FWIW, Eater published an article 5 days ago that discussed examples of New York eateries who are either OK or annoyed with being listed without permission
> But not all restaurants on DoorDash know that they're listed. Tommy Ferrick, owner of Delilah's Steaks in Greenpoint, says he rejected an offer from a DoorDash salesperson months ago due to a 20 to 25 percent commission fee. More than 50 percent of his cheesesteak business is from delivery, and he's already paying GrubHub a commission that ends up being three times higher than his rent every month. He's currently trying to get more people to just order directly through the restaurant. But a few weeks ago, his business started getting pick-up orders from DoorDash. He looked on the site and was shocked to see the Delilah's Steaks logo and full menu listed as an available restaurant, with significant price markups. A cheesesteak costs $11 in the shop, for example, but DoorDash charged $16.95 for it. "I was livid," says Ferrick, who worries about quality control for deliveries he doesn't know about.
Doughnut Plant seems meh about it:
> Still, DoorDash lists three of four Doughnut Plants shops on the site without the company's permission — but PostMates, Doughnut Plant's preferred delivery merchant, did reach out before posting the menu, according to the bakery's creative director Jeff Magness. The Doughnut Plant logo DoorDash posts is also incomplete, Magness adds. "I don't like [that] it makes it look like we are working with them," he writes in an email. "That said, we haven't received complaints from customers."
They should just use their containers to advertise the app and offer a small discount (10% or so) and then Doordash/Grubhub becomes a marketing channel for their app. Thats what I'd do.
>A cheesesteak costs $11 in the shop, for example, but DoorDash charged $16.95 for it.
From a customer perspective, this practice feels very disingenuous. The 5.95 should be labeled as part of a delivery fee.
If somehow DoorDash was the first link a user visited after searching for "donut plant", they would need information to decide whether to visit the restaurant or to order online.
The transparent thing to do is to list the 5.95 markup as DoorDash-imposed. That way the user can easily see their choice
Intuitively, that makes sense, but isn't it also pretty well-accepted for a retailer, reseller, or other "middleman" not to disclose their costs?
If you go to Walmart, you don't expect the price labels to say "$0.50 Kellogg bulk unit cost, $0.80 retail storage fee"; you just expect "$1.30", and the store's costs are their own concern.
It would certainly be a nice thing to do, but we generally don't expect retailers to facilitate you buying from their supplier.
On the other hand, retailers also probably have explicit permission from vendors to resell the good, which DoorDash doesn't.
This is a good point but also an unfair comparison. Walmart consumers do not have the option of walking to the factory instead of walmart. Doordash consumers can walk to the restaurant instead of ordering from doordash.
I think the analogy holds in this respect: in both cases, you can get it from the supplier, it's just less convenient, either because of having to go there, or needing to be shipped a longer distance, or needing to buy a bulk.
(Per sibling, a more relevant difference would be Walmart's having permission, but I'm not sure that's relevant to the consumer expectation; "telling you how cheap this stuff is from the source" is the kind of "facilitating you getting it cheaper" that we don't expect retailers to do.)
> From a customer perspective, this practice feels very disingenuous. The 5.95 should be labeled as part of a delivery fee.
Yes it is. While possible markups are mentioned somewhere their site, we didn't know about it until months after we had been regularly ordering from doordash.
Since then we only order if absolutely necessary, and prefer to pick up ourselves or use the restaurant delivery itself.
http://ny.eater.com/2015/11/6/9678206/door-dash-delivery-nyc
> But not all restaurants on DoorDash know that they're listed. Tommy Ferrick, owner of Delilah's Steaks in Greenpoint, says he rejected an offer from a DoorDash salesperson months ago due to a 20 to 25 percent commission fee. More than 50 percent of his cheesesteak business is from delivery, and he's already paying GrubHub a commission that ends up being three times higher than his rent every month. He's currently trying to get more people to just order directly through the restaurant. But a few weeks ago, his business started getting pick-up orders from DoorDash. He looked on the site and was shocked to see the Delilah's Steaks logo and full menu listed as an available restaurant, with significant price markups. A cheesesteak costs $11 in the shop, for example, but DoorDash charged $16.95 for it. "I was livid," says Ferrick, who worries about quality control for deliveries he doesn't know about.
Doughnut Plant seems meh about it:
> Still, DoorDash lists three of four Doughnut Plants shops on the site without the company's permission — but PostMates, Doughnut Plant's preferred delivery merchant, did reach out before posting the menu, according to the bakery's creative director Jeff Magness. The Doughnut Plant logo DoorDash posts is also incomplete, Magness adds. "I don't like [that] it makes it look like we are working with them," he writes in an email. "That said, we haven't received complaints from customers."