How a Pizza Shop Owner Reportedly Turned DoorDash’s Own Fee Structure Against It

[kevinUsa]

DoorDash and other apps are reportedly milking small businesses to death with fees and commissions, and one pizza owner had enough of it.

The coronavirus pandemic has, for now at least, dramatically altered the way Americans shop and eat. While social distancing and stay-at-home orders have blown a massive hole in the restaurant industry—the CEO of the reservation website OpenTable recently warned that one in every four restaurants may never reopen—deliveries have skyrocketed. According to finance magazine Barron's, restaurant delivery sales are up 70 percent from where they were at the same time last year, and orders are on average 24 percent bigger than they used to be.

Delivery services like GrubHub, UberEats, and DoorDash may be racking up orders, but the restaurants actually making the food are feeling the squeeze. As middlemen, those delivery services charge fees and commissions to the restaurants they work with, sometimes as high as 30 percent in cities or states that haven't regulated them, according to the Los Angeles Times. One especially notorious example: Chicago pizzeria owner Giuseppe Badalamenti shared his March invoice from GrubHub, and after commissions, fees, adjustments, and promotions, he was left with a mere $376.54 of his restaurant's $1,042.63 sales.

 

At least one restaurant has been able to strike back, though. In the tech industry newsletter Margins, Ranjan Roy writes about getting contacted by a friend, who owns a pizza shop, for help. Despite never agreeing to work with DoorDash, Roy's friend discovered that there was a DoorDash-linked "order delivery" button on the restaurant's Google listing. And it was causing him headaches:

DoorDash was causing him real problems. The most common was, DoorDash delivery drivers didn't have the proper bags for pizza so it inevitably would arrive cold. It led to his employees wasting time responding to complaints and even some bad Yelp reviews. But he brought up another problem—the prices were off. He was frustrated that customers were seeing incorrectly low prices. A pizza that he charged $24 for was listed as $16 by DoorDash.

That price discrepancy is the result of DoorDash scraping data from the restaurant's website—because of the layout, DoorDash was pricing a specialty pizza ($24) the same as a basic cheese one ($16). If a customer ordered the specialty pizza, they only paid $16 to DoorDash, while DoorDash had to pay the full $24 to the restaurant when they picked up the pizza. In other words, it's the perfect recipe for a short grift.

Roy crunched some numbers and found that if his friend ordered 10 pizzas himself, he'd make about $10 in profit after the cost of ingredients. But if he just put topping-less dough in the boxes—after all, he's not going to complain since he's the one receiving the delivery—the profit jumps to $75 for every order of 10 pizzas. Roy's friend reportedly tried this for several nights, partly because they were both curious to see how long it would take DoorDash to notice. Apparently, they never did.

"Was this a bit shady?" Roy writes. "Maybe, but DoorDash. Note: I did confirm with my friend that he was okay with me writing this, and we both agreed, DoorDash."

Like other delivery apps, DoorDash relies on gig workers, for whom they don't have to provide insurance, among other things. Despite those absurdly low labor costs and the heaps of commissions restaurants have to pay, delivery services are still struggling to actually turn a profit—DoorDash, for example, lost $450 million last year. And while Uber claims that UberEats is its most profitable division, UberEats lost $460 million in just one quarter in 2019.

[tom bhayya]

grubhub vaadu 15$ off coupons kuda ila cheyochu register as a new user order and select pick up option dont make the order in restaurant update that customer picked order  

[Pitta]

10 hours ago, tom bhayya said:

grubhub vaadu 15$ off coupons kuda ila cheyochu register as a new user order and select pick up option dont make the order in restaurant update that customer picked order  

[awaraa]

14 hours ago, tom bhayya said:

grubhub vaadu 15$ off coupons kuda ila cheyochu register as a new user order and select pick up option dont make the order in restaurant update that customer picked order  

koncham clear ga chepu bro

[TechAdvice]

Article doesn’t make sense to me especially where he says he will just put dough in box’s without toppings... if he does that’s customers will Neva Eva order thru them and he will loose his genuine customers .. I do agree that these delivery companies suck the blood out of small businesses! Please dont order thru them.. call in to order and pick it up 

[Kalam_Youtheman]

13 minutes ago, awaraa said:

koncham clear ga chepu bro

ROFL....  aaagam aaagam ga chepppinduu kadha

[Catalpha]

Good post, my husband would do something like this. Haha, good job.

[tacobell fan]

This seems odd to me. You have option to maintain the menu and price. 

[r2d2]

😀

[tom bhayya]

42 minutes ago, awaraa said:

koncham clear ga chepu bro

it works for restaurant owners not customers, grubhub will send coupons to the restaurant customers ki offer cheyamani like 15$ off 20$+ for new customers ani. so oka kotha email tho grubhub lo account create chesi aa coupon use chesi pick up order pedathaaru aa min amount ki pickup kabatti no delivery fee will be added so oka 20$ items ki mana card nundi 7$ paduthundhi anuko. manamey order istham ee order manadhey kabatti manam food prepare or pack cheyam 

[tacobell fan]

1 minute ago, tom bhayya said:

it works for restaurant owners not customers, grubhub will send coupons to the restaurant customers ki offer cheyamani like 15$ off 20$+ for new customers ani. so oka kotha email tho grubhub lo account create chesi aa coupon use chesi pick up order pedathaaru aa min amount ki pickup kabatti no delivery fee will be added so oka 20$ items ki mana card nundi 7$ paduthundhi anuko. manamey order istham ee order manadhey kabatti manam food prepare or pack cheyam 

We end up creating several emails kada. Too hectic of a job emo.