A bill introduced this week in California would require third-party food delivery platforms to share customer information with restaurants, according to The Sacramento Bee.
Assembly Bill 2149, also known as the “Fair Food Delivery Act,” would authorize DoorDash, Grubhub, and other delivery services to share a customer’s information with the restaurants from which they order. That includes the customer’s name, email address, phone number, and delivery address. Restaurants could request this information from delivery services once per calendar year.
While applicable to both restaurants that have contracts with delivery services and those that don’t, the bill in part at least seems aimed at the latter. There’s a growing outrage brewing over delivery services offering food from restaurants that haven’t a) given their consent and b) signed a contract with one of these services. The practice has already sparked legislative action in Rhode Island, where a proposed bill would make it illegal. If that bill gets signed into law, other states could follow with similar legislation.
In California, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, who introduced Assembly Bill 2149 this week, cited in a press release the need to “level the playing field” for smaller, independent restaurants “being taken advantage of” by Big Tech.
California Restaurant Association CEO and President Joe Condie echoed Gonzalez’ statements: “Technology giants aggressively entering the foodservice space—whether deliberately or not—are eroding the customer’s relationship with the restaurant,” he said in the press release.
Assembly Bill 2149 comes on the heels of the much-publicized Assembly Bill 5, which reclassifies gig workers as employees and requires companies to provide health insurance, paid time off, and other benefits they wouldn’t normally be on the hook for with contracted workers. The bill passed into law late last year, and has (surprise, surprise) gotten pushback from tech companies. Uber and Postmates filed a lawsuit in December claiming AB5 was “unconstitutional.” That bid was rejected this week.
Delivery services and other gig economy companies will in all likelihood speak out against Assembly Bill 2149, too. But with delivery orders expected to drive the majority of restaurant sales over the next several years, and with reports predicting 70 percent of those orders will come from third-party services, measures that protect restaurants and workers and keep Big Tech in check is more important than ever.
That includes restaurants’ relationships with their customers, which is what Assembly Bill 2149 aims to protect.
“Restaurants shouldn’t fear losing their customers when they don’t agree to the conditions of some multi-million dollar food delivery app,” Gonzalez said. “This bill will put the power back in the hands of small business owners in California.”
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