“Legal, But Unethical” — RI Restaurants Speak Out on Unauthorized Food Delivery Services
GoLocalProv News Team and Kate Nagle
“Legal, But Unethical” — RI Restaurants Speak Out on Unauthorized Food Delivery Services
“It might be legal, but it’s unethical. Why should some random website make money off my back, and the backs of small businesses — someone with a computer and access to my menu?” said Eric Handwerger, owner of Ocean State Sandwich in downtown Providence.
Handwerger spoke to partnering originally with OrderUp, before they were bought by GrubHub — and then discovering that sites including DoorDash and Postmates.com were posting, unbeknownst to him, what he said were often incorrect portions of his menu online — and his issue with having no control as to the experience the customer had ultimately with the deliveries with the latter companies.
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Other restaurants besides ones in Rhode Island are raising similar issues — in 2018, a suburban Chicago restaurant filed a trademark infringement lawsuit Monday against DoorDash, alleging the California-based online delivery service used its logo and sold its food without permission.
As the Chicago Tribune reported,
“Burger Antics, a 5-year-old Brookfield restaurant featuring locally sourced meat and exotic toppings, never authorized DoorDash to post its menu or deliver its food, according to the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Chicago. Husband-and-wife owners Dan and Brenna Velcich learned their restaurant was on DoorDash from disgruntled customers.”
Rhode Island Businesses Share Experiences
Handwerger — and Providence Bagel’s Chris Wietecha — shared their experiences with GoLocalProv.
“I was approached by OrderUp probably two and a half years ago. They were new to Providence, they had some success in Boston. They were offering rates that were significantly less than the ‘big dogs’ such as GrubHub,” said Handwerger. “I didn’t need high visibility, just delivery. About 8 months passed, and OrderUp got bought by GrubHub.”
Handwerger said GrubHub wouldn’t honor the deal he had agreed to with OrderUp, and ultimately cut ties with GrubHub.
“About six months ago I got calls for orders, and these people would walk in wearing DoorDash tees,” said Handwerger. “I looked online and found my menu and logo — and some of the pricing and ingredients were incorrect.”
“Finally, through exhaustive google searches, I got ahold of someone and asked them who authorized my menu and logo to be on the site. So they gave me who it was, but it wasn’t someone who worked for me, it was a random person,” said Handwerger. “I said I didn’t authorize this, they hung up on me. I finally got ahold of someone and I threatened legal action. I said take me off the site within 24 hours [or] I’ll send my lawyer.”
Handwerger said he thought he was through — until last week.
“This young lady walks in -- it was near closing time, and she’s got a cell phone out. I didn’t think anything of it, people take orders for their offices all the time. She said she had an order for ‘soup,’ and didn’t know which soup — just that 'her app told her soup’ — it was postmates.com,” said Handwerger. “They had approached me a while ago. They were much like OrderUp — they were small market and I had no interest.”
Handwerger said he then similarly reached out to Postmates to take him off their site.
“I said to them, you’re taking my business, my logo — this is immoral and unethical,” said Handwerger. “[The representative] said it’s perfectly legal with open source coding.”
“The customer is likely paying a delivery fee and a gratuity. My staff isn’t going to get a gratuity if I sign up with a delivery service,” said Handwerger. “A business needs to opt-in — and [companies like] Uber Eats or GrubHub have gone through the right channels."
Providence Business: “Fake Pics Were Posted Online”
Providence Bagel's Wietecha spoke to his own experience — and unhappiness — with the unauthorized delivery channels.
“About four months ago, all of a sudden we got an influx of call in orders. We didn’t put two and two together,” said Wietecha. “Then a customer called and said she placed an order through Postmates — and she got it and it was completely wrong. I didn’t even know what Postmates was.”
Postmates filed last week for an IPO. "Postmates is one of a horde of "unicorn" companies -- privately-held startups valued at $1 billion or more..." reports CNN.
Wietecha said he then started investigating.
“So the menu that popped up had fake pictures and the pricing was incorrect,” said Wietecha. “So I called Postmates and I spoke to someone who had no idea who we were — and literally said there was no one I could talk to and they’d pass it along.”
“Then we started getting orders from DoorDash and we said to them, hey, we didn’t agree to be on the site,” said Wietecha. “I Googled them and it was essentially the same thing.”
“I’m not against adding another service. We use Uber Eats and they’re phenomenal and they’re a partner — if there’s a problem I can reach out to them. With this, I have no control over who’s picking it up and getting it to a customer we don’t know,” said Wietecha. “I threatened them with a cease and desist. I put something out on social media to let our customers know. I said we’re not partners with Postmates.”
DoorDash responded to questions about businesses being unhappy with their model with the following statement.
"DoorDash launched 5.5 years ago with one goal - to help local businesses thrive by being their last-mile logistics partner. As a merchant-first company, we are constantly innovating and launching new products and features for our merchants, such as DoorDash Drive (the back-end fulfillment arm of the business) to full integrations into the restaurant POS-systems, to picking up of excess food and dropping it off at local food banks and shelters.
For the majority of our merchants, being on DoorDash offers not only an additional influx of customers and revenue but also presents an additional marketing opportunity. For those not interested in being on DoorDash for any reason, we immediately remove them from the platform upon their request."