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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

third-party delivery

DoorDash Launches Tiered Commission Fees for Restaurants

DoorDash announced today that is has launched a new pricing structure to deal with its historically controversial restaurant commission fees. Via these “Partnership Plans,” as the service calls them, U.S. restaurants can now choose between three different commission price points.

Plans are priced according to how much area a restaurant wants its delivery radius to cover and how much marketing it needs from DoorDash. 

The DoorDash Basic plan has the smallest delivery radius and the highest cost for customers, since most of the delivery costs are shifted to them. The commission fee for restaurants with this plan is 15 percent. It does not include in-app marketing.

DoorDash Plus has a 25 percent commission fee, offers a bigger delivery radius, and includes the DashPass loyalty program. DoorDash Premier has the biggest delivery radius and, in addition to DashPass, also offers what it calls a “growth guarantee.” Via this feature, restaurants will be reimbursed their full commission for the month if they receive fewer than 20 orders for delivery, pickup, or DoorDash subsidiary Caviar.

DoorDash also announced a new and reduced commission fee for pickup orders, which is 6 percent across all plans. 

The new tiered pricing structure is very clearly a response to the commission fee caps dozens of U.S. cities implemented last year. With dining rooms closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, restaurants were forced to rely more heavily on third-party delivery services like DoorDash. We weren’t too many months into restaurant restrictions before many across the restaurant industry started to decry commission fees, which often go as high as 30 percent per transaction, as detrimental to restaurants’ bottom lines. 

DoorDash and others oppose fee caps, saying they hurt order volumes and result in the service having to raise prices for customers. 

Granted, with a plan like DoorDash Basic, customers will still pay more for their meals to be delivered. From the looks of it, bringing those costs down will mean hiking commission fees for restaurants back up, so it remains to be seen if this new pricing structure is truly beneficial for businesses or if it’s more of the same old story.

Spain’s Glovo Lands €450M to Expand Its Dark Convenience Store Delivery Business

Delivery service Glovo announced today it has raised €450 million (~$528 million USD) in Series F funding. The round was led by Lugard Road Capital and the Luxor Capital Group, with participation from returning investors Delivery Hero, Drake Enterprises, and GP Bullhound. 

Barcelona, Spain-based Glovo says that this fundraise — its largest to date — will go towards expanding Glovo’s reach in the 20 markets in which the company already operates. In particular, the company will expand its Q-Commerce, aka ghost convenience store, division in these areas. 

Customers order online from these convenience stores, which carry food and household items and deliver goods to customers in 30 minutes or less. Glovo launched its concept of the dark convenience store delivery in 2019 as a way to stand out from other delivery services, most of which were focused primarily on restaurant food at the time. Glovo said today it can provide delivery in 10 minutes or less in some urban areas, and that it anticipates “a permanent shift in consumer habits towards same-day and instant delivery.”

Recent funding in the realm of super-quick delivery suggests the same. In Europe, that includes Berlin-based Gorillas, which raised $290 million in March, Italy’s Everli, which just raised $100 million, and Rohlik, a Czech Republic-based company that recently nabbed $230 million. Activity (and investment) is equally big in the states, notably with Fridge No More’s $15.4 million fundraise and a whopping $1.5 billion for GoPuff last month.

Glovo plans to have 200 dark convenience stores running by the end of 2021. Currently, they are in Barcelona and Madrid in Spain as well as Lisbon, Portugal and Milan, Italy. Future stores are planned for Valencia, Spain; Porto, Portugal; Rome, Italy; and Bucharest, Romania.

As part of this q-commerce growth, Glovo will also build up its deals with major supermarkets. Right now, its roster of stores includes Carrefour, Continente, and Kaufland.

Is Deliveroo’s IPO a Turning Point for Third-Party Delivery’s Labor Force?

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U.K.-based Deliveroo is the latest third-party delivery service getting ready to debut on the public market, with plans to go public in early April. As usual, the move comes with the standard buffet of controversies surrounding third-party delivery services, particularly those around pay and protections for workers actually doing the last mile of the food delivery. Unlike usual, the labor issue is actually making would-be investors think twice this time.

Six major U.K. investors, including Aberdeen Standard, BMO Global, and Aviva Investors, said last week that they will not participate in Deliveroo’s initial public market, citing working conditions for the delivery service’s couriers and drivers. 

Like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and others, Deliveroo classifies the folks doing the actual food delivery as independent contractors, and therefore isn’t required to offer minimum wage, paid time off, or paid sick leave. As we’ve written ad nauseam, this is problematic for many reasons, not the least of which is that many workers struggle to make a living wage off these delivery gigs, as evidenced by a recent report from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that found some Deliveroo riders earn as little as £2 ($2.76 USD) per hour during a shift.

What’s turning investors off, however, is more than just an ethical issue. Some apparently see a business built on gig workers as a risky model because of the regulatory scrutiny that model is getting of late, at least in the U.K. and in Europe. Case in point: Uber recently lost a fight against the U.K. supreme court and must now classify its drivers as employees, not independent contractors. For now, that doesn’t impact the company’s Eats business, but it’s been enough to, in the words of investment forecasters, “dampen the mood” around Deliveroo’s IPO. 

Deliveroo itself admitted in its investment prospectus that having to reclassify its workers as employees would have a “material impact” on the business. Part of the reason third-party services, including Deliveroo, have been able to achieve such high valuations in the past is because their businesses are built off the idea of minimizing labor costs. Paying drivers a minimum wage and other benefits eats into those costs, and puts the idea of steady profitability further out of reach. Additionally, Deliveroo suggested having to change its worker classifications would also impact its ability to operate in certain markets. 

The chances of Deliveroo having to reclassify its workers seems high. Just Eat Takeaway.com, another major food delivery service in the U.K. and Europe, as already pledged to do away with the gig worker model. The aforementioned Uber fight with the U.K. supreme court also doesn’t bode well for Deliveroo.

What is yet to be determined is whether this will have a ripple effect across the pond. Some recent events, like California passing Prop 22 in November of last year, seem to suggest gig workers are losing the fight against third-party delivery. On the other hand, Just Eat Takeaway.com has plans to acquire U.S.-based Grubhub, which means it may eventually bring its employee-based model Stateside.

Right now there seem to be more questions than answers surrounding the fate of third-party delivery services. But as more countries and governments take a harder stance against the gig-worker model, and as more investors think twice before backing such ventures, we may finally start to see the balance of power start to shift in favor of the folks on whose backs these businesses are actually built.

Restaurant Tech ‘Round the Web

Starbucks aims to become carbon neutral with its coffee by 2030, the company said this week. The Seattle-based coffee giant says it will do this with things like precision agronomy and climate-resistant coffee plant varieties.

Yum Brands, parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, has acquired omnichannel solutions company Tictuk Technologies. Tictuk is known for its “conversational commerce,” which will allow customers to place food orders via social media, SMS, email, and many other formats. 

Restaurant Group Brinker International this week announced a Google Maps and Google Search integration for the company’s It’s Just Wings virtual brand, in a bid to further digitize the off-premises experience.

Major Investors Avoid Deliveroo, Citing Concerns Over Worker Treatment

Ahead of Deliveroo’s initial public offering next week, six major investors in the U.K. say they will not buy shares of the third-party delivery service, citing concerns over the way the company treats workers. Additionally, hundreds of couriers plan to refuse making deliveries when the company starts trading next week, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Aberdeen Standard, Aviva Investors, BMO Global, CCLA, LGIM, and M&G said they would not participate in the Deliveroo IPO due to the working conditions for Deliveroo drivers and couriers. 

Like other third-party delivery services, including U.S.-based Uber Eats, Grubhub, and DoorDash, Deliveroo classifies its workers as contractors. In doing so, the company does not have to pay things like minimum wage or sick leave. 

Investor concerns come the same week the Bureau of Investigative Journalism published a report that found Deliveroo riders can earn as little as £2 per hour during their shifts. The analysis is based on “thousands of invoices from more than 300 riders over the past year.”

A BMO Global portfolio manager told Bloomberg that the workers’ rights issue “is too big a hurdle for me to take any risks with my clients’ capital today.” He added that there are “better business models” out there than the gig-economy one used by Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and others. 

One alternative model is that of Just Eat Takeaway.com, which has pledged to move away from gig workers recently in order to classify its drivers and couriers as employees. Uber, meanwhile, was recently forced to reclassify its workers as employees in the U.K., after a supreme court case in February, although for now the decision does not apply to the company’s Eats’ business. 

Deliveroo may at some point be forced to do the same. In February, the European Commission launched an initial consultation on conditions for gig-economy workers and is planning to draw up legislation that would govern how the gig economy works in the EU.

That potential legislation also makes Deliveroo a bigger risk for investors. “If Deliveroo is forced to change the way it classifies its riders in the future, it is likely to puncture its profits prospects, and could even derail the delivery giant,” the company said in documents outlining its IPO plans. It has set aside over £112 million to cover the potential legal costs around how the company classifies its workers. 

Third-Party Delivery Service Waitr Buys Delivery Dudes for $23M

Third-party delivery service Waitr announced today it has entered into an agreement to buy Delray Beach, Florida-based company Delivery Dudes for $23 million. The stock-and-cash deal is expected to close before the end of next week.

Delivery Dudes’ digital ordering properties and phone number will remain operational. The company said the acquisition would help it to improve service for customers, which is available around the South Florida area.

What the deal brings for Waitr is a little less clear. Waitr, which operates in small- to medium-sized U.S. cities, is one of the only third-party delivery services that has so far achieved profitability. However, it holds just 1 percent of the market share for third-party delivery in the U.S., according to recent data from Second Measure. By comparison, DoorDash holds 56 percent, Uber Eats holds 20 percent, and Grubhub has 17 percent.

Delivery Dude’s service radius is unlikely to change those numbers much, since the company only operates in a small region within the U.S.

Potentially more advantageous for Waitr is its move in recent months to add more service types to its business. In some markets, Waitr now delivers alcoholic beverages directly from restaurants. Even more recently, the company struck a deal with a payment processing company called Flow Payments to create “a compliant marketplace, delivery, and payment solution” for cannabis dispensaries. 

Other third-party delivery services have also diversified their business models over the last year, with both DoorDash and Uber Eats offering grocery and DoorDash running its own “ghost convenience stores.” We’ve yet to see any of the major players peddling cannabis to customers doorsteps, though.

Whether Waitr will be successful at this remains unclear. The service operates largely in the South and Southeastern U.S., where cannabis and/or cannabis delivery is illegal in most states. There is currently no timeline for Waitr’s service in this particular vertical.

As far as its acquisition of Delivery Dudes goes, Waitr will be able to expand into new markets through it. Again, it would be a relatively small expansion, given that Delivery Dudes only serves part of Florida. But these may also be new areas in which Waitr can try out its diversified services, potentially building more profitability for the company in the future.

Domino’s: ‘In 60 Years, We’ve Never Made a Dollar Delivering Pizza’

Pizza chain Domino’s announced its fourth-quarter 2020 earnings this week and simultaneously reiterated its stance on using third-party delivery services like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub.

Short answer: It won’t.

Speaking on an earnings call Thursday, Domino’s CEO Ritch Allison said his company has struggled to understand “the long-term economics in some of the aggregator business.”

“Every time we look at it here in the U.S., it just doesn’t make sense for us or our franchisees economically,” he said. “And if it doesn’t make sense economically, it certainly doesn’t make sense to take the risk of sharing all of our customer data with these third parties.”

Domino’s has never used nor planned to use third-party delivery apps to serve its customers, choosing instead to process digital orders through its in-house app and use its own employees to handle the last mile. Allison told the Wall Street Journal in 2019 that “the profit hit and reputational risk” of working with DoorDash et al. wasn’t worth the extra revenue that might come from such partnerships.

One pandemic and an industry-wide shift to delivery later, and Domino’s hasn’t changed its stance.

“In 60 years, we’ve never made a dollar delivering pizza,” he said. “We make money on the product, but we don’t make money on the delivery. So we’re just not sure how others do it.”

Allison went on to explain that third-party delivery services’ money has to come from either the restaurant or the customer. Both of those areas are problematic right now. The high commission fees these services charge restaurants is a well-documented and increasingly hated practice. At the same time, services have hiked prices for customers, and when restaurant dining rooms finally get to reopen, it’s uncertain how popular delivery will remain among consumers.

DoorDash as good as admitted this in its own earnings call this week, saying it expects “declines in customer engagement and average order values” as markets open back up. The company beat analyst expectations for revenue during the fourth quarter, but also more than doubled its losses. 

Those points underscore Allison’s hesitations around making money via delivery. Domino’s appears to be moving in the opposite direction. On this week’s call, Allison said the company was shrinking its delivery area “to get closer to our customer for better service.” This fortressing strategy, as Domino’s calls it, will continue to drive store growth in 2021.

Same-store sales for Dominos grew 11.2 percent during the fourth quarter. In addition to keeping its delivery business in-house, the chain will focus on its carryout service, including its recently launched “carside service,” and making investments in new technologies. 

DoorDash Exceeded Revenue Estimates but More Than Doubled its Losses in Q4 2020

DoorDash exceeded analyst estimates with its 2020 fourth-quarter revenues. However, the third-party delivery service also more than doubled its losses during that time period, and DoorDash stock took a dip this afternoon, after trading. Total revenue for the quarter represented a 226 percent year-over-year growth. 

The company went public in December 2020 after experiencing a boom fueled largely by the COVID-19 pandemic and the restaurant industry’s shift to off-premises formats like delivery. In its first financial report since that time, DoorDash said its sales increased 225 percent from 2019 during the fourth quarter 2020. Sales for Q4 totaled $970 million, beating analyst expectations of $926.7 million. However, the company also posted a net loss of $312 million, up from $134 million the previous year. 

DoorDash told shareholders it expects “declines in consumer engagement and average order values” as markets open back up and restaurants are able to open their dining rooms once more. How sharp that decline is remains unclear, the company said. 

The pandemic forced pretty much every restaurant that managed to stay open to adjust their focus towards delivery and takeout orders. Needless to say, this created a lot of business for companies like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub as homebound customers ordered in. 

Off-premises orders are likely to remain popular for the foreseeable future. At the same time, third-party delivery services remain steeped in controversies (hello, Prop. 22) and many restaurants are fed up with them. There has of late been a push to bring more of the digital ordering process back under restaurants’ own roofs, promote pickup orders, and, in some cases, build native delivery platforms that cut out the need for a third-party aggregator like DoorDash.

That might be one reason DoorDash has in the last year expanded its services to include grocery and convenience store delivery. By diversifying the types of goods it can get to customers’ doorsteps, the company may have a better chance of staying relevant long term, regardless of what happens in the restaurant biz.

Flipdish Raises €40M to Help Restaurants Process Digital Orders In House

Flipdish announced that it has raised €40 million (~$48.5 million USD) from Tiger Global Management to expand its software platform that lets restaurants create their own branded digital properties instead of having to rely on third-party platforms for online orders.

The company said today in a blog post that it will use the new funds to build out its team, expand operationally, and improve services to its existing customers. Currently, the service operates in the UK, Germany, France, Ireland, Spain, and the U.S. 

Flipdish’s promise to restaurants is that its software will help them easily set up and manage digital properties in order to bring digital ordering in-house, rather than leaving it to third-party marketplaces like Deliveroo and Uber Eats. Restaurants using software can build a website and mobile app that features their own branding but is powered by Flipdish’s technology on the back end. The system also includes built-in marketing and analytics tools. 

It does not, however, appear to completely eliminate reliance on third-party delivery providers. Instead, restaurants can process orders through their own (Flipdish-powered) apps and website, and Flipdish then partners with “a number of food delivery service providers” to power the last mile. Many of those are smaller, regional on-demand delivery services, though DoorDash’s Drive service makes an appearance. 

This hybrid approach isn’t unusual in the restaurant tech space. Few companies actually provide their own driver fleet along with their software stack to restaurants, ShiftPixy being the notable exception. Others, including Lunchbox, Orderslip, and Toast, integrate with some of the major third-party platforms in order to fulfill that last mile. That particular setup is unlikely to change soon, since few have the money to actually maintain a national (or international) driver fleet.

Flipdish, at least from its messaging, seems to understand that. The company noted in today’s blog post that its system isn’t just about addressing “the huge commissions taken by those marketplaces – although that is certainly part of it. It’s also about enabling those businesses to build a closer relationship with their customers.”

To date, the company has raised a total of €47.5 million, or roughly $58 million USD.

Ordrslip Announces Integration With DoorDash for Restaurant Delivery

Restaurant tech company Ordrslip this week announced a partnership with DoorDash’s white label fulfillment platform, DoorDash Drive. Through the partnership, restaurants with mobile-order platforms powered by Ordrslip’s technology can use the DoorDash network to fulfill delivery orders.

Ordrslip’s pitch to restaurants is that the company’s technology allows businesses to create their own branded mobile apps without having to invest the millions of dollars and countless hours typically required to create sophisticated order-and-pay apps from scratch.

From the restaurant customer’s perspective, the app looks and functions as if it were completely owned and powered by the restaurant. On the back end, the Ordrslip SaaS system powers each transaction, and provides features such as order-ahead and payment capabilities, POS integration (with Clover or Square), order tracking, and, of course, delivery integration.

Ordrslip announced a similar partnership with Postmates (now a part of Uber) in 2020.

Giving restaurants the ability to process transactions in-house has become an increasingly important topic since the start of the industry-wide shift to digital. Doing so lets businesses pay less in commission fees to third-party delivery services. It should be noted, however, that some commission fee is still required on orders that utilize DoorDash or Postmates for the last mile of delivery. Other systems, such as those of Toast and Ritual, offer similar packages. For a restaurant to entirely bypass a commission fee on delivery orders, they would have to conduct delivery via a service like ShiftPixy, which provides drivers in addition to powering restaurants’ digital properties.

Restaurants that do large volumes of takeout orders would benefit from a technology like Ordrslip’s, since a third-party service like DoorDash is not involved in the process. However, said third-party services appear to be getting hip to this idea: just this week, Uber Eats announced it is waiving the commission fee for pickup orders through June 30, 2021. Doubtless the battle over who owns the takeout/pickup order process is just heating up.

Ordrslip licenses its tech to restaurants for a flat $100/month fee and is available to restaurants across the entire U.S. 

Uber Eats Launches Campaign to Support Independent Restaurants

Uber today announced Eat Local, a campaign the company says will support independent restaurants financially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

As part of the Eat Local package, Uber will donate $4.5 million to the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), which will in turn distribute financial assistance to U.S. restaurants facing COVID-19-related challenges. Restaurants must be on the Uber Eats and/or Postmates platforms to be eligible. 

According to the LISC website, the applications process for grants opens on Feb. 16. The grant program will offer to help restaurants meet certain expenses, such as payroll, rent, utilities, outstanding debts to vendors, and upgrading technology systems. 

Restaurants must have been active on Uber Eats or Postmates since Jan. 1, 2021 in order to be eligible for the grant. Businesses must also have less than five locations and not be affiliated with a national brand. (The full list of eligibility requirements is on LISC’s site.)

In keeping with earlier relief efforts from 2020, Uber’s Eat Local package also includes waived and reduced fees for restaurants around restaurant pickup orders and for orders placed via a restaurant’s own website but delivered by Uber Eats. Restaurants can get daily payouts instead of the standard weekly ones, and Uber will also continue matching donations made by customers via the Eats app’s Restaurant Contribution feature.

Uber (and newly acquired Postmates) along with Grubhub and DoorDash first began offering relief packages for restaurants back in March 2020, when shelter-in-place mandates first went into effect in the U.S. Since then, these services have launched various grant programs and assistance efforts, including Grubhub’s Winterization Grant and DoorDash’s ongoing Main Street Strong program.

All of these efforts go some ways towards helping small and independent restaurants, which have been most damaged by the pandemic. What remains unclear is how much grants and relief efforts help when stacked up against the high commission fees third-party delivery service continue to charge these smaller restaurants. That factor remains likely to be a point of heated debate long after the worst parts of the pandemic have subsided.

Uber Lays Off More Than 180 Employees of Postmates

Uber has laid off about 15 percent, or roughly 185 people, from its Postmates division, according to a report this weekend from the New York Times. The layoffs come just a couple months after Uber completed the $2.65 billion acquisition of the rival delivery service.

The NYT noted that the cuts are part of the integration process of Postmates with Uber Eats. On the front, consumer-facing end, Postmates will still function as its own app, separate from Eats. However, it will now share back-end infrastructure with Eats’ existing technologies and operations.  

Postmates founder Bastian Lehmann is among the individuals that made a decision to depart the company. Other executives “will leave with multimillion exit packages,” according to NYT sources, who added that more exists could be possible in the coming months. 

For now, Eats remains Uber’s key money-making business, having overtaken the company’s ride-hailing service last year in terms of revenues. The pandemic, of course, helped the popularity of the Eats Business as more consumers stayed home and ordered delivery and the restaurant drastically shifted focus to off-premises formats in response.

Because of that shift, food delivery is more popular than ever, and Uber faces significant competition from services like DoorDash, which went public in December, and Grubhub, which was recently snapped up by global delivery service Just Eat Takeaway.com.

To remain competitive, Uber has made a number of cuts in recent months to parts of its business. For example, it got rid of its autonomous vehicle division and is spinning off Postmates’ robotics division into a separate entity.

Update: An earlier version of this story said that Postmates founder Bastian Lehmann was laid off. Lehmann has made the decision to depart the company on his own, according to an Uber spokesperson.

Top 3 Tech Trends for QSR Redesigns

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The “next-generation” restaurant format isn’t new, as QSR brands like Dunkin’ and McDonald’s can attest. But the restaurant industry’s sudden and in many ways irrevocable shift to off-premises formats in 2020 certainly increased both the number of restaurants revamping their store formats and the speed at which they are doing so.

Those revamps come in many forms and features: BK’s floating kitchens, Applebee’s adding drive-thru lanes, everyone’s near lack of dining room space, to name a few.

And since everyone from Sonic to Del Taco seems to be announcing some kind of format revamp — physical, virtual, or both — these days, I thought it’d be worthwhile to round the top common denominators up to get a hint at which tactics will likely become widespread across the restaurant biz in the near future.

Herewith, are my top three QSR redesign trends:

More Curbside Pickup Spots

Digital order/payment capabilities are a must-have for restaurants now, and this technology coupled with curbside pickup is something we will see a lot more of in the near future. 

For many restaurants, offering curbside pickup options is cheaper than building out a drive-thru lane and window. Outside of the technology, all a restaurant needs is to dedicate a few parking spots close to the building, some signage, and a staff person to run the orders out. Bigger brands may have the money to retrofit their existing stores with drive-thru, but for many mid-size and smaller restaurants, curbside is a more realistic option when it comes to fulfilling more off-premises orders.

For customers, digitally enhanced curbside pickup is increasingly seen as a cheap, fast alternative to delivery, which is getting more expensive for customers. (More on that in the next section.) 

Curbside tech itself is getting some improvements to make the method faster and more efficient, Panera’s geofenced curbside initiative from 2020 being the obvious example. While efforts like these are the anomaly right now, more chains will adopt them and other curbside tech in the coming months.

Drive-thrus, Cruise-thrus, Chipotlanes

On the other hand, those that can swing the cost of adding a drive-thru should do so. 

Some chains, like Applebee’s, are testing out the drive-thru concept for the first time. Chipotle is another good example of a restaurant chain that never offered the format before and has now shifted its entire strategy to accommodate more “Chipotlanes.” Ditto for Sonic, a restaurant better known for drive-ins than drive-thrus, and Pokeworks forthcoming “cruise-thru.”

Others, like QSRs that have always offered drive-thru, are expanding the format. Literally. Double, and triple drive-thru lanes, with some dedicated solely to mobile orders. are becoming the norm at the KFCs, Dunkin’s, and BKs of the world.

The common denominator of this common denominator is that tech is integrated into most of these drive-thru concepts, whether that’s through accommodating more mobile app orders or uses of artificial intelligence to improve order accuracy and upselling.

Mobile-Only Zones and Dedicated Delivery Areas

As anyone who’s been in a drive-thru line lately knows, restaurants are struggling to fulfill the influx of off-premises orders quickly. Many restaurants are addressing this by dedicating certain drive-thru lanes to mobile orders and for delivery drivers picking up orders. Some, like Dunkin’, have done this for years. Others, like Shake Shack, are new to the concept. Still others, namely Pokeworks, have taken the concept one step further and do not accommodate onsite ordering in the drive-thru lane at all.

Meanwhile, to keep third-party delivery drivers waiting on orders from taking up all the curbside spots, many restaurants are also building dedicated areas for delivery pickups. Del Taco, for example has both dedicated drive-thru lanes and pickup shelves for delivery orders.

None of the redesigns discussed above have been widely deployed yet; we can expect more of that in 2021. At that point, new standards for store designs will start to trickle down from the major brands listed here to mid-sized and smaller ones, further cementing the role of off-premises across the restaurant industry.

Postmates: the Latest Delivery Service to Raise Its Prices Post-Prop 22

After saying prices would remain the same for customers following the successful passing of Proposition 22, Postmates has now raised those same prices as high as $2.50 per order.

Postmates’ about-face follows similar price increases from Uber and DoorDash, according to a report from Eater San Francisco. It’s also a contradictory to the tagline these companies were pitching in the ramp-up to the Nov. 3 election—that Prop. 22 passing would allow them to continue operating in California and that prices for customers would not increase.  

Prop. 22 passed in a 58 to 42 percent vote, which allows gig-economy the aforementioned companies to continue classifying their workers as independent contractors. Translation: Uber et al. do not have to pay worker benefits like healthcare, workers comp, and sick leave.

The delivery companies said that they would offer their own benefits package to workers that include a stipend for healthcare. The recent price hikes appear to be geared towards paying for those benefits. For example, the Postmates website calls it “the California Driver Benefits fee” and says that it “helps us fund the new benefits offered to drivers thanks to the passing of Prop 22.” 

All of this feels pretty inevitable, to be honest. After all, one could hardly expect companies that are now infamous for predatory and dishonest business practices to subsidize workers’ benefits out of their own pockets. It’s just a shame more voters didn’t reach that conclusion before clicking “Yes” on the Prop. 22 measure.

Restaurant Tech ‘Round the Web

Part of the plan President Joe Biden has issued to combat coronavirus includes providing clear, national guidelines for restaurants on how and when they can operate. Clear national guidelines would be developed around the safety of workers as well as things like restaurant capacity restrictions.

Olo partnered with customer feedback tech platform Tattle in order to improve the process of collecting restaurant guest feedback for off-premises orders. Tattle will integrate with the Olo platform to provide restaurant guests with a digital survey they can take after ordering from a restaurant.

Pathogen control tech company UV Angel has partnered with McDonald’s franchisees in Texas and Illinois to equip locations with proprietary ultraviolet light surface and air technology. UV Angel says its tech targets pathogens at the room level (as opposed to at the building level), which the company say is more effective in fighting airborne and surface-borne bacteria, viruses, and fungi.