Quality Control Doesn’t Stop at Your Restaurant

Back in the ’90s, an animated series used to air called Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? In each episode, Carmen Sandiego would mysteriously appear in a different country somewhere in the world and it was up to the user to analyze the clues throughout the episode to find out where exactly she was. Carmen Sandiego pops into my mind whenever I think of a delivery order being placed through a third-party service, such as Uber Eats or GrubHub. After an hour of waiting, I’m usually asking myself, ‘Where in the World is My Order?’

I placed an order recently with a local restaurant using a third party delivery service and imagined the journey my food was on as I was waiting for it to be delivered. Was my order in a newer vehicle enjoying a smooth ride with A/C? Or was it in the seat of a 90’s Camry with the windows down and radio up? I decided to check in on my order and much to my surprise, it had decided to make a stop at the beach!

Of course, after several detours by the driver, my food arrived late–and cold. This got me thinking about the millions of other users on these apps who might regularly experience the same or similar problems. Sure enough, after doing some research, I found out that people very often experience their food arriving late, or not at all! In fact, 1 in 4 delivery drivers have even admitted to eating a customer’s food! No wonder so many people never see their order… It might just be sitting in the driver’s stomach!

Coming back to lateness, each third-party delivery app has its own late policy. For example, DoorDash’s policies seem to imply that a delivery taking about 30 minutes would be classified as “late”, yet their average delivery time is 42 minutes. Things aren’t quite adding up here… And while each app is different, customers on average are paying an extra 15-30% on their order to have it delivered via third-party. So considering that extra cost, why is it so commonly accepted for our food to arrive cold or half-eaten?

Even though my food arrived cold from my delivery experience, I should at least feel good about helping out my local restaurant, right? Well, turns out that order didn’t help them at all. After a bit of research, I discovered that the only real “winners” here are the third-party delivery apps themselves. For example, my order for my food was about $17 after my delivery fee. My guess is that the restaurant only received maybe $8 of that. Considering the slim profit margins restaurants already operate on, I doubt they made ANYTHING from my order. But why would the restaurant only receive about $8 when I paid $17? That’s because third-party delivery services charge the restaurant up to 30% or more ON EACH ORDER! They even take a cut on to-go orders.

So when I order through DoorDash, GrubHub, or Uber Eats, I’m actually supporting those apps and not the restaurants? Yes. And it gets worse.

Not only do third-party delivery apps make money off of restaurant orders, but they also offer “add-on services” to get themselves an even greater cut of the deal! These add-ons could be special deals offered to customers through their app, or “marketing services” to put a restaurant higher up on their built-in search engines. These add-on services take even more of the profits that restaurants are already losing so much of, and of course, many of them feel obligated to use these additional services to be able to compete at all with larger chain restaurants that are often heavily promoted on these apps.

It can’t get worse than that though, right? Well…. Yes. A lot worse actually. When I ordered through third-party delivery (let’s call the company “MoreCash”) at my local restaurant, you would like to believe that “MoreCash” would provide my name and email to that restaurant, so that the restaurant could now directly send me deals and specials, right? Well, it’s quite the opposite. The local restaurant received no information about me, and instead, I found myself receiving special promotions from “MoreCash” to eat at large chain restaurants nearby, and not the local places that I prefer. So what does that mean? It means that even though I chose to give my business to my favorite local spot, third-party delivery is essentially a roadblock in the customer relationship between the local restaurant and myself.

In a transaction where I offer my name and email, the restaurant should be able to keep my info. After all, I’d love to get special offers from them directly! But with third-party delivery, there is no customer loyalty, only app-loyalty.

It is true that third-party delivery companies have provided opportunities for delivery that restaurants didn’t think they were capable of before. However, restaurants are more than capable of handling their own delivery. The problem is that third-party delivery companies have spent most of their profits on marketing and promotion to convince consumers and restaurants alike that they are the most convenient way for a consumer to receive food. In reality, they are leeching off of restaurants’ hard work and dedication, taking their customer loyalty away, and ruining these restaurants’ reputations with their delivery issues.

Although my food arrived cold on the day that I tried out third-party delivery, I’m glad I placed the order that led me to researching and learning how to truly support local restaurants. Situations like this are what led the team here at Tría to developing an online ordering platform that truly puts control back in the restaurant’s hands. Customer loyalty stays with the restaurant, 100% of revenue goes to the restaurant, and their reputation no longer lies with mysterious delivery drivers. To see how we accomplished this, check out our How it Works page, and if you’re a restaurant owner you can even sign up for a free demo! Let us empower you to take back control of your business from third parties and grow with Tría!