Indexing and aggregating data is already covered by numerous
| laws. If Google can aggregate restaurant listings without
| permission then why can't others? Linking is ok, showing a call
| button is ok, but delivering isn't?
|
| Searching for information on the internet and having food
| delivered are not the same experience; I'm usually not "hangry"
| when my search results take too long to come up, and/or are not
| what I was expecting. Even so, I usually blame Google for the
| bad results. It "should" be the same for food delivery services
| as well, where people "should" blame DoorDash/GrubHub, but that
| rarely happens. For better or worse, it is the restaurant that
| takes the blame, and risks losing future business.
|
| Most people I have spoken to regarding this issue were under
| the assumption that the delivery service already had agreements
| in place with these restaurants. A lot of these people are
| business owners themselves, and were surprised to find out that
| no such agreements existed; much like I was when I first found
| out about this issue.
|
| > The law around copyright is clear: you can't copy a
| restaurants menu without permission the same way you can't copy
| someone's blog post. This should be enough.
|
| True. It "should" be enough, but in practice, it rarely is.
| Most companies operate knowing that legal processes are lengthy
| and expensive and take that into account when modeling their
| business practices.
|
| > Why don't restaurants want delivery companies doing this? The
| typical argument is bad Yelp reviews. Instead of blaming
| delivery companies why not blame Yelp for not authenticating
| their reviews?
|
| When you're a small-business owner losing business due to the
| activities of some third-party service you did not authorize to
| represent you in the first place, you're usually not looking to
| blame another third-party service for the bad reviews you
| didn't know you were getting; especially one whose "business-
| model" was to blackmail restaurants to take down bad reviews.
| As a business owner, it is my right to know my customer and
| know anyone who is (mis)using my brand without my permission.
|
| > Restaurants should be benefiting from delivery companies
| distributing their products, and there is nothing preventing
| them from offering direct to consumer deliveries themselves.
|
| A handful of restaurants I order from on DoorDash/GrubHub
| usually have their own delivery crew. It isn't a requirement
| for every restaurant to offer delivery. Elsewhere in this
| thread, there was the issue of certain food items (usually the
| restaurant's speciality) having very precise kitchen-to-table
| time requirements. It is hard for a restaurant owner to control
| their product when they don't have any control over the
| delivery process. And when they choose to not have delivery,
| they are bypassed entirely by these third-parties. Seems
| perfectly fine for the restaurant to fight back against such
| practices.
|
| EDIT: fixed typo
| baby_wipe wrote:
| My understanding is DoorDash started out by listing restaurants
| without their permission. Now DoorDash has this legislation which
| will protect them from any new startup who tries to do the same
| thing. (The assumption being it will be much easier for DoorDash
| to obtain permission than it would be for a nascent startup.)
| jMyles wrote:
| First-mover advantage has slowly evolved from being a social
| and economic head-start to being a declaration of candidacy for
| the patronage of regulatory capture.
| someonehere wrote:
| In N Out sued one of the delivery services. I forgot which one.
| Essentially they didn't want their brand to be ruined by shoddy
| drivers delivering cold and soggy food. I agree that this is
| needed.
| stanmancan wrote:
| This is great news. One of my customers owns a small chain of
| pizza restaurants. One of the delivery apps kept hounding them to
| sign up, but they already offer delivery, so they repeatedly
| declined. Eventually the app listed them on the app without their
| permission, using their logo and everything, and set the prices
| lower than what it was sold for. Every time an order came in,
| someone from the app would call the store and place an order for
| pickup and then one of the drivers would pick it up.
|
| Disgusting business practice.
| supernova87a wrote:
| 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 hand, I don't
| think that tech companies are improperly classifying delivery
| people's labor as contract work and need to be stopped.
|
| 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?
|
| My opinions are evolving still.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| I don't understand how couriers are extracting any margin from
| restaurants.
| novia wrote:
| Right now restaurants are in a damned if you do damned if you
| don't situation with the various delivery services out there.
|
| If the restaurants explicitly agree to do business with
| grubhub and the like, they have to give the delivery service
| a 10% cut. The delivery service also takes a percentage cut
| on the customer side. I think there's the expectation that
| the restaurants keep charging the delivery service the same
| amount for food being delivered as they charge anyone who
| orders food from the restaurant and picks it up. This forces
| restaurants to raise the price for all their customers to pay
| for that 10% cut.
|
| Have you noticed that the prices for food via delivery are
| higher than the price for food you pickup? That's not due to
| the restaurant charging the delivery service a discriminatory
| price, that's actually the third way that the food delivery
| service takes a cut.
|
| Now, as a restaurant owner, you look at all these facts and
| decide that the delivery companies are fleecing you. You
| decide you'll use the waiters and waitresses you already had
| on staff to deliver the food to your customers, and you'll
| charge them something like $5 for delivery. Not really that
| unreasonable, given the circumstances, right?
|
| Well, what happens in those cases is that the delivery
| companies will list the restaurant anyways. And they'll offer
| free delivery. And they'll charge less for your food online
| than you charge them. They take the financial hit so later
| they can come to the restaurant owner with the data to show
| that they really need the delivery service after all. They'll
| undercut your business to get a greater market share. They've
| got lots of VC money to burn, that you, as a restaurant
| owner, can't compete with.
|
| Through all of this, customers will leave negative reviews on
| Yelp, for the restaurant, when the wrong food is delivered,
| or their food is cold, or their order was delivered to the
| wrong place. The reputation of the restaurant takes a hit due
| to the third party's shoddy delivery people.
|
| That's what this law is attempting to address.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| So in the second scenario, you get to keep on selling food
| for full price and the delivery companies generate business
| for you for free, but it's a bad deal because .. a few
| people might leave bad reviews on yelp when something is
| clearly DoorDash's fault? It sounds like a good deal to me.
| You get bad reviews from idiots no matter what anyway.
| novia wrote:
| In the second scenario you will not be able to pay the
| waiters you had on staff before the pandemic. There's
| nothing for them to do (assuming the restaurant moves to
| carryout only, as is currently mandated in DC.) You get
| paid for the food from the delivery service, but you
| don't see any tips.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| > a few people might leave bad reviews on yelp when
| something is clearly DoorDash's fault?
|
| If you don't have a good set up for delivery, the bad
| reviews will not be "a few" and it will certainly be more
| than what you would've otherwise had. There are examples
| of restaurants receiving literally dozens of negative
| reviews from this in a short period of time.
| [deleted]
| mbesto wrote:
| The courier price (in the app) isn't the same price as the
| one when you physically go into the restaurant. IIRC its
| 25~35% higher.
|
| Source - good friend is a restaurant owner.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| If I buy something from you for $10 and then sell it to
| someone else for $15, I haven't taken anything away from
| you. You have your price and I have mine.
| supernova87a wrote:
| Yeah, but if my marked up $15 thing you sell to someone
| else is crappy because of your handling, and now the
| customer associates my name with expensive, crappy
| product, my brand has been spoiled by you.
| tremon wrote:
| They don't. They make their margin by fleecing investors.
| ghaff wrote:
| Their negative margin.
| jeffchien wrote:
| I don't think this particular law (AB2149) is just a b2b issue,
| which is how I interpret your opinion to be. I think that this
| is a consumer issue as well. For example, as you said, I think
| unapproved listings are more prone to misrepresent menus and
| hours, especially the latter during these turbulent times. In
| one extreme instance, I've also seen a delivery site start
| listing a restaurant that has never been open for business.
| kome wrote:
| "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 and policy makers are fully entitled to disrupt
| "private contracts" when those contracts are not in line with
| the greater good.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| "The greater good" is clearly not the actual legal
| requirement...
| whiddershins wrote:
| That's an argument, but many think this doesn't work in
| practice.
| everfree wrote:
| Antitrust cases are a good example of this type of thinking
| working well in practice.
| jjice wrote:
| I'm not very familiar with delivery apps or how they work, but
| they were allowed to do this before? How would that ordering
| process work? Would someone make an order and then the courier
| call it in and then pick it up?
| drzaiusapelord wrote:
| Yep! They just call it in and someone picks it up. I think even
| if its a loss, its a form of intimidation. "See, we're the
| gatekeeper to your customers now, so you better sign with us so
| we get 20-30% of your revenue. Also we'll list your menu in our
| app with $1 added per item that we pocket on top of that and
| charge the customer a service fee on top of that."
|
| Its an ugly business model.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I was first about to say this was bad because it arbitrarily
| restricts FOIA, but on actual reading of the legislation this
| makes sense: the delivery apps are deceptively representing
| themselves to their own customers as agents of the businesses in
| question.
| [deleted]
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| This is an industry operating outside the scope of what
| restaurants have ever offered. Once delivery companies began
| making a lot of money with courier services, people created a
| story of exploitation and market manipulation. The reality,
| however, is that food service providers want in on the action:
| the bill gives providers bargaining chips to negotiate getting a
| cut for services that they never offered before. A consequence to
| this change is that while the restaurants do not face losses due
| to courier services, the courier services will lose as a result
| of the bill. Courier services now have a legitimate claim against
| the state and restaurants. It's time to go to the Supreme Court.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| This in effect says that it is illegal to pay someone to collect
| your own food from a restaurant without the restaurant's
| agreement (only if the service is offered online, though)
|
| This does not make much sense.
|
| Legislators should not rush into kneejerk and populist reactions.
| Slartie wrote:
| No, it is just illegal if that someone pretends to have some
| sort of reseller contract with the restaurant in order to
| acquire you as a customer.
|
| If you go to some guy, ask him to pick up food for you and the
| guy agrees for a fee, that's okay. But the incentive must have
| come from your side, and the guy must not have used the name of
| the restaurant to advertise for his services or even pretend to
| be a "part" of the restaurant.
|
| Legislation often is widely different for the same eventual
| business act, depending on how the parties came together. It's
| not new stuff, real estate agents have had such huge difference
| for ages (at least in Germany, but I assume that other
| countries also differentiate depending on who initially hired
| an agent, even though eventually, the agent ends up having
| contracts with the selling and buying party).
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The link states: " _This bill would enact the Fair Food
| Delivery Act of 2020, to prohibit a food delivery platform
| from arranging for the delivery of an order from a food
| facility without first obtaining an agreement with the food
| facility..._ "
|
| No question of pretending anything, just literally of doing
| what you suggest (food pickup for a fee, if that is arranged
| through an online platform)
|
| Using the names of the restaurants you are able to collect
| from in order to describe your service is obviously fair use
| of the names.
| Slartie wrote:
| Look closely. It is just illegal for the food delivery
| platform to arrange for a delivery. It is NOT illegal for
| YOU to arrange for a delivery to you, even if you do that
| through an online platform. Go to Craigslist and offer some
| dollars to anyone who picks up your food at a takeout place
| and delivers it to you.
|
| You don't have a problem at all with this new legislation,
| unless of course you want to be the shady middleman. But
| that's kind of the purpose.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| This is a rather disingenuous take.
|
| There is nothing shady in arranging food deliveries. This
| bill is ill-thought-out.
| Slartie wrote:
| In which way is my interpretation "disingenuous"?
| throw03172019 wrote:
| This is great. Postmates tricks you into thinking the restaurant
| is on their platform but then you get charged high fees because
| they have a Postmate go there and order in person.
| dalbasal wrote:
| The "uberfication" startup model had/has the same internet
| economics magic that dropshipping, crowdsourcing and such had,
| but for VC backed startups.
|
| As usual, XKCD captures the jist: https://xkcd.com/1060/
|
| Users order food. App for that. Food is delivered by non-
| employees. HR is an app. Suppliers don't have to know they're
| suppliers. The CEO can focus on visionary statements.
|
| A software business has magic economics because they don't need
| capital assets (and therefore capital investment) and they don't
| have marginal costs. Just software development. Uberfication
| minimizes even that.
|
| It's looking pretty uninspired at this point. Let's step back and
| think of the problem space. Food. Takeaways. Unless it's soylent
| or vegan meat, startup founders seem to consider actually making
| the food beneath them.
| ghaff wrote:
| The amazing thing is how much money you can lose while doing so
| little.
|
| I guess funneling money from investors to landlords by way of
| software developers is more expensive than it looks.
| [deleted]
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| I'm completely fine with apps listing restaurants without
| permission. But ONLY if the app makes that explicitly clear.
|
| To falsely pretend to offer a sanctioned service is fraud imho.
| There's all kinds of issues with this. Such as who to blame if an
| order is incorrect. Or who to complain to when prices suddenly
| increase.
|
| This law kinda sucks. But the status who is fraud at worst and
| dishonest at best.
|
| As far as regulations go this one seems mostly fine.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Why does this even have to be a law boggles my mind.
|
| I think there are laws against impersonation already. If I went
| around purporting to sell services in the name of Microsoft,
| their lawyers would act quickly.
|
| Not that I disagree with this new law
| foobar1962 wrote:
| The law is taking a food safety angle: restaurants have a duty
| of care to their customers, which extends through the delivery
| chain.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| This seems like a stretch to me. If I am using a courier
| service to get food, I know that there are two different
| parties involved and that the restaurant's own standards
| cannot be guaranteed. Safety is, as ever, a way to generate
| political expediency for otherwise bad ideas.
| [deleted]
| Razengan wrote:
| Maybe the apps thought they were doing the restaurants and
| users both a service, but not every restaurant always feels
| that way.
| purplecats wrote:
| no, this was just another means of money extortion. they
| masquerade around like the companies they're preying on, then
| effectively blackmail those companies for connecting them to
| these customers.
|
| unnecessary man in the middle. they're essentially the
| capitalist version of the cymothoa exigua parasite species.
| Razengan wrote:
| If customers prefer using a single "middle man" for a
| category of products or services instead of going to each
| company directly, then somebody's going to cater to that.
|
| > _cymothoa exigua parasite species._
|
| Well, that's an interesting TIL.
| [deleted]
| conistonwater wrote:
| The law is not just about impersonation, it says the platform
| can't arrange for delivery of food without having an agreement
| with a restaurant. So if it's not impersonating anybody, and
| just orders food on your behalf with you knowing it's a
| middleman, that would still violate the law, if I understood
| correctly. I think that wouldn't normally be illegal because
| it's not generally illegal to do things on others' behalf
| (there would need to be misrepresentation of some sort), so if
| they want to ban that they would need a law.
|
| This is the entirety of the law, by the way:
|
| > _22599. 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._
| mehrdadn wrote:
| I'm not even sure it's _buying_ on anyone 's "behalf" either.
| But rather just buying and then reselling goods.
| supernova87a wrote:
| I think the intention though, is to stop say a Doordash from
| listing a restaurant's menu on its (DD's) website and making
| it seem like the restaurant is consenting to having delivery
| of its food with whatever margin DD feels like adding on top
| of it. (Also by the way, shadier practices too, like
| hijaking/publishing a false restaurant phone number that
| diverts to DD instead of the restaurant.)
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yes, hence, impersonation
| mehrdadn wrote:
| The issue here isn't "did delivery apps sometimes
| impersonate restaurants" (which is why you think this law
| is redundant), but rather "does this law ban things
| _other_ than impersonation " (yes, and hence why others
| are saying a violation of the law need not constitute
| impersonation).
| ummonk wrote:
| The point is that the stated reason for the law is
| impersonation, which is already illegal, but under the
| guise of cracking down on impersonation of restaurants,
| the law does much more.
| mehrdadn wrote:
| > The point is that the stated reason for the law is
| impersonation
|
| Is it? I don't see anything in the text about
| impersonation.
| ehnto wrote:
| It's not terribly difficult to put together the arrangements
| with businesses who are amenable. DD and friends are just
| annoyed they'll have to do some minor business relations work
| instead of drawing value out of a business and then palming
| customer support off to them, while they never knew they were
| ever part of the transaction in the first place.
|
| It puts the restaurants back in a position of control over
| their own business operations, I think that's fine. If you
| want to work with the business to draw value from them,
| you'll have to arrange it. People are looking at this like
| it's the customer versus the restaurants, it's not, it's
| about mediating the relationship between two commercial
| operations and the vast majority of law is about just that
| kind of thing.
| cmckn wrote:
| Lately, I just call the restaurant and do a pickup order. I get
| the food a lot faster and I don't end up paying $40 for a $16
| pizza. There are some times when delivery is great, maybe I'm
| sick or have had a couple beers, or don't have my car; but those
| times are few and far between (for me). DoorDash and friends have
| convinced folks that delivery food is great. I think it kind of
| sucks.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Only problem with this is definitions. Why does it need to refer
| to "online delivery platforms" when it could refer to anybody
| that poses to deliver the food for you without express permission
| of the business owner?
|
| I mean, if the worry is that the owner should be able to have say
| in how the food is to be delivered, it should not matter how the
| actual order was made, whether it was through online platform, by
| phone, mail or pigeon?
|
| So, if I somehow do this without "online" component then it is
| fine?
|
| Why does half of the law need to be so specific and reactive
| instead of setting principles for how people should live and
| cooperate together?
|
| Imagine US Constitution referred to unimpeded travel by horse or
| train or by foot instead of unimpeded travel in general.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's trying to avoid rolling in other small scale activity that
| should be allowed. If I tell my kids' soccer team that I'll
| pick up 15 McDonalds burgers for them, I've "arranged for the
| delivery of an order" under the law's definition, so I'm in
| trouble unless the definition of "food delivery platform"
| exempts me.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Are you commercially providing a service of picking up
| burgers? There is already a clear distinction in law between
| commercial and non-commercial activity.
|
| Obviously my single sentence isn't yet enough to be
| standalone law. But you rightly pointed non-commercial
| activity could be exempt from this restriction.
|
| I can imagine somebody picking up burgers and delivering them
| to homeless people. I believe this could be exempt as non-
| commercial activity.
|
| There are again questions, what if Uber decides to pick up
| burgers and deliver them to homeless? One could say that even
| if deliver it for free it is still commercial activity
| (because they obviously stand to gain PR which has a value).
| Also they can just ask a burger place for permission to buy
| burgers from them for homeless people, I see no problem with
| that.
|
| Also all attempts at distinction of small and large scale
| seem to have issues with them. First is the arbitrary
| definition of what small and large scale is.
|
| Then what if you are wealthy man and decide to feed all
| homeless in LA for Christmas? I guess you could try to get
| permission from the owner of the establishment but I don't
| see why you shouldn't just be able to decide, in a spur of
| the moment, to send a dozen of your minions to various
| establishments and just buy the stuff.
|
| What then if Uber decides that their minions who deliver
| goods are actually small businesses providing the service on
| its own and use Uber's platform as a service to coordinate
| them with buyers? How would large/small scale operation be
| defined?
|
| To summarize, I think:
|
| - commercial / non-commercial distinction is better than
| large/small "scale" (however defined),
|
| - non-commercial organizations and private individuals should
| not be subject of this law
|
| - commercial activity most likely is calculated to gain
| something from this whether the delivery is or isn't paid for
| by the consumer and so I think it should not be exempt,
|
| - "small scale" commercial activity can probably be perverted
| by corporate lawyers.
|
| - if the law is restricted to online platforms, there is
| possibility corporations are going to work around it so that
| it does not meet the criteria of online platform.
| transfire wrote:
| F that! 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.
|
| As long as a delivery service doesn't pose as the store itself,
| there should be no issues. The laws in this country are a out of
| control.
| ecf wrote:
| I've come to just not give my business to restaurants that
| don't want to exist in the modern world. It's a high risk, low
| margin business. The fact they don't want to support any type
| of delivery with these apps shows to me they don't care about
| staying in business.
|
| "Support local" goes both ways.
| blargathon wrote:
| I wonder what the secondary consequences will be. The gig worker
| law had some nasty secondary consequences for musicians and such.
| These regulations really seem to hurt the little guys.
|
| That said, the law is short and doesn't even go to deeply into
| what an "agreement" is. So maybe it's ok?
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| well, the gig worker law never got to do it's intended thing,
| first cause the stays, then cause prop 22, so now it should
| just be repealed. Had it, at least the distortions for
| musicians that are also Uber drivers would have been the same.
|
| I would by the other's argument that this is about preventing
| misrepresentation. In fact, perhaps it should have _already_ be
| covered by trademark protections anyways.
| WalterBright wrote:
| If a person decides to buy a pizza from X and then sell it to Y,
| don't they have a right to?
| dxgarnish wrote:
| 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.
| ddalex wrote:
| absolutely; but they can't pretend to be X at all
| akira2501 wrote:
| If a person decides to open their home kitchen and sell food to
| the general public, don't they have a right to?
|
| If they get a license first. As long as the license process is
| reasonable and non-discriminatory, what's the issue?
| ratww wrote:
| 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 the government felt it needed to step up.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I don't think so? Its that you cant claim to be an agent of a
| company if you have no financial/contractual connection with
| the company. Image some sleazy guy went around town
| pretending to work for you. Its illegal.
| devcpp wrote:
| 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.
| wilde wrote:
| Impersonation is illegal, but GrubHub would argue that
| their logos are everywhere on these menus and it's clear
| that they're acting as agent.
|
| To resolve this under existing law we'd need to wait for a
| lawsuit to roll through the courts. The legislature passes
| laws all the time that are somewhat duplicative to clarify
| their intent. The law isn't a normalized database, and that
| actually speeds things up.
| wruza wrote:
| >GrubHub would argue that their logos are everywhere on
| these menus and it's clear that they're acting as agent
|
| Which is obvious to anyone who can and does read text. It
| seems to me that CA protects businesses not from
| impostors, but from illiterate who cannot differentiate
| delivery from production and they just rush to review on
| completely separate review platforms (it is wrong even if
| delivery contracted with production beforehand, imagine
| an angry customer reviewing bricks from a brick factory
| because a reseller brought them half a trailer of bricks
| broken in half). I bet that when you call a number, they
| even introduce as "grubhub support", not as a restaurant.
| Not only this law treats a symptom rather than a disease,
| it also allows established monopolies who first used this
| "loophole" to retain their status in the future.
|
| As of the problem as a whole - restaurants with their own
| delivery usually have a much worse service than
| aggregators'. Claims that "they just take our markup" is
| nonsense, because in practice people do value
| predictability and ratings of separare delivery services,
| while they cannot really stick a lever into many
| different companies that produce nice food but their
| delivery guys simply suck "because it's small place and
| they have to meet ends". The alternative is _not_ their
| own delivery, the real alternative is to shutdown.
| Pandemic changed markets and fault tolerances drastically
| and those who ignore these facts are unlikely to bloom in
| it anyway.
| ratww wrote:
| Someone else has mentioned that impersonation is certainly
| already illegal, and the right solution would be
| prosecution instead of making a new law, and I agree. I'm
| not from CA/US so I have no idea why the legislators felt
| the need for a new law.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Part of this is that it's really expensive to litigate
| that nuance in court because even if you believe you're
| correct, a company like GrubHub can continue to do
| business for _years and years_ while dragging this out
| through the courts. Especially because of covid, many
| cases like this are already backed up and GrubHub could
| probably be happily continuing to fleece small businesses
| for over half a decade.
|
| Also, if a judge for whatever reason doesn't agree with
| it, say, "if the government wanted trademarks to be
| enforced in this manner they'd pass a law about it, no
| deal" (this happens Eg. An argument that made it all the
| way up to the Supreme Court, taking years and years to do
| so, is that discriminating against trans people isn't
| discriminating on the basis of sex because if legislature
| intended it that way they'd say it more explicitly in
| law. Imagine how many trans people were fired for being
| trans while this thing was going through the courts.)
| then now you have to pass legislature again.
| carbonx wrote:
| 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.
| caf wrote:
| It seems like a form of passing-off, which has long been
| regarded as worthy of proscription.
| ghaff wrote:
| Maybe I'm misunderstanding you but companies (and
| individuals) pass off things all the time. Shipping is
| perhaps the most obvious example. If I'm an eBay seller and
| ship something to you, once I give you a tracking number,
| it's mostly between you and UPS. (Unless, e.g., an item was
| improperly packed and UPS won't honor a claim, etc.)
| michaelt wrote:
| "Passing off" in this context doesn't mean something
| being passed to another party, like a sportsball player
| making a pass.
|
| Rather, it's a common law term for selling an item while
| misrepresenting its origin [1] - for example, if an ebay
| seller claims to sell real rolexes and sends out fake
| rolexes, they have 'passed off' the fakes as real. This
| can happen even in the absence of registered trademarks.
|
| Of course, most of the historical examples are of copycat
| products - but the definitions used on Wikipedia sound
| like it might cover misrepresenting restaurant
| partnerships - particularly if the restaurant's
| reputation is besmirched by inept deliveries.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_off
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| That isn't the case with these delivery services.
|
| If ANYTHING is wrong with your order, they will refer you
| to the business that cooked the food unless you blow them
| up on the phone.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > they will refer you to the business that cooked the
| food unless
|
| This hasn't been my experience. Every time I've used
| Grubhub or Postmates and used their form to submit an
| issue with an order, the services have always either
| refunded me the issue or provided credit. I've never had
| to deal with the restaurant, unless I wanted something
| outside of money.
| criddell wrote:
| If you have a complaint, they just refund you right away.
| I think they know customers could start issuing
| chargebacks through the credit card company and they
| wouldn't have a way to defend themselves against that.
| ghaff wrote:
| Even if there's no real impersonation involved, the reality
| is that a lot of consumers, understandably, are going to sort
| of lump the food _as delivered_ as something the restaurant
| has responsibility for. After all, none of us have a lot of
| patience for companies that take the attitude of "Not our
| problem. This other company was responsible for that. Take it
| up with them."
|
| This is especially true here as, historically, restaurants
| were responsible for their own delivery. To most people,
| these services are just something that the restaurant
| contracted out for and is still basically on the hook for.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > as something the restaurant has responsibility for
|
| Exactly. It's not unreasonable for customers to make the
| assumption that a restaurant has entered into an explicit
| contract with a delivery service, the same way we hold them
| accountable for the ingredients they select. It's a very
| different mindset from something like postal delivery from
| FedEx or UPS, where we are more likely to treat each party
| as separate entities.
| aquadrop wrote:
| Then the law should be about making it clear status of the
| restaurant. Just forbidding everything seems like wide sweep
| action that can stifle a lot of other good/innovative
| business models. Not something government should do.
| alexander-litty wrote:
| It is far more unpredictable to litigate based on intent
| and public perception.
|
| If an app displays a phone number but doesn't say it
| belongs to the restaurant, is that making the current
| partnership clear or unclear? It's a question left to
| precedent, which means there is a chance the legislation
| would not have teeth.
|
| Instead of throwing restaurant owners into that mess, the
| new law we have today forbids a specific set of provable
| behaviors.
| WalterBright wrote:
| All the law has to say is that the delivery service must
| note next to their restaurant advertisement that they are
| not affiliated with or an agent of that restaurant.
|
| This would be a simple provable thing.
| [deleted]
| remus wrote:
| 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.
| frombody wrote:
| I believe every country has laws against distributing food if
| you don't have some sort of approval from some sort of health
| and safety department.
|
| If you do it once, nobody is going to care, but if you try and
| make a business out of other people's food, you'd best be
| compliant.
| Slartie wrote:
| They have, but not if they pretend to be X or to be somehow
| contracted by X to do deliveries if that is not actually the
| case.
| jopsen wrote:
| Not if you're using X branding to market the pizza to Y.
|
| Especially, not if the pizza being resold doesn't live up to X
| quality standards because it got cold.
|
| Try reselling from any major fast food restaurant, they'll stop
| selling to you, and if you paid different people to do the
| pickup, I bet you would get sued.
| ghaff wrote:
| Is that true? I've never used any of these services but,
| around where I live, I'd say most of the listed restaurants
| are national fast food chains. Of course, these companies may
| well have agreements will all of them.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Normally I am pretty anti- whatever california does. This time
| I'm super pro it. This is a great way to look out for the little
| guy getting bullied by the bigger ones. Would love to see 100x
| more of this.
| cleak wrote:
| This seems like a very broad solution to a very specific (albeit
| large) problem. The main thing I keep seeing mentioned is
| impersonation. That can be solved without requiring explicit
| agreements, and may be counterproductive in some cases.
|
| Imagine Joe's Tapas actually needs to rely on deliveries during
| COVID and isn't equipped to do it themselves. With this law
| they'd need an explicit contract with GrubHub or the like and
| that would surely include "we can do business using the Joe's
| Tapas name for X". There'd be no room to change the contact and
| even less protection for Joe's Tapas having their brand ruined.
|
| Why not solve the more narrow impersonation problem? Explicit
| transparency requirements and hefty fines for companies that run
| aground of them.
| tannerbrockwell wrote:
| This will be overturned based on First Amendment and Free Speech
| Grounds.
| daenz wrote:
| Maybe, if the headline matched the content. From the bill:
|
| >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 see anywhere mentioned about not being able to "list" a
| restaurant. Just that you cannot actually perform the delivery.
| Presumably, you could still lie and list a restaurant that you
| don't deliver for.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Not everything has to be solved with a new law.
|
| In fact, most things shouldn't.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| The legislator has to act when the private sector refuses to
| behave ethically. I don't see any problem here. DoorDash and co
| created the problem with their unethical business model, which
| is at the expense of restaurants they list on their own website
| without any kind of agreement whatsoever. They should have
| stuck to restaurants who agree to do business with DoorDash.
| [deleted]
| wskinner wrote:
| Looks like this is from Lorena Gonzalez, the author of the
| notorious AB5. Like that law, it seems rather too broad. By my
| reading it would ban a hypothetical app that worked on behalf of
| customers to deliver orders, even if the app explicitly mentions
| it is not affiliated with the restaurant or business. This
| doesn't seem like a good thing for Californians.
| CivBase wrote:
| By the look of it, this gives restaurants full control over how
| their product reaches the customer. It basically outlaws
| competition in the food delivery market, to the obvious benefit
| of restaurants and incumbents.
|
| There is an obvious problem in how many of the food delivery
| companies represent the restaurants they deliver from, but this
| goes way beyond addressing that particular problem.
|
| Glad this is just a CA thing.
| scrps wrote:
| I am not sure this will hurt delivery apps as much as
| restaurants, seems to me like it would compel resturants to enter
| into contract with delivery services (giving them an upper-hand)
| else they lose business. Maybe pre-covid that might have been
| survivable.
|
| Perhaps I am too narrow of a demographic but since covid hit I
| order pretty heavily from delivery services and I have completely
| ignored resturants I like simply because they don't offer
| delivery or are not listed with a delivery service.
|
| Edit: typo
| CivBase wrote:
| > 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.
|
| That's more than just preventing apps from listing a restaurant.
| I don't think delivery services should be able to represent
| restaurants without an agreement like many of them currently do,
| but I think this goes way too far.
|
| This basically outlaws competition in the food delivery market.
|
| EDIT: A food delivery service essentially buys food from a
| restaurant, then resells it to the customer. Is there any
| precedent for outlawing sale of a legal product to a business?
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