
San Francisco Emergency Order Says Delivery Apps Must Cap Restaurant Fees at 15% - analyst74
https://sf.eater.com/2020/4/10/21216546/san-francisco-delivery-cap-doordash-grubhub-uber-eats-postmates-caviar
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pertymcpert
I don't understand how these apps get away with such high commissions. Some of
these are 30% of the total order. For someone to deliver the food.

And they already charge a service fee and a delivery fee to the customer.
Double dipping bastards all of them. Their platform can't cost that much to
run either, no need for such high margins.

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lonelappde
I agree. You should start a competing business with lower prices and and drive
them out.

Guess what? It costs more than $3 to drive a $10 order to your apartment.

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Engineering-MD
Surely the delivery cost is independent of the order cost?

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curryst
I think the order cost increases the variability of the delivery cost.
Anecdata, but I have noticed for larger orders, the driver often spends more
time at the restaurant waiting for the order to be ready. Ideally the delivery
company would know when it will be ready; but that comes with a certain risk
that they are late, which means cold food. And to add on to that, if customers
complain about cold food, the larger the order means the larger the refund
(hopefully).

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praveenperera
I’m sure this will have no unintended consequences...

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lonelappde
It's fine. Just like with the freelancer's law, local restaurants and delivery
services will be replaced by out of town ones. So you'll be able to get dinner
delivered from Palo Alto instead.

Plenty of time to preheat the oven for your cold delivery.

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gbronner
This will be an interesting natural economics experiment. An economist would
say that it shouldn't matter- that as long as restaurants can adjust prices,
and consumers are price sensitive, that the total delivery cost should stay
about the same.

Curious what will happen.

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skybrian
If the restaurant raises menu prices then pick-up orders would be more
expensive. Maybe they don't want to do that?

Another possibility might be that delivery services charge more to consumers.
Apparently some delivery services waived fees during the crisis? They could
stop doing that, keeping their revenue per delivery the same. (But this would
encourage consumers to switch to pick-up.)

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chongli
They can raise menu prices and offer a pickup discount. Chinese restaurants
near me have been doing this for as long as I can remember.

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tomatocracy
Perhaps a better approach would be a combination of consumer price
transparency and banning exclusivity agreements. That way a combination of
public shame and competition ought to make this problem go away.

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lonelappde
The local curry house isn't the iOS app store. If they charge too much for
delivery you can easily buy from someone else. Especially if it's delivery and
you don't have to go to the shop.

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lonelappde
Why %? What is the correlation between cost of a food order and cost of
delivery? There is none.

This is absurd politician's syllogisming.

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malandrew
Seems like the restaurant industry should be super grateful. Without these
delivery networks, most restaurants would have totally shutdown and have no
hope of surviving.

