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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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).
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.
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.
?? 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.
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.
