[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? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-01 23:00 UTC)