[discopicante]

This reminds me of Ticketmaster vs. Pearl Jam in the 90s where the band exposed that Ticketmaster takes a much bigger cut that ticket holders didn't see in addition to a small 'ticket fee' that the ticket holder did see. I remember during that time that the general consensus from music fans was that Ticketmaster was an evil and greedy company.

Restaurant customers really need to change their perceptions and understanding of restaurant economics before it collapses under the current pressure – many will not return for a long time, if ever.

[bawolff]

I dont really see why its my responsibility as a consumer to police if business deals resturants engage in are "fair". That is the resturant's job. Its part of running a business. Actually its the main part. If the deal doesn't make financial sense - then the business shouldn't make the deal. If the business cannot survive neither taking the deal nor not taking it, then the business is not viable and it should go out of business.

At most i support a law requring that resturants can set different prices for uber eats than for walk in customers

[castlecrasher2]

How would restaurants have a choice, here? As far as they know, Uber Eats/Doordash/etc are just "regular customers" but are really just scalping the restaurant's product.

[delfinom]

Scalping product AND funneling all the blame on their fuckups onto the restaurants. It's a american rent seekers dream gig.

[bawolff]

If they were just regular customers, than there would be no need for the 10% cap. The cap would be 0% because regular customers dont negotiate massive discounts; they pay regular price.

[jiofih]

The sad thing is I don’t believe that situation has changed - if anything they take an even larger chunk, and even figured out a way to profit multiple times from the same ticket by owning the reseller platforms.

[muststopmyths]

>I remember during that time that the general consensus from music fans was that Ticketmaster was an evil and greedy company.

Sure, but it didn't translate into anything concrete. Pearl Jam suffered a lot by not being able to book major concert venues and pretty much stopped touring for a while. Ticketmaster went on to bigger and better things to where it's pretty much the only game in town for most artists/concert venues.

As video game pricing has shown, consumers don't give a shit about fair value when it comes right down to it.

What's really needed for the restaurant industry is for a co-op model where a bunch of restaurants in a city/locality pool together their resources to hire a fleet of delivery drivers and a common ordering platform.

A simple online-ordering system, plus a map that shows the location of the driver is all that's really needed. Craigslist makes tens of millions with a minimalist interface. No reason why you couldn't build a relatively cheap site like that for this co-op model.

Unfortunately no one has the incentive to build this platform for them. Because you can't return billions to your VCs this way.

[lolsal]

When I hear things like, "many will not return for a long time, if ever" I think about forests and how wildfires are ultimately a Good Thing® for clearing out crowded ecosystems and paving the way for new growth.

I'm too ignorant of all the moving parts to confidently make that analogy, but I can't help but wonder if this sort of collapse could be a net positive thing. I think there are opportunities here for all the participants, even if some of the incumbents will not survive.