> restaurants are complaining that they dont make enough via the apps
Is this true? I can't think of any reason why a restaurant would put themselves on the app and spend all of that time managing it (Uber/Skip) if they feel they don't make enough?
This happened back in 2019 with a restaurant I have a stake in. We did not enter into an agreement with Door Dash. Door Dash would call and place a pick-up order. The driver would come in and attempt to pay for the order with a debit card. The card got declined. Another (exactly the same order) gets called in, a different driver shows up - card got declined.
Staff thought it was a scam. They noticed the same type of debit card was used for both orders. Finally a driver informed us it was a door dash order. They scraped an old menu online with outdated prices, and loaded the debit card with the amount they calculated from the outdated menu.
Staff called back the phone number that placed the orders, explained the issue, and let Door Dash know there were 2 orders (sitting for over an hour, no longer saleable) that they owed [amount] for before we would take any additional orders from them, and that they needed to pay in advance over the phone before we would make any more food for them. Horrible experience, would never do business with them.
Some of these delivery apps have gone so far as to create fake websites for restaurants and hijacked Yelp and Google Maps location entries to drive customers to use the app to place their order.
Then they go to the restaurant and say "We're generating this much business for you... if you give us a cut, we'll generate more" and the spiral starts.
We briefly dabbled into running a takeaway in the UK; these apps have changed customer behaviour such that if you’re not on it, you won’t get much business at all. So it’s not much of a choice; and yes ordering from one of these apps practically sucks all profit margin away, order directly from the place if you can.
Its more about marketing and mindshare. What if mcdonalds was on the apps but not carls jr? You'd rather the customer come to you and deny the other business a customer than to not be there at all
Is this true? I can't think of any reason why a restaurant would put themselves on the app and spend all of that time managing it (Uber/Skip) if they feel they don't make enough?