8 ms·

Another thing I realized lately: I usually tip restaurants for curbside/pickup right now since I know their staff have been hit hard. But if we DoorDash, the ti

Another thing I realized lately: I usually tip restaurants for curbside/pickup right now since I know their staff have been hit hard. But if we DoorDash, the tip goes to DoorDash, not the restaurant I want to support. I generally try to order either curbside or delivery through the restaurant's own site. I figure even if they use a third party then, they're using the one most advantageous to their business. I want my favorite restaurants to survive this pandemic, but I couldn't care less about these delivery startups.

HaloZero 7y ago
I've found that many of favorite businesses advertise using Caviar, at least here in SF. I wonder if they're offering better rates. This is purely anecdotal.
cbhl 7y ago
For a while, I saw an option to tip the restaurant as a line item in UberEats. Not sure if it's everywhere yet. It was also a bit confusing that there were two different tips, with different UX (since there's still the existing option to also tip the driver).
- steveklabnik 7y ago
  One issue with this approach is that the industry has lost consumer trust in this specifically. That is, DoorDash used to keep tips, then there was public outcry, then they said they would change, but then it looked like they actually didn't https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-still-be-pocketing-tips-despite-pay-model-change-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-still-be-pocketing-... (I know this is about it being for the driver, but the overall point still stands, I think.)
- NoodleIncident 7y ago
  Yeah, the UberEats one even said they would match the tip to the restaurant when I used it
  - a3n 7y ago
    Match? Where does that money come from? What would happen if you tipped more than the entire bill?
    - NoodleIncident 7y ago
      I believe it was a fixed number, maybe $5 that they matched? It wasn't part of the normal tip UI, it had its own CTA and was added as a line item on your receipt when you actually did it.
Brian-Puccio 7y ago
Same. I’m cool with the driver getting a tip (and for a while the delivery startups were taking cuts of those), but there doesn’t seem to be a way to tip the restaurant. The exception appears to be ChowNow where, I think, restaurants pay a flat fee as opposed to the percent of sale business model. Plus I can pick up, so the tip that you leave is really the restaurant, though who knows if they’re skimming from their staff.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  It looks like ChowNow is positioning themselves to be the "ethical" food delivery company working with the restaurants instead of exploiting them: https://thespoon.tech/chownow-launches-a-loyalty-program-designed-to-get-struggling-restaurants-paid/ https://thespoon.tech/chownow-launches-a-loyalty-program-des... https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/chownow-instagram-launch-commission-free-online-food-ordering/576146/ https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/chownow-instagram-launch... https://thecounter.org/google-online-delivery-order-button-doordash-postmates-chownow-commission/ https://thecounter.org/google-online-delivery-order-button-d... > ChowNow makes it pretty easy for restaurant owners to understand the implications of Google’s new button. It offers a “Profit Protector” program that essentially inflates menu prices to make up for the price of the commission. It also assures owners that they can opt out of ChowNow’s Google services anytime by contacting the platform’s support staff. https://innovationforallcast.com/2019/04/10/meal-delivery-apps-are-killing-restaurants-chris-webb-chownow/ https://innovationforallcast.com/2019/04/10/meal-delivery-ap...
dilly_li 7y ago
I am in the same boat. I used to only order from Seamless or UberEats because their "streamlined" experience. But now that I am hearing so many terrible things that these VC-backed startups are doing to small restaurants, I now specifically look for the restaurant's website, or even just call them directly and order a takeout.
kbenson 7y ago
> I want my favorite restaurants to survive this pandemic, but I couldn't care less about these delivery startups. Does the tip go to DoorDash, or to the person that delivered for DoorDash? I want the restaurants to survive too, but I have to imagine a lot of these DoorDash delivery people were either Uber drivers or employed somewhere else a few weeks ago until furloughed, and may have a less stable income than someone working at a restaurant which is getting takeout orders.
- d1str0 7y ago
  This is a question with two answers. It depends on the company. There is lots of evidence of some delivery companies using your “tip” to cover the base salary of their employees. So if a driver is guaranteed $5/hr, and you tip $3, DD/UberEats/etc. will claim they only have to pay out $2 for that hour.
  - uoaei 7y ago
    DoorDash was in trouble about a year ago for skimming tips off the top in some strange convoluted scheme that was too ingenious to be an accident. It appears they haven't changed that behavior yet, despite getting a lot of bad PR and promising they will look into it. Corporations are not moral agents. They cannot be shamed into acting to the benefit of the majority, and their promises mean nothing.
    - ravenstine 7y ago
      Skimming puts it lightly. If the driver's base pay was $5, for instance, and the customer tipped $5 through the app, the driver would receive $0 in tips because PoorDash would use the tip to offset as much of the base pay as possible. That's theft and borderline fraud because the term "tip" implies that the money will go to the person responsible for delivering your food, not Tony Xu the CEO.
      - BeetleB 7y ago
        Every time this comes up I'm always astounded that most people have no idea how tips work. In a lot of states, at least for restaurant workers, this is normal practice and explicitly allowed for by law. In those states, this has been common practice since ... forever? The laws there require restaurant owners to pay the waiters such that their wage + tips combined should be at least the minimum wage. If a waiter makes more than the minimum wage in tips then the owner only needs to pay a less than minimum wage amount. See https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped So as an example, in Texas, if a waiter made more then $5.12/hr in tips, the restaurant owner needs to pay him/her only $2.13/hr. The question I have is: Why are we OK with this for waiters but suddenly get upset when this happens to the drivers? Do you ask your favorite restaurants their policy?
alex_g 7y ago
I felt the same when I ordered dinner for myself and my girlfriend from a restaurant here in SF. I called up prior to ordering to ask if they had a preference on delivery provider- they said they were all about the same, but thanked me for asking. When was just about done filling out my order, I added a big tip, and my girlfriend reminded me it was not going to the restaurant at all, which had completely flew over my head. My entire view of delivery services has changed during this pandemic, thanks to these restaurants coming forward about how much they are getting screwed.
- uxp100 7y ago
  It was never supposed to go to the restaurant. It has always supposed to have gone to the worker.
BurningFrog 7y ago
The simple way to support the restaurant directly is to order an extra item, that you don't eat.
- dumbfoundded 7y ago
  Order a drink. Those are usually the highest margin items for restaurants.
- RussianCow 7y ago
  That seems like a huge waste of time and food. If you're picking up your order anyway, why not have a $5 bill ready to put on the counter?
- uoaei 7y ago
  Tips work to this end, and don't deplete the stocks of the restaurant for something you are planning to throw in the trash. Better to order something that you can keep in the fridge to eat later, or something for the animal(s) that live with you to munch on.
- triceratops 7y ago
  Why wouldn't you eat it though? Put it in the fridge, eat it later. Give it to a homeless person or panhandler. Wasting it is a stupid idea.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    OP specifically wanted to spend extra money that goes to the restaurant. Iow, waste money. Maybe this is mostly a philosophical point, but to me, if you eat the food, you just had a bigger order. You didn't "tip".
    - triceratops 7y ago
      Ok but it's also an inefficient way of tipping. Just leave extra cash. Or like I mentioned, give the food away. By making them prepare food that won't be eaten you're wasting extra money that could be going to the restaurant. They'd rather you just gave them $1 extra, than have you pay $5 on an additional item that they then have to spend $4.50 on food and labor cost to make.
asdf21 7y ago
We break even on Door Dash orders, at best. They take 30%, which is all of our profits and then some. But we still use them because there is demand and so our revenue looks strong.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  VC-funded startups incentivizing traditional brick and mortar companies to play the same balance sheet shell games!
Naac 7y ago
>> But if we DoorDash, the tip goes to DoorDash, not the restaurant I want to support. I don't think that's true. That used to be the case, but it looked like DoorDash reversed this policy last June: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-policy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-pol...
- KeepFlying 7y ago
  True. But that is still going to a Doordash "employee" and not to an employee of the restaurant itself. So DoorDash is still diverting money that I would normally give to the restaurant.
- QuotedForTruth 7y ago
  That was about DoorDash (corporate) keeping tips intended for DoorDash drivers. The person you are replying to wants to tip the restaurant not DoorDash or their driver.
tehjoker 7y ago
Tip in cash if you can. That goes for restaurants too, if you want to be sure the money is going to the person serving you rather than the owner.
- kyteland 7y ago
  The problem with this is that many delivery drivers use the tip to determine if the delivery is worth their time to accept. If you put in $0 (assuming a cash tip at delivery) nobody will want to pick up your order. On average it will arrive later and in worse condition than if you had entered a higher tip into the app. The tipping incentives for online ordering are all backwards.
  - Spivak 7y ago
    It would be nice if they just turned it into a "bounty" system. Delivery is "free" to start. You (and the restaurant since they want to make a sale too) can put up whatever number you want to attract a delivery driver to take the job. Like it's super weird but at least it's honest about how these systems work.
autarch 7y ago
I'm done with delivery services because of this stuff. Is it really that hard for me to drive 5-10 minutes and pick stuff up? Not really. And my wife and I have discovered the joy of eating in the car during the pandemic. If we drive 20 minutes to a place it's best to eat it right away than to drive home and have everything get cold and soggy.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

HaloZero 7y ago

I've found that many of favorite businesses advertise using Caviar, at least here in SF. I wonder if they're offering better rates. This is purely anecdotal.

cbhl 7y ago

For a while, I saw an option to tip the restaurant as a line item in UberEats. Not sure if it's everywhere yet. It was also a bit confusing that there were two different tips, with different UX (since there's still the existing option to also tip the driver).

steveklabnik 7y ago
One issue with this approach is that the industry has lost consumer trust in this specifically. That is, DoorDash used to keep tips, then there was public outcry, then they said they would change, but then it looked like they actually didn't https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-still-be-pocketing-tips-despite-pay-model-change-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-still-be-pocketing-... (I know this is about it being for the driver, but the overall point still stands, I think.)
NoodleIncident 7y ago
Yeah, the UberEats one even said they would match the tip to the restaurant when I used it
- a3n 7y ago
  Match? Where does that money come from? What would happen if you tipped more than the entire bill?
  - NoodleIncident 7y ago
    I believe it was a fixed number, maybe $5 that they matched? It wasn't part of the normal tip UI, it had its own CTA and was added as a line item on your receipt when you actually did it.

Brian-Puccio 7y ago

Same. I’m cool with the driver getting a tip (and for a while the delivery startups were taking cuts of those), but there doesn’t seem to be a way to tip the restaurant. The exception appears to be ChowNow where, I think, restaurants pay a flat fee as opposed to the percent of sale business model. Plus I can pick up, so the tip that you leave is really the restaurant, though who knows if they’re skimming from their staff.

Apocryphon 7y ago
It looks like ChowNow is positioning themselves to be the "ethical" food delivery company working with the restaurants instead of exploiting them: https://thespoon.tech/chownow-launches-a-loyalty-program-designed-to-get-struggling-restaurants-paid/ https://thespoon.tech/chownow-launches-a-loyalty-program-des... https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/chownow-instagram-launch-commission-free-online-food-ordering/576146/ https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/chownow-instagram-launch... https://thecounter.org/google-online-delivery-order-button-doordash-postmates-chownow-commission/ https://thecounter.org/google-online-delivery-order-button-d... > ChowNow makes it pretty easy for restaurant owners to understand the implications of Google’s new button. It offers a “Profit Protector” program that essentially inflates menu prices to make up for the price of the commission. It also assures owners that they can opt out of ChowNow’s Google services anytime by contacting the platform’s support staff. https://innovationforallcast.com/2019/04/10/meal-delivery-apps-are-killing-restaurants-chris-webb-chownow/ https://innovationforallcast.com/2019/04/10/meal-delivery-ap...

dilly_li 7y ago

I am in the same boat. I used to only order from Seamless or UberEats because their "streamlined" experience. But now that I am hearing so many terrible things that these VC-backed startups are doing to small restaurants, I now specifically look for the restaurant's website, or even just call them directly and order a takeout.

kbenson 7y ago

> I want my favorite restaurants to survive this pandemic, but I couldn't care less about these delivery startups. Does the tip go to DoorDash, or to the person that delivered for DoorDash? I want the restaurants to survive too, but I have to imagine a lot of these DoorDash delivery people were either Uber drivers or employed somewhere else a few weeks ago until furloughed, and may have a less stable income than someone working at a restaurant which is getting takeout orders.

d1str0 7y ago
This is a question with two answers. It depends on the company. There is lots of evidence of some delivery companies using your “tip” to cover the base salary of their employees. So if a driver is guaranteed $5/hr, and you tip $3, DD/UberEats/etc. will claim they only have to pay out $2 for that hour.
- uoaei 7y ago
  DoorDash was in trouble about a year ago for skimming tips off the top in some strange convoluted scheme that was too ingenious to be an accident. It appears they haven't changed that behavior yet, despite getting a lot of bad PR and promising they will look into it. Corporations are not moral agents. They cannot be shamed into acting to the benefit of the majority, and their promises mean nothing.
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    Skimming puts it lightly. If the driver's base pay was $5, for instance, and the customer tipped $5 through the app, the driver would receive $0 in tips because PoorDash would use the tip to offset as much of the base pay as possible. That's theft and borderline fraud because the term "tip" implies that the money will go to the person responsible for delivering your food, not Tony Xu the CEO.
    - BeetleB 7y ago
      Every time this comes up I'm always astounded that most people have no idea how tips work. In a lot of states, at least for restaurant workers, this is normal practice and explicitly allowed for by law. In those states, this has been common practice since ... forever? The laws there require restaurant owners to pay the waiters such that their wage + tips combined should be at least the minimum wage. If a waiter makes more than the minimum wage in tips then the owner only needs to pay a less than minimum wage amount. See https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped So as an example, in Texas, if a waiter made more then $5.12/hr in tips, the restaurant owner needs to pay him/her only $2.13/hr. The question I have is: Why are we OK with this for waiters but suddenly get upset when this happens to the drivers? Do you ask your favorite restaurants their policy?

alex_g 7y ago

I felt the same when I ordered dinner for myself and my girlfriend from a restaurant here in SF. I called up prior to ordering to ask if they had a preference on delivery provider- they said they were all about the same, but thanked me for asking. When was just about done filling out my order, I added a big tip, and my girlfriend reminded me it was not going to the restaurant at all, which had completely flew over my head. My entire view of delivery services has changed during this pandemic, thanks to these restaurants coming forward about how much they are getting screwed.

uxp100 7y ago
It was never supposed to go to the restaurant. It has always supposed to have gone to the worker.

BurningFrog 7y ago

The simple way to support the restaurant directly is to order an extra item, that you don't eat.

dumbfoundded 7y ago
Order a drink. Those are usually the highest margin items for restaurants.
RussianCow 7y ago
That seems like a huge waste of time and food. If you're picking up your order anyway, why not have a $5 bill ready to put on the counter?
uoaei 7y ago
Tips work to this end, and don't deplete the stocks of the restaurant for something you are planning to throw in the trash. Better to order something that you can keep in the fridge to eat later, or something for the animal(s) that live with you to munch on.
triceratops 7y ago
Why wouldn't you eat it though? Put it in the fridge, eat it later. Give it to a homeless person or panhandler. Wasting it is a stupid idea.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  OP specifically wanted to spend extra money that goes to the restaurant. Iow, waste money. Maybe this is mostly a philosophical point, but to me, if you eat the food, you just had a bigger order. You didn't "tip".
  - triceratops 7y ago
    Ok but it's also an inefficient way of tipping. Just leave extra cash. Or like I mentioned, give the food away. By making them prepare food that won't be eaten you're wasting extra money that could be going to the restaurant. They'd rather you just gave them $1 extra, than have you pay $5 on an additional item that they then have to spend $4.50 on food and labor cost to make.

asdf21 7y ago

We break even on Door Dash orders, at best. They take 30%, which is all of our profits and then some. But we still use them because there is demand and so our revenue looks strong.

Apocryphon 7y ago
VC-funded startups incentivizing traditional brick and mortar companies to play the same balance sheet shell games!

Naac 7y ago

>> But if we DoorDash, the tip goes to DoorDash, not the restaurant I want to support. I don't think that's true. That used to be the case, but it looked like DoorDash reversed this policy last June: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-policy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/nyregion/doordash-tip-pol...

KeepFlying 7y ago
True. But that is still going to a Doordash "employee" and not to an employee of the restaurant itself. So DoorDash is still diverting money that I would normally give to the restaurant.
QuotedForTruth 7y ago
That was about DoorDash (corporate) keeping tips intended for DoorDash drivers. The person you are replying to wants to tip the restaurant not DoorDash or their driver.

tehjoker 7y ago

Tip in cash if you can. That goes for restaurants too, if you want to be sure the money is going to the person serving you rather than the owner.

kyteland 7y ago
The problem with this is that many delivery drivers use the tip to determine if the delivery is worth their time to accept. If you put in $0 (assuming a cash tip at delivery) nobody will want to pick up your order. On average it will arrive later and in worse condition than if you had entered a higher tip into the app. The tipping incentives for online ordering are all backwards.
- Spivak 7y ago
  It would be nice if they just turned it into a "bounty" system. Delivery is "free" to start. You (and the restaurant since they want to make a sale too) can put up whatever number you want to attract a delivery driver to take the job. Like it's super weird but at least it's honest about how these systems work.

autarch 7y ago

I'm done with delivery services because of this stuff. Is it really that hard for me to drive 5-10 minutes and pick stuff up? Not really. And my wife and I have discovered the joy of eating in the car during the pandemic. If we drive 20 minutes to a place it's best to eat it right away than to drive home and have everything get cold and soggy.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]