> some consumers will still tend to blame Sally's Piping Hot Burgers when their burger arrives soggy and cold

A friend who manages an excellent restaurant says that this is indeed a problem. One of their signature dishes is fried chicken, and it is glorious. They optimize everything about the meal with the understanding that it's 15-30 seconds from the kitchen to the table. But those are the wrong choices for 15-30 minutes of travel time. You'd be better off just getting Popeye's. But who gets the negative review on Yelp? Not the delivery company.

I’m incredibly perplexed why people do this. Even pre pandemic it was patently obvious to anyone who paid attention that certain foods just don’t deliver well. Before the internet became a thing, the only places that regularly offered delivery were pizza joints and Chinese food, because both of those survive delivery well! I ordered delivery burgers once, from a restaurant close by, and learned my lesson that burgers are best enjoyed immediately and not 10 minutes later. Why should I blame the restaurant for that?

>> were pizza joints and Chinese food

Don't forget indian food. Much of that cuisine was specifically developed for delivery. The multitude of cultures and eating habits (vegetation, Muslim etc) in modernizing india meant that housewives would prepare hot lunches for their husbands away at work, food which was delivered by the famed Dabbawala network. Some modern restaurants are so proud of this that they deliver food to the table in metal dabba boxes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala

"In the late 1800's, an increasing number of migrants were moving to Bombay from different parts of the country, and fast food and canteens were not prevalent. All these people left early in the morning for offices, and often had to go hungry for lunch. They belonged to different communities, and therefore had different types of tastes, which could only be satisfied by their own home-cooked meals. So, in 1890, Mahadeo Havaji Bachche started a lunch delivery service in Bombay with about a hundred men."

Amusingly, Indian food isn’t well suited for restaurant-style eating. The meal prep takes too long forcing restaurants to cut corners. It only works well with a limited, set menu.

Depends on how the chef runs the place. Indian food is difficult if one sticks to western notions of "made to order", each meal being started only after ordering. But a curry house will prep things like the curry base before opening, doing maybe 75% of the work before the first orders arrive. Then it goes quickly. In western cooking the skill is in the actual cooking, with indian food the skill comes in the non-cooking prep work.

Restaurant indian food is made in batch though. The food tastes just as fresh and often tastes better after the spices have had time to settle.

No clue about the history. All I know is: The longer it takes them to deliver my vindaloo, the better it tastes.

> I’m incredibly perplexed why people do this. Even pre pandemic it was patently obvious to anyone who paid attention that certain foods just don’t deliver well.

I don't say this with any malice, but a lot of people are just not that bright. Things that you think are "perplexingly obvious", to the point that you can't conceive of not thinking about them, just aren't to them.

> a lot of people are just not that bright.

From anecdotal observation, I wouldn’t say intelligence is the deciding factor, but impatience. People don’t pause to evaluate.

I have a friend who lashes out or gives up at mundane life problems (why is this hamburger soggy and how to avoid it) without pondering a solution or cause. Her immediate reaction is to find blame (even if herself), not to consider if and how the issue can be fixed.

But I’m confident she has the ability and intelligence to find solutions, because from what she tells me of her work—including customer and management reviews—she does it in professional settings.

I don’t think delivery choices really have anything to do with someone’s intelligence. Some of the most intelligent people I know have horrible diets, some to the point of nearly refusing to eat anything but a few select dishes, others just extreme laziness when it comes to food. It’s a total afterthought.

In this situation, I think it’s more that when you really want a burger, Chinese food just isn’t going to cut it. A kinda soggy burger is still better because it’s what you want.

The claim is not that you have to be dumb to want a suboptimal burger over optimal Chinese food. It's that it doesn't make sense to do so and then blame the restaurant for the burger not being as fresh as it would be if you got it in-person.

Also note that I'm not claiming that this is simply due to people being dumb. It's just my experience that, in the absence of an explanation for why someone does something "obviously" dumb, it makes more sense to accept that they're dumb than it does to be "perplexed". There's a cultural barrier against communicating openly about differences in intelligence, and it can lead to blindspots if you rely on it too much tk explain people's behavior. But it's my observation that the pendulum has swung so far to one side that many people don't even like to consider that others may be reasoning poorly.

I know people have different degrees of intelligent judgment, but you should also consider the fact that people who order online have already accepted the absurd fees and taxes imposed by the app (19% fee on Doordash, 16% on Grubhub, + tips + taxes). If you're willing to pay extra money in order to get your desired food while you're busy doing your own work, isn't it reasonable to get mad at the restaurant and the app for handling the food poorly?

> If you're willing to pay extra money in order to get your desired food while you're busy doing your own work, isn't it reasonable to get mad at the restaurant and the app for handling the food poorly?

Depends. If the restaurant doesn’t offer delivery, and some third party is charging you to perform delivery services for you, why is the restaurant at fault?

Invariably, the restaurant gets the blame for the failed delivery experience, regardless of whether or not they’re responsible.

As the snickers advert correctly notes: you’re not you when you’re hungry. Reason and rational thought are difficult when blood sugar is low.

> people who order online have already accepted the absurd fees and taxes imposed by the app (19% fee on Doordash, 16% on Grubhub, + tips + taxes).

Is this absurd? You have to balance it against the service you want, which is having someone drive to an arbitrary burger joint, wait for your order, and then drive it to your door. That's such an inefficient use of someone else's time that I'd expect to pay a lot for it. It's not clear to me that 15-20% is somehow "absurd". I get mild sticker shock on the few occasions I order delivery, but the sticker shock is directed at my own laziness, not price-gouging. Wasn't there an article on HN just yesterday calling these companies "parasites" for screwing investors, drivers, and restaurants, all in the name of delivering unreasonably low consumer prices?

> If you're willing to pay extra money in order to get your desired food while you're busy doing your own work, isn't it reasonable to get mad at the restaurant and the app for handling the food poorly?

Those standards don't extend infinitely. As the original comment I replied to says, some foods don't deliver well. If you get a burger delivered, it's probably not going to be as good as in the restaurant. This isn't just common sense; it's the type of common sense that a sufficiently intelligent person is usually not going to be able to avoid thinking about. As an upthread comment says, it's fine if you want a soggy burger, but expecting it to taste fresh off the grill is almost physically impossible.

The only way for the restaurant to get around this is by leaving items off of their delivery menu. But this would be a terrible idea: if I felt like a delivery burger, I wouldn't want a restuarant deciding for me that it's too low-quality to even be an option.

Fundamentally,the act we're talking about is complaining in a review that a (subsidized) delivered burger tastes like a delivered burger. It seems pretty irreducibly dumb to me.

> Things that you think are "perplexingly obvious", to the point that you can't conceive of not thinking about it, just aren't to them.

And it can take almost half a lifetime to realize this

That other people can have so vastly different brains.

Which is pretty strange given that you see can see clearly a vast spectrum of different mental capabilities (from handicap to genius) your entire life. I guess it flies in the face of cultural virtues about how hard work will set you free.

There are plenty of people who aren't very bright or capable and yet have very "free" (in the financial sense) lives and live comfortably.

Of course there are plenty of people, both bright and dull, who could live comfortably and yet stay mired in debt and distress.

People are kept separate.

In first grade, I was in the "green" reading group, with just 4 or 5 out of about 30 kids. Nothing was ever said about abilities. I just assumed that the groups were random. I was the best in the green group by far, so it seemed that I was experiencing the other extreme of mental abilities. Late in the year, something inadvertently revealed to me that "green" was the best. To this day, I have no idea how bad the other groups could have been.

I remember being the best in AP Chemistry too. I set the 15-year record for the final exam score, permanently changing the grade scaling for the class by 3 points out of 100. (old scaling would have given me a 103 but that became a 100, and even years later all the grades would be lower by 3 points) That class was about 15 out of 350 students who started as freshmen. There were other students, about 50 out of the 350, who dropped out. I don't have much of an idea of what their science classes might have been like.

> I don't have much of an idea of what their science classes might have been like.

Class "adjustment" is usually simpler than you might think. Expect the following differences as the class gets dumber:

- Less material is covered by the instructor.

- There is less of an expectation that any given material will be remembered more than a week after it was covered.

- Hints for questions asked of students in class will be more direct.

- More time is spent on watching movies with themes notionally related to the class, and on playing games (think "chemistry bingo") during class.

Note that all of these are pretty smooth continuous scales; there's lots of room for tuning.

> People are kept separate

Good point. And they "self segregate" themselves too? If there're two kids, and one is a lot brighter than the other, i think both of them will tend to get frustrated when playing together or deciding what to do -- so they'll find others to play with.

Maybe this a bit applies to emotional intelligence too.

One's whole life, one a bit chooses people with similar "capabilities", without thinking about it?

And then, from time to time, one sees in the newspapers what the vastly different people do, and get surprised: can there really be such people, where are all those people

More charitably. A lot of people really wanted food delivery in the pandemic who had never use it much before. And discovered, to their disappointment, that a lot of food deliveries were pretty bad.

There’s certainly something to that. Before the pandemic, I would have never thought to order a burger for delivery because that’s just not what one does. If I wanted delivery, I’d go for pizza or Thai food.

But during the pandemic I wanted a burger, and getting my car out sucked (yay city living), so I ordered a delivery burger. Immediately after that subpar experience I thought “oh, that’s why ordering delivery burgers isn’t the norm” and went back to ordering noodles and pizza instead.

It’s the leap from “culturally this isn’t a common thing to do (order a delivery burger), so obviously it’s the restaurants fault that my experience wasn’t as good as it would be in store” that I don’t get.

I don't think there's any indication that this issue is new to the pandemic, is there?

I also don't have any strong opinions about this particular topic, and there could very well be some other explanation. I'm just generally remarking on the common expression of such confusion at other people acting suboptimally; sometimes it's just because most people aren't all that smart or thoughtful.

I think it's a matter of expectation more than anything. Someone who orders food from a restaurant might expect that the restaurant has recipes designed for delivery. I wouldn't expect a top quality restaurant burger when I order delivery, but I'd still be disappointed if it were a soggy mess instead of the 5-8/10 I've come to expect from decent delivery options.

I think it IS a matter of expectation, yes.

If I go and pick up something that doesn't sit around at room temperature well (let's say a milkshake), and drive 20 minutes home before eating it, I'm not going to ding the restaurant for the fact it's melted.

If, however, milkshakes are offered for takeout (reasonable), but then a third delivery party gets involved and starts offering them for delivery, anyone ordering it will have the impression of "I ordered a milkshake. It arrived to my hand melted! 1-star, bad!" Since they clearly aren't thinking enough to -not order the milkshake in the first place-.

Milkshake is an extreme example to demonstrate the point, but applies to anything that doesn't sit well (previously mentioned burger included), with the added trouble that customers are less likely to know what will sit well.

Funny fact, one of the best deliveries I’ve gotten this year was ice cream. The local creamery[0] has an option to sign up for weekly deliveries. They obviously bring the equipment to keep it properly frozen (easier than a milkshake I know), and check IDs for their alcoholic ice creams. I suspect that if they wanted to, they could have pulled off milkshake deliveries, although the logistics wouldn’t scale.

0 - https://ilovethestil.com/

I've had Jeni's delivered before, yeah. Packed in dry ice it shipped fine. But, yeah, it's packed to travel. Not just placed in someone's passenger seat for 30 minutes.

TIL alcoholic ice cream is a thing.

And it is awesome.

There’s not really enough alcohol in there to affect you; probably because it would eventually hamper the formation of ice. But having ice cream that actually tastes like coffee and bailey’s is the best.

local = Boise Idaho. If you were wondering

The quality of the food really isn't a binary state, though. I think most people get the idea that delivery food isn't going to be as good as having it at a restaurant, but they're expecting a middle ground if the item is offered for delivery.

I know a few people who own top quality restaurants. They spent a shit ton of time figuring out delivery. One in chicago does it for reheat with nice instructions on everything. Like a blue apron style setup. A bbq place just won't sell certain items ever togo. Heck maggianos obviously spent time in their take home setup.

One of the problems is that, with some exceptions, if a restaurant offers take-out at all, they probably offer their whole menu. If I look at the menu for my local Greek pizza place, I can pretty much guarantee you that their pizzas, Veal Parmesan, and salads are going to stand up to take-out (AFAIK you can't get delivery) better than their burgers, meatball subs, or calzones.

Ironically, the main reason pizza works so well for delivery is because the drivers have specialized boxes that hold in heat, maintains the right humidity conditions, and is easy to handle.

The third party app drivers don't have this, so pizza delivered from them often arrives cold and soggy, and sometimes even smashed to one side of the box.

> Even pre pandemic it was patently obvious to anyone who paid attention that certain foods just don’t deliver well.

Before the pandemic, many people had literally never ordered delivery before!

I for one only ever ordered carry-out, or ate at the restaurant. I live in an urban jungle of restaurants, all within walking distance; why would I pay someone to drive to a place that's within five minutes' walk?

Recent months have been educational about both the virtues and vices of delivery food. This has not been an education I would have ever otherwise received.

A local (actual, not American) Chinese joint makes by far the best soup dumplings in town. During the pandemic they’ve understandably switched to takeout only, but now their reviews are filled with people that are disappointed by dumplings that aren’t steaming hot inside and have holes because they stick to the takeout containers. I feel really bad for the owners - they’re forced to choose between endangering the lives of their workers or offering a subpar product.

I can't imagine getting takeout soup dumplings. They're almost getting a little too cooled down by the time you finish them in a restaurant. Dumplings that you pan fry at home can work reasonably well but, of course, a product that you have to partially cook yourself is not what a lot of people are looking for in take-out.

For the most part, they're okay, if you don't have super high expectations for the soup portion of it.

Some Chinese places near me have started selling the dumplings they make frozen as well.

The thing is I do have high expectations.

I'd be very happy with good frozen potstickers and wontons. Actually cooking them is pretty easy; I just find making them really tedious. And I haven't really found the ones I can get in Oriental markets all that great.

yeah, getting food delivered generally sucks.. You pay $30* for something that tastes like crap, when you could've made something better on your own in 20 minutes for $5 or less

* in the bay area anyway, presumably it's not this expensive out in the real world

> because they stick to the takeout containers

Technological solution: some sort of return-for-deposit Teflon-walled thermos. Only available for regular customers, of course.

I miss getting those soup dumplings hot and fresh so much that I would unironically pay for this in a heartbeat if it worked.

After seeing a one-star negative review for a mosquito electric zapper because it didn’t get rid of their roaches problem, nothing people do or say on internet will ever surprise me again.

Who is old enough to remember the McDLT?

https://youtu.be/UTSdUOC8Kac

I am.

And it was dropped because when McDonalds stopped using styrofoam they couldn't make it work any more.

There is an irony in that. We went from a society that uses styrofoam to paper cups. Never mind that styrofoam is one of the most easily recycled substances we have, while the wax on paper cups makes them destined for the landfill.

> styrofoam is one of the most easily recycled substances

Is that actually true? I've always heard to put styrofoam in trash rather than recycling.

It is.

I had a friend whose father was a chemical engineer back in the 1980s who did a study on it. The cost per cubic yard to recycle styrofoam was insanely cheap. It was just that it required a specialized process that nobody implemented because creating more was also cheap. So it wasn't recycled, but it could have been.

Is it also possible that food-contaminated styrofoam is significantly costlier to recycle than styrofoam on its own, or did this specialized process also take care of this problem?

It is not significantly costlier to recycle.

The problem is that there is no money to be made from selling recycled styrofoam since it is competing with products that are themselves extremely cheap. If we imposed a high enough tax on the original product, then it would be cost effective. However we still have the trouble that we have to collect it, separate it out from other wastes in the waste stream, and so on.

So we could recycle styrofoam. But we don't because it is not cost effective to do so. So it is viewed as unrecyclable. And for that reason we have replaced it with things that are even less recyclable.

>>> The cost per cubic yard to recycle styrofoam was insanely cheap.

No wonder. Maybe volume is not the good metric to look at when comparing styrofoam to paper.

Styrofoam is insanely bulky. The same orders could be filled with a fraction of the volume of paper.

We can recycle styrofoam? This is news to me.

You can't recycle wax paper cups. But they'll either break down in the landfill, which is fine. Or they won't, which is a form of carbon capture, which is also fine. You can also burn it for energy.

How about composting styrofoam? I keep wanting to try it at home sometime!

https://livingearthsystems.com/mealworms-compost-styrofoam/

We can recycle it. But it isn't cost effective.

Still consider this. Things decompose only slowly in a landfill. But when they do, they decomposed into methane because it is a low oxygen environment. And methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 is.

Therefore "they'll break down in the landfill" is not as fine as you think it is. The fact that styrofoam will NOT breakdown in a landfill makes it ACTUALLY better as a form of carbon capture. (Although the carbon being captured is actually from fossil fuels, so at best it can be net neutral.)

Paper in general doesn’t always recycle well in practice. The issue is that grease ruins batches of paper that are being recycled by literally greasing the fibers so they don’t stick together into a coherent product. This is a big issue when food grease ends up in the recycling chain, especially in the form of pizza boxes.

I'm not sure where you live, but here in SF, waxed paper and cardboard go in the compost bin.

And paper coffee cups can be straight up recycled here as well, with a rinse.

Dropping the McDLT was what started me on the road to not try 'new' items from fast food places very much. If I like the new offering, it's going to be cut, just like the McDLT. McDLT was my all time favorite fast food burger from the 80s.

Before VCs started trying to buy delivery market share and take a slice of restaurant profits, the restaurants that offered delivery were the ones that were well suited for it. Others would offer take-out, but there it was up to customers to solve the travel-time problem, so people generally got take-out from nearby restaurants.

Now, though, consumers are being offered the food they love delivered to their door, with no hint that it might be a bad idea. I'm not surprised at all that they are unhappy that the thing they were sold turned out to be disappointing. I agree that if one understands all the logistical, marketplace, and culinary factors, it doesn't make much sense to blame the restaurant. But one of the glories of capitalism is that purchasers don't have to understand a thing. They just have to have money and a desire.

I think the real bad actors here are the delivery companies here, not the consumers. The delivery companies are selling something they really can't deliver. It shouldn't be up to consumers to figure all this out on an order-by-order basis.

> Why should I blame the restaurant for that?

Of course, you should not and you would not

But, to paraphrase PT Barnum: no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average populous.

There are a sufficiently large portion of the customer base who either lack the intelligence or just do not care enough to figure out what is the source of the problem, and will happily blame the restaurant, and broadcast that erroneous blame in person and online. More than enough of these to ruin a restaurant's reputation and business.

That is why this law is a good thing.

My product or service, I should have the right to control it's distribution up to and including it's first sale (especially if it is not a commodity).

Because more people than you think do not understand this and how delivery platforms work (ie. that restaurants do not control them)

If you're a restaurant and some of your dishes do not handle delivery well then you should not sell them as delivery/takeaway but only on premises. Otherwise you'll have to accept that some customers will be unhappy and leave a bad review.

I think this is a learning curve for many restaurants that are not used to this business model. Certainly in Europe it was not usual for restaurants to offer delivery/takeaway, which was only done by some pizzerias for a long time. Now these platforms are booming and the pandemic has made them critical.

A couple of times I've been tempted to order from Five Guys with one of the services I have a promo with. But then I remember that said Five Guys is far enough away that I wouldn't want to drive to it and, best case, what I receive is not going to be great. Better to grill it myself.

> I ordered delivery burgers once, from a restaurant close by, and learned my lesson that burgers are best enjoyed immediately and not 10 minutes later.

Weird. It takes me notably longer than that to eat a burger in a restaurant, and I never notice any quality problems over that period of time.

The ten minutes it spends on your plate is a very different ten minutes than those spent tightly wrapped in foil in a car; one makes the burger a lot soggier than the other.

So the problem is how it's packed, and delivery could be done correctly. Okay, that makes sense.

It's not only about packing. If you take your first bite a minute after a dish is ready in the kitchen, it leaves a much different impression than the first bite you take after 10 minutes in a ride. The extra time spent in the delivery is always going to make a huge different in how the food tastes, at least for certain dishes (dumplings, e.g.).

Yeah. I think if you got delivered a hamburger in a restaurant that had just been sitting for 15 minutes, not under heat lamps, you'd be complaining to the waiter. I think we sort of internalize that our food is going to be getting colder etc. as the process of eating it goes on and we don't really think about it. And, as I noted elsewhere, something like soup dumplings or dumplings generally (unless you pan-fry them at home) are going to be pretty meh too in general.

A restaurant burger is a different beast than a fast food burger. Restaurants usually go for big thick patties, softer breads, and may go with more soupier sauces. A fast food burger is very thin, on a more serious bun and usually has less moisture on it overall. Even the actual burger meat itself can be different, with fast food being a fattier cheaper cut and restaurant burgers being a fancier ground beef.

And yet it still tastes good hours later as leftovers.

If you keep the bread from getting soggy, which is definitely possible (worst case pack it separately), a delivery burger can be high quality. I don't care if it's no longer perfect.

I'm really perplexed by what problems you have with burgers?

Burgers work really well with delivery. Used to order burgers very regularly at parties (GBK in London), it was one of the few things everybody would agree with and find good.

I can imagine that you would have troubles if the restaurant wasn't aware it was intended for delivery and gave a loose burger on a plate to the delivery guy. Gotta be put in a tight box to stay warm and in shape.

OT, but Indian food also travels very well.

Except for the foil wrapped naan. Toasting it briefly sometimes helps...

There are definitely good delivery burgers. Not every restaurant makes them good for delivery, but we have few around and they are our favorite delivery.

I've had some ok delivery burgers, but it was the actual burger place doing the delivery

Does delivery tend to be different from takeout in your experience? It does in mine. The gap between finishing prep and me eating it is much longer for delivery, except that the apps almost all lie about it. While your order is sitting there waiting for a driver for 10 minutes, they tell you, no way! It’s not our inability to get a driver there quickly! It’s the restaurant who is still wrapping up right now! If they even tell you that. Then they drop off a few other orders on the way. You end up with food you think came off the stove 13 minutes ago that actually came off like 40 minutes ago. And then you think it came out of the oven worse because the app puts all the blame and uncertainty on the restaurant.

As the rare food service worker on HN, I can confirm this is exactly the case. Yesterday I watched an order from a partnered delivery service take just over an hour from the ticket printing to the driver showing up.

That makes a lot of sense, but personally I wouldn't know. I refuse to use the delivery service apps. I despise them both for how they treat their workers and how they treat the restaurants. If a restaurant doesn't offer their own delivery (as e.g., pizza places used to), I'll pick it up myself.

I've been ordering in way more than I would have been comfortable with pre-covid. I never blame the restaurant, especially when I see the driver taking a circuitous route, indubitably filling multiple deliveries on the way. And I don't really blame the drivers, either, because of how their pay structure translates to incentives.

Ordering for pickup has gotten so much easier this year. Restaurants usually will hand me my food at the door, so I only need to spend a few seconds waiting, and the food is just in way better condition when I carry it home myself.

Fried chicken delivers great if you leave the box open so it can vent. I tell the bar by my house this every order. The paper boxes that are standard for fried chicken are terrible for it. They work for fast food chains because it goes under the hot light to steam out for 5 minutes before going in the box. Fryer to box immediately makes a literal sauna.

Wouldn't this be a problem for any takeout order? I know some restaurants don't offer takeout for this reason.

Some foods definitely work better than others. As others have noted, pizza usually does. And Asian stir fry type dishes are mostly pretty decent. Basic fried chicken (or rotisserie chicken) are fine too actually. They're not totally top drawer fried chicken like you get at a good restaurant that specializes in it but it's pretty good heated up in the oven. Soups. Etc.

And then there are a lot of foods that just aren't going to be good. Basically, if it's something that either cold or that you would normally consider reheating in the oven or microwave it's probably OK. Otherwise, not.

And, as others have noted, take-out you have more control over. There are some sandwiches I'll order from a local place and pickup given that I know I'll be home in less than 10 minutes. I'd be less tempted if I knew it might be sitting in a delivery car for an hour.

I was talking about the specific restaurant mentioned in the comment I was responding to.

Some food are really good for takeout. The extreme example would be Japanese Bento box. Delicious even after hours.

I was talking about the food mentioned in the comment I was responding to.

Seems the remedy is simply to not offer fried chicken for takeout, end of story. A customer picking up his/her own order to take home is certainly not arriving in 30 seconds either.

So there's nothing wrong with takeout; during COVID you might buy it takeout, and eat it at a nearby table. Even outside of COVID, you might eat it in your car. This law is to ensure the restaurant has control over whether it's the customer taking it out (and it's then up to them how long they wait to eat it), or a third party (and the customer has no control over how long it waits before they eat it).

Because otherwise, there is nothing preventing Doordash or similar from adding the location to their app. The restaurant may not offer them favorable terms, or otherwise work with them, but even without official support, Doordash interopts with the restaurant's online ordering system for pickup (or even involves a human to call it in), sends a driver to pick it up ("Here to pick up an order for Steve"), and then delivers it. Nothing the restaurant can do to prevent it.

This restaurant is in a neighborhood. The reason they offer take-out at all was because neighbors just wanted to pick something up and eat at home. That's probably not 30 seconds, but it's way different than the amount of time a delivery company ads. It's also psychologically different if the consumer is the one in direct control of the delay.

Wouldn’t this also be bad as take-out then? How is the delivery even possible if they aren’t already allowing for the poor experience through take-out? If it’s meant to be served at the table then it should be table only and then it’s fine right? There’s plenty of restaurants that do this, so it’s unclear how the delivery is causing this issue. But I may just be misunderstanding.

But in that instance the dish wouldn’t be available for take out either.

If the restaurant sells takeout, why does it matter whether I take it gone to my house or another person’s house?

DoorDashers have a tendency to pick up multiple orders at the same time without informing me. So I’ll order food expecting it’ll take 20 minutes, then it takes 40 because the dasher decided to take 4 orders at once. With a friend, I know they’re going there and coming right back, and if not, they generally let me know and I can reconsider.

Maybe restaurant could timestamp food on packaging so customer doesn't blame them for late delivery?

This is fair point but what stops these businesses from refusing to do food pick up. Especially, if they know food won't taste good if not consumed within a few minutes. I rather resturants remove to-go option instead of blaming delivery companies.

In my friend's case, it's because people in the neighborhood sometimes like to pick things up. Why should they penalize those people just because delivery companies have without their permission decided to start advertising their food?

Agreed, and this reminds me of friend who started to carry foldable chairs and table in their car during lockdown. They would, sometimes, set those up in the parking lot of the restaurant and eat there.

However, perhaps a solution might be a labeler that prints a label with consume by time and attach the label to carryout container. Or some other kind of disclaimer on the containers. Yes, this adds burden on the restaurants but hopefully, reduces negative reviews.

Or we could place the burden correctly on the delivery company, and require them to work with the restaurant to create the optimal delivery experience. Say, by mandating that delivery companies actually have to get a restaurant's agreement before advertising their food.

This is removing to-go option. There are apps that claim to offer delivery from a restaurant not intending to provide it.

Legally the only way to acquire restaurant food over here atm is takeout or delivery. They can't just not offer it.

so the remedy is to implement a law that will live forever, even as we expect covid to (hopefully) recede this year?

This specific issue was an issue pre-pandemic as well. The surge in take-out has amplified the problem.

What’s the problem here? The negative reviews are found on this delivery service app. They would therefore help other customers know that this restaurant is less desirable to order delivery from.

That’s what both parties want.

It seems to me that this is working “as intended” and no intervention from the state is needed.

I can't envision a way you can be making this argument in good faith while actively discarding that the review is next to the restaurant's name and not the delivery service's delivery of that restaurant's food.

For people who can’t understand it, think about Amazon and the various “1 star; late” “reviews”. To think that the same won’t happen with food is wishful thinking.

Why should regulation like this be enacted due to shitty consumer behavior that is evident everywhere, not just online reviews?

I really don’t know who this is helping because I’m not going to start using a more inconvenient way of ordering because these restaurants want things their way.

It’ll only result in these local businesses losing access to the $750 I pay in delivery each month.

> due to shitty consumer behavior

This is not shitty consumer behavior. It is lying... a company pretending to be another company or a representative of another company... when they are not.

If you buy a fake Toyota car and it sucks, do you blame Toyota then complain when a law is passed making this fraud illegal?

> is lying... a company pretending to be another company or a representative of another company... when they are not.

This law affects much more than that.

It doesn't because you can always ask for permission.

Forcing companies to ask for permission changes a lot. In general, it's usually bad for market competition.

If DoorDash can’t be arsed to ask for permission from whoever to deliver, then maybe it’s for the better that they don’t deliver that place. Sure, it costs more than just adding the place to their site, but the restaurant is having their image harmed by soggy food. If that restaurant doesn’t want to allow delivery, they should have that option.

It's bad for the restaurant to be harmed this way, of course. But it's not a choice between "do nothing" and "force them to ask permission". Under this law, a restaurant might refuse permission for other reasons. And some of those reasons would be bad for consumers. If a similar rule was applied to non-food items, it could be a very harmful blow to the first sale doctrine.

A restaurant is already allowed to refuse to sell arbitrarily. They have the right to freedom of association, just like anybody else, with narrow exceptions when it's targeted at protected classes. And restaurants are already allowed to do all sorts of things may depart from the gospel of revenue maximization.

This is the sort of thing we expect to be taken care of by the free market. If signing up with a delivery service is truly in their interest and aligns with what they want their business to be, they mostly will. And if not, that's fine.

> And some of those reasons would be bad for consumers.

Can you give an example?

> Can you give an example?

Of a bad reason or a bad effect?

Bad reasons are a dime a dozen. Maybe they just don't want to. They don't like the idea, and they're stubborn. Or they made a deal with one or two companies and don't want to allow others, even though some customer would really prefer the disallowed ones or can't get service from the allowed ones.

For bad effects, it means that the customer can't get the food they want, even with 100% knowledge that it's a third party picking it up, and that the quality will be imperfect in a way that's not the restaurant's fault.

Here, let me quote someone else from this same comment page: "Last night I wanted w bottle of alcohol for new years celebration. I already had a few drinks so I didn't want to drive. Unfortunately no delivery service had an agreement with any local liquor stores."

And, I mean, for non-food items imagine how bad it would be if you needed explicit permission from the manufacturer to sell something on ebay. Food's not that different.

> It’ll only result in these local businesses losing access to the $750 I pay in delivery each month.

If you're using exclusively delivery platforms and not getting delivery from the restaurants themselves, I can guarantee you that the local businesses likely never had access to the 750$ you pay. Assuming a tip of say 20% to the driver, let me take the sales tax of my local city which is around 8%, a 10% commission from grubhub with a processing 3.05% fee (plus $0.30 per order).

This means on a platform like grubhub, your 750$ you pay in delivery is paying grubhub 97$, 60$ to government, 150$ to delivery people. Restaurants only receive 443$, assuming you never take advantage of deals they offer to stay afloat, and the restaurant only pays grubhub the minimum fees (they are often pressured more or the grubhub algo will deprioritize them).

> And has a clear disclaimer that they're not affiliated with the businesses.

This isn’t actually clear. GrubHub’s about page:

“ Grubhub is a leading online and mobile food-ordering and delivery marketplace with the largest and most comprehensive network of restaurant partners. ”

This tells me as a customer that the restaurant is a consenting partner. This is a lie.

EDIT: a commentor below had issue with my use of the word lie here. To clarify, I meant that this is not a clear disclaimer.

> But that, of course, is not what any of these services do.

Response to edit: A lie by obfuscation, or a lie by misdirection is still a lie.

If you set something up so it is easy to believe a thing, without ever stating that thing, you are still lying, it is just not obvious that you are.

There's also a matter of SEO. Grubhub is an extremely popular website who's pages will far exceed the restaurant's own webpage's rank, so even when searching for local restaurant store by name, the grubhub page will feature prominently, despite having no relation to the restaurant.

No, you're misinterpreting it - they don't claim all of the restaurants are partners, just that they have the most comprehensive network of restaurant partners.

Edit: -4 downvotes so far for highlighting a person's bad logic - good start to the New Year for critical thinking on HN; I'll assume they're projecting their anger for the topic onto me, their emotion overriding their logic.

There are different types of lies. A lie of commission would be like Grubhub saying “All restaurants are our partners”. The second case (which applies here) is a lie by omission. They are withholding very important information in an intentional way.

Since we’re on the topic of food: It’s like if someone asked, “Hey did you eat the whole pizza?” and you reply “I ate my three slices”. That’s true, except you also ate the other nine slices. Lie of omission.

It’s not bad logic. It’s you failing to recognize a basic tactic used by companies and four year olds and everyone in between.

Nowhere on their about page do they make it clear that they also have restaurants who are not their partners listed on their platform.

The given ask that there is a clear disclaimer. I’m saying it’s not clear at all, and therefore the hypothetical has deviated from reality so much that it’s useless.

> you're just seeming to want them to spell it out completely

Yes because that’s what “clear disclaimer” means, which was the ask. I’m really baffled that this line of logic, because the post I was responding to said “clear disclaimer”, when I’m pointing to something that requires second-order interpretation and therefore by definition can’t be a clear disclaimer. (I mean you yourself said that it’s understood by extrapolation. Requiring extrapolation =! clear disclaimer imo. I would in fact expect a clear disclaimer to require no extrapolation, and be so dumbly explained that anyone who can read at at teen level can understand it.)

You're changing the goal posts of your argument now. You claimed the statement was a lie, it wasn't - that is all I argued.

Oh, okay, I’ve edited my post to say that “this is not a clear disclaimer”.

“Partner” implies agreed upon consent. The assumption from the grub hub text is that all restaurants on their platform are “partners” and have therefore consented.

The two possible omissions are: 1) “partners” does not actually mean consent. 2) They have other restaurants on their platform who are not “partners”, but they have the largest “partner” network even without those unconsenting restaurants.

Both are deceitful of the common reading of the language which implies both consent and that their platform serves only the group mentioned.

It’s leveraging omission and ambiguity to communicate a false hood. 90% of people read it they way grub hub is not using the phrasing.

No, you're making an assumption and misinterpreting the sentence as well - they're not saying all restaurants on their platform in the statement we're referencing are partners.

I agree them saying there are partners doesn't define what that means, nor if they said they "work with restaurants." That still doesn't mean it's valid to believe assumptions are truth when you don't know the answer.

In English, by calling out a specific subject in the sentence that is the implied and assumed context. Not more and not less. Unless clarified in preceding or subsequent sentences. Otherwise everything needs a qualifier all of the time which would make communication annoying, overly verbose, and burdensome. We do this to get along in the world and with each other. This is why it is correct to consider Grubhub dishonest or incompetent. They are using an alternate meaning, which is not common usage, by leaving out the necessary qualifiers to communicate what they actually mean.

By your misinterpretation of this I’d guess you deal with rigorous systems and strive towards clarity. That is fine but not how common language is used. Grub hubs language here is exploiting not using common standards to veil their intended and unexpected meaning in language the reader will find positive because of their common interpretation, which is false information because grubhub means something non-standard.

These are often termed lies of ommission, where details are left out to make what is said appear to be the full truth, and not just a slice of it. By only stating that they work with partners, they imply that they only work with partners.

I went to pickup a take out order for my wife the other day and the cashier asked if this was a personal order? I was so confused I didn't even know how to answer and just asked "personal order meaning what". She answered, "I mean you're not with door dash or something right, you personally made the order?". It was a pretty baffling exchange and maybe this misrepresentation speaks to some of that.

There’s reports of delivery sites trying to hide that they’re delivery sites when they pick up the order. Normally a DoorDasher uses a DoorDash bag (it seems), but supposedly they don’t use it inside, and then put the order in the DoorDash bag in the car. Not sure how true it is though (it could just be people not wanting to hold up the line)

The way cashiers assume I'm a delivery driver makes me think I'm literally the only person who uses the app.

This is actually the Postmates business model; they hire a delivery person to go to a restaurant, stand in line, and make the order. At no point does the restaurant know of the buyer’s existence.

Well, minus the clear disclaimer, and also minus tipping people at the restaurant (tip goes to courier)

With any luck, this will kill Postmates. That business model is deceitful at best, actively a scam more likely.

Postmates is so useful though. I think it's pretty clear in its marketing that it is a service that will go to a store or restaurant and buy the things you ask for, similar to the way Instacart works. Doordash on the other hand will sometimes do this without making clear which restaurants it has a relationship with or not. That causes all types of problems.

It’s probably because some restaurants have “banned” delivery app people. So, in this instance, the Postmate person can feign ignorance and act like they’re just ordering for a friend (which is a common thing).

Using the restaurant's logo and name and in general masquerading as the restaurant's official website pretty clearly crosses the line.

> So Sally should maybe have a right to refuse to sell to anyone other than the end consumer. But that seems trickier.

Maybe restaurants should defend themselves from that by not selling some dishes in transportable packaging. Maybe 'delivery' companies wouldn't be so eager to put those dishes on the menu if they had to provide the container themselves and scoop the dish into it from a plate?

It’s a form of domain squatting if someone lists as you, above you in search, leaving some customers frustrated and likely picking someone else, forever.

I should never be able to force Sally to make me a cheeseburger. Therefore, Sally should have the right refuse to sell to anyone. No maybe.

> But that, of course, is not what any of these services do.

Likely because customers don't care. Nor does this law introduce such a requirement. Instead it increases the cost of entering the delivery market, thus it protects extant delivery services from new competitors.

> So Sally should maybe have a right to refuse to sell to anyone other than the end consumer.

They can already do that; restaurants know which delivery services are placing the order.