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California law bans delivery apps from listing a restaurant without an agreement

• uselesstech 6y ago
  The only sad part is that this gives existing food delivery apps a stronger foothold now that they are established
• raverbashing 6y ago
  Why does this even have to be a law boggles my mind. I think there are laws against impersonation already. If I went around purporting to sell services in the name of Microsoft, their lawyers would act quickly. Not that I disagree with this new law
  • Razengan 6y ago
    Maybe the apps thought they were doing the restaurants and users both a service, but not every restaurant always feels that way.
    • purplecats 6y ago
      no, this was just another means of money extortion. they masquerade around like the companies they're preying on, then effectively blackmail those companies for connecting them to these customers. unnecessary man in the middle. they're essentially the capitalist version of the cymothoa exigua parasite species.
      • Razengan 6y ago
        If customers prefer using a single "middle man" for a category of products or services instead of going to each company directly, then somebody's going to cater to that. > cymothoa exigua parasite species. Well, that's an interesting TIL.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • conistonwater 6y ago
    The law is not just about impersonation, it says the platform can't arrange for delivery of food without having an agreement with a restaurant. So if it's not impersonating anybody, and just orders food on your behalf with you knowing it's a middleman, that would still violate the law, if I understood correctly. I think that wouldn't normally be illegal because it's not generally illegal to do things on others' behalf (there would need to be misrepresentation of some sort), so if they want to ban that they would need a law. This is the entirety of the law, by the way: > 22599. A food delivery platform shall not arrange for the delivery of an order from a food facility without first obtaining an agreement with the food facility expressly authorizing the food delivery platform to take orders and deliver meals prepared by the food facility.
    • mehrdadn 6y ago
      I'm not even sure it's buying on anyone's "behalf" either. But rather just buying and then reselling goods.
    • supernova87a 6y ago
      I think the intention though, is to stop say a Doordash from listing a restaurant's menu on its (DD's) website and making it seem like the restaurant is consenting to having delivery of its food with whatever margin DD feels like adding on top of it. (Also by the way, shadier practices too, like hijaking/publishing a false restaurant phone number that diverts to DD instead of the restaurant.)
      • raverbashing 6y ago
        Yes, hence, impersonation
        • mehrdadn 6y ago
          The issue here isn't "did delivery apps sometimes impersonate restaurants" (which is why you think this law is redundant), but rather "does this law ban things other than impersonation" (yes, and hence why others are saying a violation of the law need not constitute impersonation).
  • foobar1962 6y ago
    The law is taking a food safety angle: restaurants have a duty of care to their customers, which extends through the delivery chain.
    • throwawaysea 6y ago
      This seems like a stretch to me. If I am using a courier service to get food, I know that there are two different parties involved and that the restaurant's own standards cannot be guaranteed. Safety is, as ever, a way to generate political expediency for otherwise bad ideas.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
• foobar1962 6y ago
  There was a post a few months go about a pizza place that started getting customers complaining about their food arriving cold and damaged: except they didn't offer delivery. They discovered that a popular search engine was offering free delivery. The story ended with them ordering dozens of pizzas from themselves to themselves and making a nice profit.
  • joubert 6y ago
    The story: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/18/21262316/doordash-pizza-profits-venture-capital-the-margins-ranjan-roy https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/18/21262316/doordash-pizza-p...
  • dogma1138 6y ago
    How did they made a profit off this?
    • foobar1962 6y ago
      They delivered pizza base with no toppings. The base was just so the boxes weren't empty. EDIT and Doordash got the price wrong (I forgot about that).
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • ljm 6y ago
      Doordash priced the pizza at $16, but the pizza place charged $24. Presumably a 'growth hack' to get more users. The pizza place, seeing the difference, bought pizzas for $16 and received $24 from Door Dash, so for each purchase they were $8 better off. They also ordered plain pizza dough in larger quantities, for more profit. Presumably because they didn't have to actually make the full pizza.
      • dogma1138 6y ago
        That makes more sense than someone just offering a free delivery.
• roenxi 6y ago
  This is a silly law. If someone feels like sending a courier to buy take away then that should be legal.
  • ratww 6y ago
    The problem is not sending a courier. You can use Apps to send someone there without a problem. The problem is them impersonating the restaurant and giving customers the impression that the restaurant is offering the delivery service themselves.
    • throwawaysea 6y ago
      Someone else posted the below excerpt of the law that also prohibits couriers (who are not impersonating anyone) unless they have permission from the restaurant. That seems like a ridiculous restriction to me. > 22599. A food delivery platform shall not arrange for the delivery of an order from a food facility without first obtaining an agreement with the food facility expressly authorizing the food delivery platform to take orders and deliver meals prepared by the food facility.
      • ratww 6y ago
        I don't think sending someone to perform a task is the same as taking an order, though. The restaurant is still the one taking the order for the food itself in the case of a courier. Also the law seem to only include "food delivery platforms", which exclude couriers. (Of course, I might be wrong, but it seems that the intent of the law is to stop impersonation, not couriers).
        • throwawaysea 6y ago
          Why can't I pay someone to place an order and pick it up for me? Can't I have someone go shop on my behalf at non-restaurant businesses? And if so, isn't it reasonable that a menu of options be shown with items and the costs? I agree that there should be transparency about who is delivering the food, there should be no impersonation of the restaurant, no false listing of phone numbers, and so on. But allowing restaurants to deny a courier without prior agreement seems like a government overreach.
• swyx 6y ago
  always entertaining how regulation unintentionally acts to increase barriers to entry for incumbents. in this case closing the barn doors almost a decade after the horse left the stable. you couldn't pay politicians enough for the favors they perform in earnest. edit:to elaborate, the growth hacks of the likes of Doordash and Postmates doing exactly this got them their start, now it will be illegal to compete with them using the same methods they used. I understand there are also brand protection concerns for the small restaurants. have to weigh the tradeoffs.
  • DGAP 6y ago
    Exactly. If I'm in California and I want to challenge the incumbents with my cool new idea about how to do delivery better, now I can't. There's no way to effectively scale a sales team in the beginning to reach out to all these restaurants. And as you said, all the successful incumbent players already used this strategy to become big, now this won't materially affect them. They already have sales agreements in place with all the biggest sellers on their platforms.
    • criddell 6y ago
      The incumbents spent a lot of investor money to get where they are today. DoorDash, for example, started in San Francisco with something like 75 restaurants. That feels doable even with this bill. Today DoorDash is worth something like $15 billion. If you actually have a better idea and can execute, you will find investors.
    • tzs 6y ago
      > There's no way to effectively scale a sales team in the beginning to reach out to all these restaurants. Sure their is. There's a whole system dedicated to it. You make a brochure describing the service you want to offer to the restaurants. There are then companies that will print as many copies of that brochure as you ask them to, put them in envelopes, and mail them to addresses on a list you provide. (There are companies that will make the list for you, too). Combine that with phone calls to the restaurants you think would be most beneficial to get on your service. Three salespeople using phones could contact 10% of the restaurants in Los Angeles in under a month, and all of them within a year. Restaurant delivery is local. You don't have to compete with the incumbents nationwide right from the start. You can do it one city at a time.
• tanilama 6y ago
  Not that unreasonable I guess? Even an App is free, it doesn't mean you can distribute it without permission? I would say the case apply to restaurants as well. I can see good restaurants leverage this to negotiate favorable terms with platforms.
• supernova87a 6y ago
  I admit that I have yet to reconcile my own somewhat conflicted feelings about these recent bills (e.g. the one voted on in Nov 2020 about drivers as contractors, versus this one). For example, I'm in favor of regulating tech companies from misrepresenting restaurant menus as their own, and extracting a hefty margin off restaurants' barely-surviving profits by merely being a middleman aggregator. Yet on the other hand, I don't think that tech companies are improperly classifying delivery people's labor as contract work and need to be stopped. Maybe it's that the first is an involuntary participation without someone's agreement, while the 2nd is someone agreeing to work under given conditions? My opinions are evolving still.
  • kome 6y ago
    "Maybe it's that the first is an involuntary participation without someone's agreement, while the 2nd is someone agreeing to work under given conditions?" It's an old debate, the "lochner era" debate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_era). "Agreeing on conditions" is not enough to make something fair. You may agree because you are desperate and you need cash, you may go straight to voluntary serfdom... Society and policy makers are fully entitled to disrupt "private contracts" when those contracts are not in line with the greater good.
    • whiddershins 6y ago
      That’s an argument, but many think this doesn’t work in practice.
      • everfree 6y ago
        Antitrust cases are a good example of this type of thinking working well in practice.
    • zeroonetwothree 6y ago
      “The greater good” is clearly not the actual legal requirement...
  • 6y ago
• say_it_as_it_is 6y ago
  This is an industry operating outside the scope of what restaurants have ever offered. Once delivery companies began making a lot of money with courier services, people created a story of exploitation and market manipulation. The reality, however, is that food service providers want in on the action: the bill gives providers bargaining chips to negotiate getting a cut for services that they never offered before. A consequence to this change is that while the restaurants do not face losses due to courier services, the courier services will lose as a result of the bill. Courier services now have a legitimate claim against the state and restaurants. It's time to go to the Supreme Court.
• dalbasal 6y ago
  The "uberfication" startup model had/has the same internet economics magic that dropshipping, crowdsourcing and such had, but for VC backed startups. As usual, XKCD captures the jist: https://xkcd.com/1060/ https://xkcd.com/1060/ Users order food. App for that. Food is delivered by non-employees. HR is an app. Suppliers don't have to know they're suppliers. The CEO can focus on visionary statements. A software business has magic economics because they don't need capital assets (and therefore capital investment) and they don't have marginal costs. Just software development. Uberfication minimizes even that. It's looking pretty uninspired at this point. Let's step back and think of the problem space. Food. Takeaways. Unless it's soylent or vegan meat, startup founders seem to consider actually making the food beneath them.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    The amazing thing is how much money you can lose while doing so little. I guess funneling money from investors to landlords by way of software developers is more expensive than it looks.
  • Apocryphon 6y ago
    > startup founders seem to consider actually making the food beneath them. Ghost kitchens are the next big space.
• WalterBright 6y ago
  If a person decides to buy a pizza from X and then sell it to Y, don't they have a right to?
  • dxgarnish 6y ago
    It's a good question. There's two parts to it, whether the law allows for that, and whether or not the law should allow for it? There are certainly some classes of items/products/services that allow X to legally bar Y from selling it to Z: airline tickets, sub-leasing apartments, software etc.
  • ratww 6y ago
    I think the core issue here is that some platforms were creating websites and phone numbers to impersonate the companies. In practice it's a man-in-the-middle attack. This is what the law seems to intend to stop. I'm pretty sure that if I falsified a website to resell services or products on behalf of a larger company I would get slapped by a lawsuit, trademark or otherwise, but it seems that for small restaurants the government felt it needed to step up.
    • devcpp 6y ago
      Then why not make impersonation illegal? If they enforce making reselling illegal proactively they can enforce making impersonation illegal just the same. This is overreach. I would be rightly pissed if I lived in CA.
      • ratww 6y ago
        Someone else has mentioned that impersonation is certainly already illegal, and the right solution would be prosecution instead of making a new law, and I agree. I'm not from CA/US so I have no idea why the legislators felt the need for a new law.
        • SamoyedFurFluff 6y ago
          Part of this is that it’s really expensive to litigate that nuance in court because even if you believe you’re correct, a company like GrubHub can continue to do business for years and years while dragging this out through the courts. Especially because of covid, many cases like this are already backed up and GrubHub could probably be happily continuing to fleece small businesses for over half a decade. Also, if a judge for whatever reason doesn’t agree with it, say, “if the government wanted trademarks to be enforced in this manner they’d pass a law about it, no deal” (this happens Eg. An argument that made it all the way up to the Supreme Court, taking years and years to do so, is that discriminating against trans people isn’t discriminating on the basis of sex because if legislature intended it that way they’d say it more explicitly in law. Imagine how many trans people were fired for being trans while this thing was going through the courts.) then now you have to pass legislature again.
• whiddershins 6y ago
  Not everything has to be solved with a new law. In fact, most things shouldn’t.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • throw_m239339 6y ago
    The legislator has to act when the private sector refuses to behave ethically. I don't see any problem here. DoorDash and co created the problem with their unethical business model, which is at the expense of restaurants they list on their own website without any kind of agreement whatsoever. They should have stuck to restaurants who agree to do business with DoorDash.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• th3iedkid 6y ago
  If cloud-provider X is providing a managed-service A , which is otherwise available as an open-source project Y. Does X need an agreement from Y to run the managed service ? If X does a bad job of providing value from Y, isn't X showcasing Y in a bad-light as well?
  • frombody 6y ago
    software licenses allow for this, so in this scenario there is generally already an agreement between the creators and the consumers / distributors over what uses of the product are considered fair.
  • paxys 6y ago
    Depends on how Y is licensed. A lot of open source projects are now specifically adding clauses preventing AWS etc. from offering their product as a hosted service.
    • ghaff 6y ago
      Well, pseudo-open source licenses. They're certainly not OSI approved, which is the benchmark most go by. And it's not really a "lot," in part because most organizations won't touch open source software that isn't on a usually fairly short list of licenses approved for use.
• Giorgi 6y ago
  Why though? Do we need government at this level in business?
• forrestthewoods 6y ago
  I’m completely fine with apps listing restaurants without permission. But ONLY if the app makes that explicitly clear. To falsely pretend to offer a sanctioned service is fraud imho. There’s all kinds of issues with this. Such as who to blame if an order is incorrect. Or who to complain to when prices suddenly increase. This law kinda sucks. But the status who is fraud at worst and dishonest at best. As far as regulations go this one seems mostly fine.
• ramphastidae 6y ago
  This is undeniably a good thing if you put yourself in the shoes of the restaurant. Imagine if someone went around impersonating your business online, leveraging the good name you have built for yourself over the decades. They create ads offering your expert development services, ostensibly competing with your existing website, but with intentionally slashed pricing and a ‘creatively’ misrepresented offering (aka growth hacking). Then they subcontract the job to some crappy outsourcing firm that bungles it, but who cares, they got their cut and you signed the TOS. Now bad reviews are piling up online about the bad experiences people had with your business, your reputation is destroyed, and your business is next. I know it’s not a perfect analogy but try to empathize with the restaurants here.
  • mysterydip 6y ago
    This exact thing is happening to one of my favorite local pizza places. Very frustrating for them.
    • jimmaswell 6y ago
      They're frustrated by free advertising and new customers? The smart thing to do is krep taking the business and just put a leaflet in the pizza box/whatever saying ordering directly is cheaper/faster, if that's the case.
      • danso 6y ago
        Maybe there's more involved than getting "free advertising and new customers". As in, "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch."
      • jimktrains2 6y ago
        Perhaps frustrated that someone is doing business as them using their copyright and trademarks? These companies are basically commiting fraud, and any bad experience reflexts on the restaurant, not the delivery company. Sometimes the restaurant doesn't know that something is being ordered via another channel and cannot add sufh a slip.
• mytailorisrich 6y ago
  This in effect says that it is illegal to pay someone to collect your own food from a restaurant without the restaurant's agreement (only if the service is offered online, though) This does not make much sense. Legislators should not rush into kneejerk and populist reactions.
  • Slartie 6y ago
    No, it is just illegal if that someone pretends to have some sort of reseller contract with the restaurant in order to acquire you as a customer. If you go to some guy, ask him to pick up food for you and the guy agrees for a fee, that's okay. But the incentive must have come from your side, and the guy must not have used the name of the restaurant to advertise for his services or even pretend to be a "part" of the restaurant. Legislation often is widely different for the same eventual business act, depending on how the parties came together. It's not new stuff, real estate agents have had such huge difference for ages (at least in Germany, but I assume that other countries also differentiate depending on who initially hired an agent, even though eventually, the agent ends up having contracts with the selling and buying party).
    • mytailorisrich 6y ago
      The link states: "This bill would enact the Fair Food Delivery Act of 2020, to prohibit a food delivery platform from arranging for the delivery of an order from a food facility without first obtaining an agreement with the food facility... " No question of pretending anything, just literally of doing what you suggest (food pickup for a fee, if that is arranged through an online platform) Using the names of the restaurants you are able to collect from in order to describe your service is obviously fair use of the names.
      • Slartie 6y ago
        Look closely. It is just illegal for the food delivery platform to arrange for a delivery. It is NOT illegal for YOU to arrange for a delivery to you, even if you do that through an online platform. Go to Craigslist and offer some dollars to anyone who picks up your food at a takeout place and delivers it to you. You don't have a problem at all with this new legislation, unless of course you want to be the shady middleman. But that's kind of the purpose.
• deleted 6y ago
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• lmilcin 6y ago
  Only problem with this is definitions. Why does it need to refer to "online delivery platforms" when it could refer to anybody that poses to deliver the food for you without express permission of the business owner? I mean, if the worry is that the owner should be able to have say in how the food is to be delivered, it should not matter how the actual order was made, whether it was through online platform, by phone, mail or pigeon? So, if I somehow do this without "online" component then it is fine? Why does half of the law need to be so specific and reactive instead of setting principles for how people should live and cooperate together? Imagine US Constitution referred to unimpeded travel by horse or train or by foot instead of unimpeded travel in general.
  • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    It’s trying to avoid rolling in other small scale activity that should be allowed. If I tell my kids’ soccer team that I’ll pick up 15 McDonalds burgers for them, I’ve “arranged for the delivery of an order” under the law’s definition, so I’m in trouble unless the definition of “food delivery platform” exempts me.
    • lmilcin 6y ago
      Are you commercially providing a service of picking up burgers? There is already a clear distinction in law between commercial and non-commercial activity. Obviously my single sentence isn't yet enough to be standalone law. But you rightly pointed non-commercial activity could be exempt from this restriction. I can imagine somebody picking up burgers and delivering them to homeless people. I believe this could be exempt as non-commercial activity. There are again questions, what if Uber decides to pick up burgers and deliver them to homeless? One could say that even if deliver it for free it is still commercial activity (because they obviously stand to gain PR which has a value). Also they can just ask a burger place for permission to buy burgers from them for homeless people, I see no problem with that. Also all attempts at distinction of small and large scale seem to have issues with them. First is the arbitrary definition of what small and large scale is. Then what if you are wealthy man and decide to feed all homeless in LA for Christmas? I guess you could try to get permission from the owner of the establishment but I don't see why you shouldn't just be able to decide, in a spur of the moment, to send a dozen of your minions to various establishments and just buy the stuff. What then if Uber decides that their minions who deliver goods are actually small businesses providing the service on its own and use Uber's platform as a service to coordinate them with buyers? How would large/small scale operation be defined? To summarize, I think: - commercial / non-commercial distinction is better than large/small "scale" (however defined), - non-commercial organizations and private individuals should not be subject of this law - commercial activity most likely is calculated to gain something from this whether the delivery is or isn't paid for by the consumer and so I think it should not be exempt, - "small scale" commercial activity can probably be perverted by corporate lawyers. - if the law is restricted to online platforms, there is possibility corporations are going to work around it so that it does not meet the criteria of online platform.
• lr4444lr 6y ago
  I was first about to say this was bad because it arbitrarily restricts FOIA, but on actual reading of the legislation this makes sense: the delivery apps are deceptively representing themselves to their own customers as agents of the businesses in question.
• DGAP 6y ago
  HN is so strangely anti tech and anti startup at this point. I'm not sure exactly who's on the platform at this point. Unemployed OSS devs bitter that everyone else in the valley is making more money than them?
  • Cyclone_ 6y ago
    I don't really view this as anti-tech or anti-startup at all. These kind of laws make sense regardless of whether a small or large company is committing the offense.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    People sick of all the terrible, exploitative, world-worsening things that modern tech companies seems to be all about?
  • bjornsing 6y ago
    Yea I’ve noticed this too. HN is starting to feel more and more like my social surroundings here in Sweden. On the other hand my social surroundings are obviously picking up some aspects of HN. Maybe culture is converging globally in a lot of ways?
  • umeshunni 6y ago
    I find it especially true early in the US day, perhaps because the audience then is probably bitter Europeans?
    • Lev1a 6y ago
      Why would we be bitter? Here in Germany for example there is at least one example ( https://www.lieferando.de https://www.lieferando.de ) of a takeaway/delivery service that AFAICT operates only on official partnerships with restaurants etc. Just for the record, I'm not in any way affiliated with them or any other such business apart from ordering through once or twice a few years ago.
  • throw_m239339 6y ago
    anti tech... it's called fraud. The "We're just an app" excuse needs to die already. It has absolutely nothing to do with tech, everything to do with an unethical business model. Absolutely nothing to do with technology.
• swalsh 6y ago
  This is such a great law, I wish my State would enact something similar. The real link to my local chinese restaurant is the 3rd link down. The apps links are always first. The only way I know it's the real site is if "pick-up" is offered as an option. I'd much prefer the restaurant got the full margin, than some app.
  • coffeefirst 6y ago
    Even then, I’ve caught Seamless showing restaurants as being closed or not having delivery when they’re open and they do, just not through Seamless. I wasn’t sure if this was sloppy or malicious, but it costs restaurants customers in a pandemic.
  • Dylan16807 6y ago
    While I agree that impersonation or platforms showing up first in search results is bad, whether the restaurant gets the full margin is a separate issue and currently correlates negatively. A restaurant that's being impersonated without any agreement/permission will get the full margin, because the platform has to buy at retail prices. A restaurant only loses money to commissions when they have an agreement with the platform, and that agreement very often also allows the platform to set up those pages that show up first. So a law requiring platforms to get permission to deliver might end up with fewer restaurants getting full margin!
• coding123 6y ago
  Great way to shut out any new competition in the space.
• tw25601814 6y ago
  Cheering for more anti-competitive laws. Do you never learn? This law does nothing except increase the cost of entering the delivery market, thus acts to protect the extant delivery services from new competitors.
• transfire 6y ago
  F that! 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. As long as a delivery service doesn't pose as the store itself, there should be no issues. The laws in this country are a out of control.
  • ecf 6y ago
    I’ve come to just not give my business to restaurants that don’t want to exist in the modern world. It’s a high risk, low margin business. The fact they don’t want to support any type of delivery with these apps shows to me they don’t care about staying in business. “Support local” goes both ways.
• ecf 6y ago
  What’s exactly the issue here? In my eyes, I’m paying for a service that does the ordering as well as delivery of food. What’s the difference between me calling in and having to physically drive to a location to pick it up and doordash doing the ordering on my behalf and then having one of their drivers get it for me?
• roamerz 6y ago
  California got this right. Credit where credit is due.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• blargathon 6y ago
  I wonder what the secondary consequences will be. The gig worker law had some nasty secondary consequences for musicians and such. These regulations really seem to hurt the little guys. That said, the law is short and doesn't even go to deeply into what an "agreement" is. So maybe it's ok?
  • Ericson2314 6y ago
    well, the gig worker law never got to do it's intended thing, first cause the stays, then cause prop 22, so now it should just be repealed. Had it, at least the distortions for musicians that are also Uber drivers would have been the same. I would by the other's argument that this is about preventing misrepresentation. In fact, perhaps it should have already be covered by trademark protections anyways.
• smarx007 6y ago
  I think it would have been much better to outlaw misrepresentation and advertising without prior agreement (ie the pizza place that did not agree to partnership should only pop up in the search results if the user searches for it) and there should be a warning mandated like "Startup Inc is not affiliated with the Moms and Pops Pizza. If you proceed, we will place your order by calling PHONE_NUMBER and pick up your order from ADDRESS". It should still be legal for the end users to have a service do chores for them including picking up food but only if there is no confusion on the side of the user what is happening here (incl. the fact the pizza may get cold through a no fault of Moms and Pops Pizza). Edit: oh, the law would also outlaw food picking apps from delivering from Walmart too ("The code defines food facility [...] as an operation that stores, [...] or otherwise provides food [...] at the retail level.")
  • hedora 6y ago
    Agreed. Misrepresenting the relationship with the restaurants is the problem, not the existence of the delivery service. As written, the bill seems so poorly thought out that I wonder if the authors has some alternate motive. Regulatory capture, maybe? Also, this doesn’t ban setting up fake websites to take orders, and then forwarding them to hapless restaurant owners. Honestly, just enforcing existing trademark law would be more effective.
    • smarx007 6y ago
      I think "shall not arrange for the delivery of an order" in § 22599 pretty much bans taking orders. But yes, it does not ban setting up fake websites, unfortunately. So a food delivery service can still put up a fake website only to tell a user on a landing page "we are sorry, Moms and Pops pizza does not take orders online, how about a slice of Jack and Jill's pizza instead?"
      • ip26 6y ago
        That's just fraud though, if they are representing themselves as Moms and Pops
• exabrial 6y ago
  How about opt-in for _literally everything_? That's called consent, a concept Silicon Valley doesn't understand.
  • ianhorn 6y ago
    That’s a good slogan but there needs to be delineation of who is and isn’t involved. It turns out to be the central question. If I buy a book from Amazon and want to sell it on eBay, who needs to opt in? I certainly shouldn’t need your permission as you’re not involved. Is the paper manufacturer involved in me selling the book on eBay? Is the author? The publisher? Amazon? Me taking something I buy on Amazon and selling it on eBay has a pretty direct analogy here (sell what I buy from local pizza co to my app users). Asking for opt in is just a different way to phrase it, unfortunately. That said, I’m glad for this law. Maybe it’s not perfectly worded but it’s a net good. What the delivery companies were doing was such blatant exploitation of everyone involved and I’m glad to see it go.
• baby_wipe 6y ago
  My understanding is DoorDash started out by listing restaurants without their permission. Now DoorDash has this legislation which will protect them from any new startup who tries to do the same thing. (The assumption being it will be much easier for DoorDash to obtain permission than it would be for a nascent startup.)
  • jMyles 6y ago
    First-mover advantage has slowly evolved from being a social and economic head-start to being a declaration of candidacy for the patronage of regulatory capture.
  • dayaz36 6y ago
    Bingo!
  • dumbfoundded 6y ago
    Maybe a solution would be to add revenue thresholds. It does seem like many of the new age of internet based companies do seem to exist solely b/c of their ability to circumvent regulation. Uber with employment laws and Airbnb with hotel regulations come to mind.
• cleak 6y ago
  This seems like a very broad solution to a very specific (albeit large) problem. The main thing I keep seeing mentioned is impersonation. That can be solved without requiring explicit agreements, and may be counterproductive in some cases. Imagine Joe’s Tapas actually needs to rely on deliveries during COVID and isn’t equipped to do it themselves. With this law they’d need an explicit contract with GrubHub or the like and that would surely include “we can do business using the Joe’s Tapas name for X”. There’d be no room to change the contact and even less protection for Joe’s Tapas having their brand ruined. Why not solve the more narrow impersonation problem? Explicit transparency requirements and hefty fines for companies that run aground of them.
• nrmitchi 6y ago
  This feels kind of like some sort of regulatory capture by DoorDash, etc now that they are big enough. Is there any way that this wouldn’t stifle any new competition?
  • granzymes 6y ago
    This was my thought too. This law is a huge barrier to entry for any new delivery apps in California.
• j45 6y ago
  This is a good idea, I’ve heard how unscrupulous some apps have been to effectively hijack the identity and contact points of private businesses without consent. It’s one thing to want to own the demand for food, it’s another thing to take it away from small business owners. It’s worth going out of your way to order by a verified phone number, or recommend small restaurants install their own affordable platform like gloriafoods and keep their margins during the pandemic.
• someonehere 6y ago
  In N Out sued one of the delivery services. I forgot which one. Essentially they didn’t want their brand to be ruined by shoddy drivers delivering cold and soggy food. I agree that this is needed.
• jjice 6y ago
  I'm not very familiar with delivery apps or how they work, but they were allowed to do this before? How would that ordering process work? Would someone make an order and then the courier call it in and then pick it up?
  • drzaiusapelord 6y ago
    Yep! They just call it in and someone picks it up. I think even if its a loss, its a form of intimidation. "See, we're the gatekeeper to your customers now, so you better sign with us so we get 20-30% of your revenue. Also we'll list your menu in our app with $1 added per item that we pocket on top of that and charge the customer a service fee on top of that." Its an ugly business model.
• tannerbrockwell 6y ago
  This will be overturned based on First Amendment and Free Speech Grounds.
  • daenz 6y ago
    Maybe, if the headline matched the content. From the bill: >A food delivery platform shall not arrange for the delivery of an order from a food facility without first obtaining an agreement with the food facility expressly authorizing the food delivery platform to take orders and deliver meals prepared by the food facility. I don't see anywhere mentioned about not being able to "list" a restaurant. Just that you cannot actually perform the delivery. Presumably, you could still lie and list a restaurant that you don't deliver for.
• maerF0x0 6y ago
  Normally I am pretty anti- whatever california does. This time I'm super pro it. This is a great way to look out for the little guy getting bullied by the bigger ones. Would love to see 100x more of this.
• InTheArena 6y ago
  Reasonable in scope and protection. Unusual for California, but better for everyone involved. Great.
• cmckn 6y ago
  Lately, I just call the restaurant and do a pickup order. I get the food a lot faster and I don’t end up paying $40 for a $16 pizza. There are some times when delivery is great, maybe I’m sick or have had a couple beers, or don’t have my car; but those times are few and far between (for me). DoorDash and friends have convinced folks that delivery food is great. I think it kind of sucks.
• wskinner 6y ago
  Looks like this is from Lorena Gonzalez, the author of the notorious AB5. Like that law, it seems rather too broad. By my reading it would ban a hypothetical app that worked on behalf of customers to deliver orders, even if the app explicitly mentions it is not affiliated with the restaurant or business. This doesn’t seem like a good thing for Californians.
  • CivBase 6y ago
    By the look of it, this gives restaurants full control over how their product reaches the customer. It basically outlaws competition in the food delivery market, to the obvious benefit of restaurants and incumbents. There is an obvious problem in how many of the food delivery companies represent the restaurants they deliver from, but this goes way beyond addressing that particular problem. Glad this is just a CA thing.
• CivBase 6y ago
  > A food delivery platform shall not arrange for the delivery of an order from a food facility without first obtaining an agreement with the food facility expressly authorizing the food delivery platform to take orders and deliver meals prepared by the food facility. That's more than just preventing apps from listing a restaurant. I don't think delivery services should be able to represent restaurants without an agreement like many of them currently do, but I think this goes way too far. This basically outlaws competition in the food delivery market. EDIT: A food delivery service essentially buys food from a restaurant, then resells it to the customer. Is there any precedent for outlawing sale of a legal product to a business?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• stanmancan 6y ago
  This is great news. One of my customers owns a small chain of pizza restaurants. One of the delivery apps kept hounding them to sign up, but they already offer delivery, so they repeatedly declined. Eventually the app listed them on the app without their permission, using their logo and everything, and set the prices lower than what it was sold for. Every time an order came in, someone from the app would call the store and place an order for pickup and then one of the drivers would pick it up. Disgusting business practice.
• scrps 6y ago
  I am not sure this will hurt delivery apps as much as restaurants, seems to me like it would compel resturants to enter into contract with delivery services (giving them an upper-hand) else they lose business. Maybe pre-covid that might have been survivable. Perhaps I am too narrow of a demographic but since covid hit I order pretty heavily from delivery services and I have completely ignored resturants I like simply because they don't offer delivery or are not listed with a delivery service. Edit: typo
• akrymski 6y ago
  Yet another law to reduce competition in the delivery space and help existing monopolies. I'm sure GrubHub and DoorDash are cheering. Indexing and aggregating data is already covered by numerous laws. If Google can aggregate restaurant listings without permission then why can't others? Linking is ok, showing a call button is ok, but delivering isn't? The law around copyright is clear: you can't copy a restaurants menu without permission the same way you can't copy someone's blog post. This should be enough. If I want to pay a service to drive, purchase and deliver something for me it should be a human right, the same way that anyone should be able to walk into a restaurant and order without being refused service. Why don't restaurants want delivery companies doing this? The typical argument is bad Yelp reviews. Instead of blaming delivery companies why not blame Yelp for not authenticating their reviews? Same way that you shouldn't be able to leave an Amazon review without buying the product you shouldn't be able to leave a yelp review without booking a table at the restaurant. It's Yelp's fault for not authenticating reviews. Restaurants should be benefiting from delivery companies distributing their products, and there is nothing preventing them from offering direct to consumer deliveries themselves
  • throw_m239339 6y ago
    > Why don't restaurants want delivery companies doing this? Why can't delivery services ask for permission before listing food from restaurants first? Why do they feel the need to impersonate restaurants, steal their menu, their trademark while never disclosing to the client that the restaurant has absolutely no part in that deal? Why can't delivery services behave in an ethical fashion that doesn't involve fraud? When your business model is so rotten you need to lie on both ends to make money (restaurants and clients), well you shouldn't be in business at all.
    • akrymski 6y ago
      Why can Google aggregate websites without author permissions? Data protection laws already exist. I'm not arguing it's good or bad. I'm just saying that since the laws won't be applied retroactively it equates to creating a huge barrier for new startups entering the field. Instead of promoting competition, existing leaders will be able to put ever more pricing pressure on restaurants.
• nojvek 6y ago
  When I saw the YC post about praising DoorDash and Airbnb, it was clear that YC endorses doing borderline illegal things in the name of growth. Same with Pg’s posts of how to create billionaires. In a way he’s not wrong, about hacking taken to a whole new level of messing with entire cities and industries. But as a greater society, without proper regulation, we’ll have a dystopia. The rich are insanely rich while the median has barely gone up. The pie is much larger compared to 10 years ago, but most of it is captured by a fair few. It is not a great world to be in if it continues for the next 100 years, which it’ll likely be as technology divides us into haves and have -nots.
  • wasdfff 6y ago
    It just blows my mind how, reliably, selfish people end up in positions of power. They then work the system to increase wealth or power as much as possible, everything else including the environment that we all live off of be damned, because you will be dead in 50 years anyway. Where are the altruists? Chanting in some buddhist temple? Why are things so evil?
  • weaksauce 6y ago
    in a lot of ways a lot of the billionaires are the robber barons of our times. having multiple billions in wealth doesn't seem to be compatible with a healthy society and seems to be a failure of that society. the sheer scale of even one single billion dollars compared to a million dollars is absurd. a million seconds of time is almost 12 days. a billion seconds is 32 years of time.
• Melting_Harps 6y ago
  It has to be said, that the combination of Delivery app incompetence and exploitative business models working in tandem with Government corruption and lack of aid for the Food Industry in the US its a fucking miracle it has lasted this long at all. I'm afraid to say that the Industry to me will never be the same, and what it is today even as it defies Shutdown orders will not be enough for it to be close to what it was as the finance channels are breaking down before our eyes--take out models are less than ~10% of revenue from what a normal 100% service brought in. I always thought the Industry needed to be disrupted as it was wasteful, abusive and over all toxic in many ways. But the fact that so many are resrtin to Gofund me crowdsourcing then actual food sales screams that we've seen the same thing happen to the Restaurant Industry that happened to the Health Care Industry. I've been in both and the parallels are quite obvious to see. But what we've seen with COIVD is the systemic take-down and consolidation of the Food Industry from both Private (and I use that word loosely) and Public sides which only really benefited the massive Corporate players who benefited from PPP and have the resources and financial and legal wherewithal that small private restaurant owners can't afford. Wallstreet and VC firms like Softbank also made out like bandits with such poor models like Doordash IPO. I'm sad to say this but I think the US will be a culinary wasteland in all but the food truck and high end dining end points, everything in between will be sucked up by large corporations and Ghost kitchen models. We had made so much progress that one can't help but feel entirely dejected about it, especially now as Food Education is even more dire than ever as 70% of all Americans are classified as fat and obese [0]. I just hope people support their local farmers and begin cooking more at home then continue to pour money into what has clearly been a hi-jacking of small entrepreneurial people trying to advance the very low standard of culinary edification in the US in relation to Europe and Asia. It's a sad situation, but I'm retired as a chef for good now I'm glad to say I exited at a high that I think will never be seen again. 0: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm
• st1x7 6y ago
  Threads like this one remind me just how different the US is from Europe. It's astounding to think that it was even possible until now for delivery apps to operate in this way, or that this is somehow a controversial issue.
  • wasdfff 6y ago
    Thanks to the lobbying system, most laws and regulation in the US serve to protect and enrich moneyed interests beyond all else. If something is actually collectively beneficial to the wider populace, its a happy accident. Politics in the US make much more sense when understood through the lobbying lens.
    • carapace 6y ago
      Yeah there was that infamous study: "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... > Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
  • Jenda_ 6y ago
    Maybe I don't understand the issue correctly, but several services exist in .cz that you call, tell them „I need X from shop Y“ (any shop, incl. food) and they will go there, buy it and deliver it. I don't think this should be forbidden (yes, I get potential quality complains mistakenly directed to the restaurant, but you already have the same problem with any external delivery service or reseller...). Example of such service (they even have an English website): https://idodo.cz/en/products/dodo-courier/ https://idodo.cz/en/products/dodo-courier/ (of course the impersonating issue is different)
• anandsuresh 6y ago
  This law is dated September 24, 2020. If it has indeed been the law for around 3 months now, any ideas if/how much this impacts Doordash, Uber Eats and others? From my own research, it looks like these delivery companies do have a number of restaurants listed on their platform that they don't have any explicit agreements with, yet have not heard/read anything to the effect of litigations based on this law.
• throw03172019 6y ago
  This is great. Postmates tricks you into thinking the restaurant is on their platform but then you get charged high fees because they have a Postmate go there and order in person.
• RobLach 6y ago
  I’m surprised some firm didn’t put together a class action given there’s precedent: https://www.eater.com/2015/11/11/9714840/in-n-out-doordash-delivery-lawsuit https://www.eater.com/2015/11/11/9714840/in-n-out-doordash-d...
• frankydp 6y ago
  These companies copy my menu, images and all. Mark up the prices incredibly. Market my menu to customers with inflated prices as if they are the restaurant prices. Then they also charge a delivery fee on top. Customer drives by the bricks a week later and keeps driving because I have terrible prices. Worst of all I have no idea the transactions are happening, and the companies are directing drivers to not divulge they are not the actual customer.
  • cdolan 6y ago
    Curious how they are getting your menu? Do you have a website and they scrape it? Or did they physically pay a mechanical Turk or some similar process to type it out, then mark it up 20%+?
    • frankydp 6y ago
      I think they probably Turk it with drivers, and just hand jamb it with the menu board photos.
• barkingcat 6y ago
  It's basically identity theft. Should have been banned from the beginning.
• kuang_eleven 6y ago
  This is great; the practice is incredibly deceitful, harming both customers and restaraunts. Postmates still has me blacklisted from their app after advertising one of my favorite Mexican places to me with this kind of scam, when they didn't have correct prices on their app, they tried to charge me the difference after I placed the order.
• musicale 6y ago
  I'm disappointed that there has been no crackdown on deceptive advertising by the apps, which seems to be the root cause of the problem.
• codecamper 6y ago
  Thereby ensuring that the dominant companies stay dominant, because they just upped the barriers to entry. Always count on government to do the opposite thing to what might actually fix the problem. The actual problem is not that delivery apps list without consent. The actual, real problem is that they use their dominance to take their cut. Without that dominance we could easily see another app & another app until that margin is a mere cloud fees + 50% sort of markup. But now... restaurants can go on paying through the nose.
• diebeforei485 6y ago
  It doesn't surprise me that Lorena Gonzalez pushes bills like this. She is currently running for Secretary of State; it would be great if she leaves the legislature.
• koolk3ychain 6y ago
  I usually disagree with flick of the wrist legislation from CA but this is a win! Unfortunately, this will likely just lead to google and these delivery apps actively suppressing search / SEO for restaurants that refuse to use their platforms :(
• MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  If you can't see how this is a good thing for local businesses, I would suggest that you never attempt to start one of your own, purely for the well-being of your potential customers.
• iamkoby 6y ago
  What's wrong with CA? It seems to me that state tries it bests to kick innovation out, and start another tech ecosystem somewhere else... If impersonating is the reason they couldn't have just regulated a requirement to clearly list if the ad is by the owner or a third party, and not throw away the baby...
  • gtyras2mrs 6y ago
    > If impersonating is the reason they couldn't have just regulated a requirement to clearly list if the ad is by the owner or a third party, and not throw away the baby Because so many people will never comprehend that the lisitng is by a third party and go on to give the restaurant a bad review. Also some foods don't travel well and are made for immediate consumption. Even if the customer recognises that the listing is made by a third party - they are more likely to blame the restaurant for the sub-par food. Leaving the decision to the restaurant to opt-in is the best move IMO. Rather than have "disrupters" come in - damage the brand reputation and then leave the damage control bit to the restaurant.
• fblp 6y ago
  I agree with this law in principle but i hate that it is getting implemented at a state level with specific industry language. Broad federal consumer protection laws could be expanded. For example, misrepresenting an affiliation with a business by omission could be made an offense regardless of the industry. The test would be "would a reasonable person think this (intermediary) is affiliated?". This is inspired by Australian Consumer Law.