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Comment by rvnx | Hacker News Reader

I don't think ethics are the top priority of these companies: food delivery businesses traditionally take 30% from the food, take additional delivery fee from the user, and sometimes even a couple of dollars from the tips.

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It might sound naive, but as a user of these services for the last couple years, I only just recently learned this. Eg that they take a cut of each food item on top of their delivery fee. I always assumed the delivery fee was their cut. It was only when my wife mentioned she chatted to a local store who we ordered regularly from, that they mentioned they make crap all money on Uber/Deliveroo/etc orders.

We’ve deleted their apps and now just call ahead for pickup and go grab it ourselves. I feel shit for not looking into it sooner.

It's difficult without digging into the topic that these commissions exist because those kickbacks are fundamentally unjustified (and largely contested by restaurants). The current situation has caused restaurants to be more and more dependant to this revenue stream and are not in a position to negotiate.

Which is why it's so important for restaurants to organize and defend themselves.

https://www.protectourrestaurants.com/

Drove a Grubhub sales rep around. Usually between 15-30% depending on the package they picked. Which would also determine where they ranked on the site when someone searched for their cuisine. This was when they were just starting out their delivery program.

I've also noticed the food prices are marked up by $1-2 on uber eats, even if doing pickup; Im not sure if its uber or the restaurant doing it, but I've verified the markup exists on multiple shops

I'm down to use an alternative. All it needs is an iOS app, a website, a support line for order issues and to remove restaurants that repeatedly have issues, and secure payment methods. One app to aggregate all the restaurants that don't want to get screwed by the Ubers and Grubhubs. Since 2014 I haven't seen such an app. If one exists, please let me know, and the millions of restaurants as well. Perhaps a non-profit intermediary or collective could exist here.

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