In my neighborhood in NYC, restaurants are getting much more vocal about the commission rate.
We used to be pretty exclusive seamless users in my house until we got a letter in one of our bags that roughly read:
"thank you for your order. Especially with the decrease in volume during these times of crisis, the grubhub commission makes it hard for us to stay in business. please consider ordering direct to support your neighborhood."
Since then (near the beginning of the COVID shelter in place order), we've ordered with the telephone or custom solutions every time. And we've noticed a difference: delivery times are literally half of what they were before.
It's interesting to see the `shopify`-ing of restaurants in our area: instead of going through the big platform of Seamless etc., they're using platforms that appear to be more like shopify/stripe (decentralized, meager commissions, no high-traffic "discovery" platform). Some of our favorite restaurants have even left Seamless/etc, because they're literally losing money on orders fulfilled there.
I don't know if all of this commotion will be enough to unseat the seamless/grubhub/postmates of the world, but I honestly hope it does. Restaurants are a tough enough business as it is, and the steep commission rates have been converting mom & pop places into sweatshops. :/
My wife and I were exclusively using Seamless until we read an article in Eater talking about how Grubhub/Seamless charge restaurants $6-7+ per phone call.[0]
..but then when we started trying to call or order directly through restaurants, we kept getting turned away and told to order through one of the apps. It seems many (most?) restaurants aren't in a position to take orders over the phone or directly through their website, even for pickup.
Similar experience here in NYC/Brooklyn. Got a leaflet in an order to use their direct website. They use this, which seems to work pretty well and the tech looks solid:
We used to be pretty exclusive seamless users in my house until we got a letter in one of our bags that roughly read:
"thank you for your order. Especially with the decrease in volume during these times of crisis, the grubhub commission makes it hard for us to stay in business. please consider ordering direct to support your neighborhood."
Since then (near the beginning of the COVID shelter in place order), we've ordered with the telephone or custom solutions every time. And we've noticed a difference: delivery times are literally half of what they were before.
It's interesting to see the `shopify`-ing of restaurants in our area: instead of going through the big platform of Seamless etc., they're using platforms that appear to be more like shopify/stripe (decentralized, meager commissions, no high-traffic "discovery" platform). Some of our favorite restaurants have even left Seamless/etc, because they're literally losing money on orders fulfilled there.
For example, a famous pizzeria nearby used to never offer delivery, but recently started offering delivery, with online ordering powered by https://pos.toasttab.com/products/online-ordering.
I don't know if all of this commotion will be enough to unseat the seamless/grubhub/postmates of the world, but I honestly hope it does. Restaurants are a tough enough business as it is, and the steep commission rates have been converting mom & pop places into sweatshops. :/