That would explain why they sell less or cheaper food, which appear too high on the app due to the markup they have to add to the price to handle the fees. This would be an alternate explanation to why things seem inflated. Even with inflated ingredients prices, it actually still doesn’t add up how the volume dropped so much such that each unit would need to cost that much more (I’m arguing it can’t just be the ingredient prices being high). The fees adding to the perceptual inflation make sense.

It’s more expensive volume or less cheaper volume they can make due to higher ingredient prices PLUS the fees they have to add to cover the delivery service cut. That’s how you get a $20 burger for delivery.

This all gets worse when the prices become sticky at the retail place itself (app prices enter the real world). These delivery service are a serious agitator, true disrupter.

Nah. Those delivery services were opt-out until California passed a law in 2021 prohibiting that kind of behavior.

Ok, but if they're doing it without the restaurant's buy in, then they're presumably just acting as a middleman and ordering from the restaurant themselves, at which point I'm not sure how they're stiffing the restaurant 20-30%. If I were running a restaurant and Doordash kept calling me trying to submit an order for cheaper than the food costs I would simply decline to take their business...?

Doordash puts up a listing for a restaurant and siphons off take-out traffic. Once Doordash gets a critical mass they can turn around and "negotiate" with the restaurant.

And the restaurant can say “no.”

If I were a restaurateur and caught a glimpse of a Doordash driver in my finest establishment, the first thing I would do is put together a simple online order form and start advertising it in every order. If you just disappear from the app one day, your customers trying to reorder would probably go somewhere else – but if they know they can order on your site instead, they probably will (if your food is good enough and your ordering experience is top-notch, or vice versa).

  And the restaurant can say “no.”

And now you have hordes of angry customers who can't understand why you have a Doordash listing (that you didn't create and don't want) but won't fulfill orders.

  If I were a restaurateur and caught a glimpse of a Doordash driver in my
  finest establishment, the first thing I would do is put together a simple
  online order form and start advertising it in every order. 

Whether it's not wanting to give Doordash a cut, not wanting to sell food that doesn't travel well for delivery, not wanting to crowd out local customers, not wanting Doordash to hijack their brand, not wanting Doordash to crowd out their own in-house delivery, or whatever actual restaurant owners litigated these forced listings because they didn't want to be listed on Doordash.

e.g. https://boston.eater.com/2016/3/4/11160924/legal-sea-foods-s...

The claim isn't that your saying no to fulfilling orders, it's that your saying no to giving them a discount.

  The claim isn't that your saying no to fulfilling orders,
  it's that your saying no to giving them a discount.

Well, no. This is the comment I responded to:

  Unless something has changed over the last couple years,
  restaurants opt in to being available on those apps. 

That very much asserts that the issue is about accepting orders. Doordash et al were initially opt-out.

Yeah, like the restaurant can say “no” to giving a discount, they can say “no” to people wanting their food to get delivered now. It’s just that now it’ll be a bad business decision probably.

Everything is possible. And every choice has its own set of tradeoffs. But no, there’s no time machine to the pre-Doordash world now.

If restaurants didn't put themselves on the platform, wouldn't that mean the restaurant is getting full price? Its equivalent of paying someone to call in your order and picking it up. What are the negatives?

This is all, of course very fuzzy, but "I will spend 30 dollars on food tonight" can turn into "I call the restaurant and order 30 dollars of takeout" vs "I use door dash to get 30 dollars of food from that restaurant", and in the latter the restaurant sees less sales. But if I'm already like "I will have food from this place I like" and it's not on doordash or w/e, I might still be motivated enough to head over there!

There's a lot of dynamic variables here (including of course the "the person doesn't order from the restaurant"), but the few times I've used those delivery apps I end up ordering very little food for a lot of money.

I try to just do takeout instead.

You're just arguing against delivery food generally, not against Uber.

Of course delivery has a cost, was even typical for pizza delivery before the apps. If you're that price conscience, takeout always exists.

While I won't go as far as to say that Dominos & co. are trying to run delivery entirely at cost, it is not clear to me that delivery from a shop directly vs delivery with a middle layer (having to pay lots of engineers fancy salaries mind you..) is an equivalent operation.

Remember, delivery apps take the costs and then their cut. That cut theoretically has some pressure from markets or whatever, but ... well.....

I'm splitting hairs here, granted

Dominos uses door dash in my area.