[fxtentacle]

"We know restaurant ‘partners’ are a flight risk because this is not a genuine partnership, it’s extractive."

In my area, there's a pizza shop that is doing well. They also sell on Takeaway.com. But if you order through that - like I initially did - they'll give you a small business card that says "Did you know that our prices on Takeaway.com are 15% higher to compensate for the fees that they charge us?" And on the back of the business card is their URL for ordering and their own phone number. I now always order directly from them and the service is insanely better than the best I ever got from Takeaway.com. Their long-term delivery employees will actually remember how to find my house on the 1st try while the Pizza is still hot. I've never ever had a <30 minute delivery from Takeaway.com. But those pizza guys reliably hit 20 minutes if I order directly from them.

So yes, the restaurant that I know that does best on online delivery platforms is the one that treats it like an expensive advertisement channel and that funnels customers off the platform as fast as they can.

DoorDash's biggest risk is that one of their "partners" might become successful enough to leave.

[TeMPOraL]

Clever, but how long until Takeaway.com and others add a clause in their contract against putting such business cards in their order? These companies have power over restaurants, because they can ruin a restaurant's reputation until it yields and accepts the new contract.

[fxtentacle]

That's about as anticompetitive as it gets, using your market power to prohibit your partners from mentioning a lower cost alternative. The damage to consumers would be easy to illustrate.

[bobbylarrybobby]

Reminds me of a certain fruit company whose new M1 processor has been making the rounds on the news lately.

[impendia]

> Takeaway.com and others add a clause in their contract against putting such business cards in their order?

Possibly, buried in the fine print somewhere, but enforced by whom? Aside from the restaurants, only the drivers will see the food. Will they be ratting out the restaurants to their corporate overlords? I doubt it.

[TeMPOraL]

They can hire delivery-driver-equivalents of mystery shoppers - better paid workers whose primary job is spot-checking ToS compliance. Or they'll just pay someone to order random stuff from random restaurants and report what they get, under guise of quality assurance.

It's how trust-based arrangements are handled in other industries.

[tartoran]

How long until some actor emerges who provides a network of ordering sites hosted on the cloud that charge $30-50 a month for each restaurant and nothing more? As margins get thinner and thinner this is inevitable. And no marketing needed, if the service is good word of mouth would do it.

[rdtwo]

A long time, I don’t think it’s a viable model at scale. The restaurant owners are only slightly more tech savvy than my mom and they really struggle with this stuff. Also Uber acts as a mini Facebook style walled garden and locks out more and more customers from using your restaurant. At some point 10-20% the walled garden is enough to drive your profit to 0 and bankrupt a restaurant.

[timecube]

ChowNow is exactly this: https://get.chownow.com/

[ketzo]

And for what it's worth, I actually love using ChowNow. I can order directly from the restaurant, but I don't have to use a 2009 website built in PHP 0.2 by the owner's niece.

[SpicyLemonZest]

If I’m understanding you correctly, that already exists as Square Online, although I think they’re a bit more expensive than that. A lot of restaurants near me use it.

[winded_italics]

Takeaway needs the restaurants otherwise their service is useless.

[waylandsmithers]

Doesn't it always make sense to check if the restaurant offers delivery outside of the delivery apps? Otherwise as a customer you're just paying more money for no reason