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Comment by mysterydip | Hacker News Reader

This exact thing is happening to one of my favorite local pizza places. Very frustrating for them.

They're frustrated by free advertising and new customers?

The smart thing to do is krep taking the business and just put a leaflet in the pizza box/whatever saying ordering directly is cheaper/faster, if that's the case.

Maybe there's more involved than getting "free advertising and new customers". As in, "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch."

Perhaps frustrated that someone is doing business as them using their copyright and trademarks? These companies are basically commiting fraud, and any bad experience reflexts on the restaurant, not the delivery company.

Sometimes the restaurant doesn't know that something is being ordered via another channel and cannot add sufh a slip.

That “free” advertising is competing with your own channels (without the 30% commission).

Also there are uncountable reports of them fucking up the delivery itself by not having appropriate containers, when the restaurant they are dealing doesn’t actually do deliveries. That will lose you customers and hurt your brand.

If it's such a bad deal, why is the restaurant continuing to service orders from the food delivery platform? It's not like they don't know who's placing the order.

Perhaps add a 30% markup fee for any grubhub customer or ubereats customer based on payment info or familiar faces/cars.

I’m confused. How is GrubHub getting a 30% commission out of restaurants that don’t actively partner with them?

I think they mean that other partnered restaurants get 30%. I could be misreading it though.

They inflate menu prices and add additional service and delivery fees. You end up spending $50 on a meal that should be $30, and if you were shopping by amount of money spent (as many people are) then the net result is $30 going to the restaurant instead of all $50 you were willing to spend.

Sure, but that’s not actually a commission from the restaurant. The restaurant earns the same amount regardless of if it was true takeout or GrubHub (for folks that haven’t opted in to being partners).

sorry but at some point it's on the customer. if they are so price-insensitive that they are willing to pay $50 for $30 of food, they are too lazy to cross-reference the price, or shop around, or just go pick it up themselves, then I have no issue with the delivery service milking them for whatever the customer is willing to spend.

They only do this ruse for a while, then after controlling a good chunk of the business they “sell” their services officially to the restaurant, including commission. It’s not a charity.

But it's up to the individual restaurants to agree to this. There's no automatic 30% commission. If a delivery company wants to burn their capital offering discounts, why stop them? The restaurant is under no obligation to sign a contract taking on the burden of kreping those discounts.

Very naive view. They will be “strongly incentivized” to sign once the company can threaten to pull their listing off and vanish 50% of their customer base. Nothing new here, standard growth playbook.

So then why would California force them into that very situation?

It's not just about the money. The menus, information, and other details are just wrong or go out-of-date because this pizza restaurant changes things on a daily basis. Additionally their business is not setup for take-out at scale. They do the occasional take-out but when the phone starts ringing with to-go orders they were not anticipating, they are not staffed or ready to meet the demand. They call to remove themselves and then a few weeks later they end up back on there.

Frustrated by people having terrible customer service experiences associated with their business but completely out of their control.

> The smart thing to do is krep taking

I think the smart thing to do is to trust that people who have spent years doing a thing have more insight into the topic than a random internet forum participant.

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