This is a pretty cynical way to see things. I’m a restaurant lover who wants my local restaurants to survive the pandemic. Why is building a product to help them “not the right move?”
I've definitely had this happen on occasion. There might be interesting ways to solve this problem, like showing the level of "delivery risk" associated with an order given the user's distance from the restaurant and time of day.
This is a really good insight and a part of the delivery experience I think could be greatly improved. Different services offer surprisingly different versions of the same menu, and customers are unaware there might be better selection on a different website.
Wow, that's really wild. Would you mind sharing the name of the restaurant? I'd love to reach out to them to understand what happened there. And thanks for posting this, that's definitely something I'll take into consideration.
This is the right move - local restaurants are hurting and, sadly, the internet is a place where big corps with large budgets have leverage over passionate little guys working their butts off.
For those who want to help, I built a chrome extension similar to Honey that shows a local restaurant's direct ordering website as you're about to order from that restaurant thru a third party service. If direct ordering isn't available, it will also show you if that same order is cheaper elsewhere. If you have a favorite local restaurant that accepts direct orders, please help us add them to our system by filling in this form: https://platerapp.app.link/JACVBOFUY7
For those interested in checking out the extension, it can be downloaded here: https://platerapp.app.link/tDSD3mUTY7
(it doesn't collect browsing history or sell personal info or anything of the sort)
Market consolidation would limit competition and hurt consumers so I'm glad they were purchased by an external player. But local restaurants are still hurting from exorbitant fees and something needs to be done to help.
Shameless plug: I'm working on a chrome extension that compares the price of your order across delivery services to get you the best price. We'll soon be linking to restaurants' websites to let people order direct and save on fees. For those interested, link is here: https://platerapp.app.link/1VRKKwGAe7
Its astonishing delivery services have the depravity to dupe customers trying to help a hurting industry.
If you live in NYC or SF, I built a browser extension that will help you place delivery orders directly with local restaurants. It currently compares the price of your delivery across all delivery services, and within the next week, will link you to local restaurant websites if one is available. For those interested in checking, the link is https://platerapp.app.link/Gsxltl3d06