In-N-Out Files Lawsuit Against Food Delivery Startup DoorDash(techcrunch.com) |
In-N-Out Files Lawsuit Against Food Delivery Startup DoorDash(techcrunch.com) |
http://ny.eater.com/2015/11/6/9678206/door-dash-delivery-nyc
> But not all restaurants on DoorDash know that they're listed. Tommy Ferrick, owner of Delilah's Steaks in Greenpoint, says he rejected an offer from a DoorDash salesperson months ago due to a 20 to 25 percent commission fee. More than 50 percent of his cheesesteak business is from delivery, and he's already paying GrubHub a commission that ends up being three times higher than his rent every month. He's currently trying to get more people to just order directly through the restaurant. But a few weeks ago, his business started getting pick-up orders from DoorDash. He looked on the site and was shocked to see the Delilah's Steaks logo and full menu listed as an available restaurant, with significant price markups. A cheesesteak costs $11 in the shop, for example, but DoorDash charged $16.95 for it. "I was livid," says Ferrick, who worries about quality control for deliveries he doesn't know about.
Doughnut Plant seems meh about it:
> Still, DoorDash lists three of four Doughnut Plants shops on the site without the company's permission — but PostMates, Doughnut Plant's preferred delivery merchant, did reach out before posting the menu, according to the bakery's creative director Jeff Magness. The Doughnut Plant logo DoorDash posts is also incomplete, Magness adds. "I don't like [that] it makes it look like we are working with them," he writes in an email. "That said, we haven't received complaints from customers."
From a customer perspective, this practice feels very disingenuous. The 5.95 should be labeled as part of a delivery fee.
If somehow DoorDash was the first link a user visited after searching for "donut plant", they would need information to decide whether to visit the restaurant or to order online.
The transparent thing to do is to list the 5.95 markup as DoorDash-imposed. That way the user can easily see their choice
If you go to Walmart, you don't expect the price labels to say "$0.50 Kellogg bulk unit cost, $0.80 retail storage fee"; you just expect "$1.30", and the store's costs are their own concern.
It would certainly be a nice thing to do, but we generally don't expect retailers to facilitate you buying from their supplier.
On the other hand, retailers also probably have explicit permission from vendors to resell the good, which DoorDash doesn't.
Yes it is. While possible markups are mentioned somewhere their site, we didn't know about it until months after we had been regularly ordering from doordash.
Since then we only order if absolutely necessary, and prefer to pick up ourselves or use the restaurant delivery itself.
Why using so many times the word delicious? Moreover, that's not really the scope of the article.
Is this just lazy reporting or is it an effect of the leaking of corporate speech into everyday language? Asked differently: Have we become so used to the marketing jargon that even reporters start picking it up in their articles?
The details will determine who is right -- hence the lawsuit.
It's made getting delivery food here SO much better, as it's many smaller family owned stores that now get massive business if they have better food
It's crazy how popular they've become; just about everybody I know uses Menulog and Eat Now to order food, and if your restaurant isn't on it, we'll probably never know about you.
In-n-out gets exposed to liabilities and bad pr. No brainer.
Funny enough by suing DoorDash actually gets bad PR which to them is still good PR. A lot more people will know about DoorDash than before. Pretty naughty to agree to stop then renege on it, then disregard all attempts there after. Almost as if it was deliberate...
But getting a $5 burger in your mouth in 45 minutes with a $3 delivery fee is the boring part. The larger context of all this is how companies use terminology these days.
Per DoorDash marketing:
Through the DoorDash marketplace, people can purchase goods from local merchants and have them delivered in less than 45 minutes - thanks to our revolutionary logistics technology.
Per DoorDash TOS:
THE COMPANY DOES NOT PROVIDE LOGISTICS OR COURIER SERVICES, AND THE COMPANY IS NOT A LOGISTICS CARRIER. IT IS UP TO THE THIRD PARTY COURIER OR LOGISTICS PROVIDER, COURIER OR VEHICLE OPERATOR TO OFFER COURIER SERVICES WHICH MAY BE SCHEDULED THROUGH USE OF THE SOFTWARE OR SERVICE. THE COMPANY OFFERS INFORMATION AND A METHOD TO OBTAIN SUCH THIRD PARTY COURIER SERVICES, BUT DOES NOT AND DOES NOT INTEND TO PROVIDE COURIER SERVICES OR ACT IN ANY WAY AS A COURIER, AND HAS NO RESPONSIBILITY OR LIABILITY FOR ANY COURIER OTHER THAN STATED HEREIN SERVICES PROVIDED TO YOU BY SUCH THIRD PARTIES.
Per Postmates marketing:
Postmates' revolutionary urban logistics & on-demand delivery platform connects customers with local couriers, who purchase and deliver goods from any restaurant or store in a city.
Per Postmates TOS:
THE COMPANY DOES NOT PROVIDE LOGISTICS OR COURIER SERVICES, AND THE COMPANY IS NOT A LOGISTICS CARRIER. IT IS UP TO THE THIRD PARTY COURIER OR LOGISTICS PROVIDER, COURIER OR VEHICLE OPERATOR (COLLECTIVELY, THE “POSTMATE”) TO OFFER COURIER SERVICES WHICH MAY BE SCHEDULED THROUGH USE OF THE SOFTWARE OR SERVICE. THE COMPANY OFFERS INFORMATION AND A METHOD TO OBTAIN SUCH THIRD PARTY COURIER SERVICES, BUT DOES NOT AND DOES NOT INTEND TO PROVIDE COURIER SERVICES OR ACT IN ANY WAY AS A COURIER, AND HAS NO RESPONSIBILITY OR LIABILITY FOR ANY COURIER.
And of course the grand daddy of them all:
By seamlessly connecting riders to drivers through our apps, we make cities more accessible, opening up more possibilities for riders and more business for drivers.
And per Uber TOS:
The Services constitute a technology platform that enables users of Uber's mobile applications or websites provided as part of the Services (each, an "Application") to arrange and schedule transportation and/or logistics services with third party providers of such services, including independent third party transportation providers and third party logistics providers under agreement with Uber or certain of Uber's affiliates ("Third Party Providers"). YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT UBER DOES NOT PROVIDE TRANSPORTATION OR LOGISTICS SERVICES OR FUNCTION AS A TRANSPORTATION CARRIER.
A lot of aerobatics to contort and redefine words so that one gets the branding benefit of the word's previous meaning but suffer none of word's consequences.
Is this a better or worse turn than the naughtiness of YouTube hypergrowth days shielded by DMCA safe harbor? Or how Facebook drags their feet dealing with users that steal content because it allows them to juice up their view counts?
1. Homejoy
2. Theranos
3. Doordash
4. DraftKings/FanDuel
5. Fab
6. Evernote
7. ...
I completely understand. I used DoorDash exactly once to order from a local Chinese restaurant. The food was delivered by a dude who looked disinterested, and the containers were crushed and leaking lots of brown sauce into the plastic bag. It wasn't a great experience. Whose fault was it? I dunno. But I haven't ordered from DoorDash or that Chinese restaurant since.
Remember the case of Cristal (champagne) vs. the rappers from 2006? Similar idea - http://www.economist.com/node/6905921
The fries at In-N-Out is an interesting paradox. Without sauce they taste almost like nothing; the blandest fast food fries I've ever eaten. With sauce? It's okay. A bit too soggy for my liking but okay.
Hence why they should not be allowed to use In-n-Out's logo or otherwise imply there's some sort of partnership.
Since DoorDash is handing the food over to the customer, after a delay that will likely exceed 20 minutes, I can see In-N-Out's point here.
The sick people, clearly. Just like the dead people who went to Jack in the Box. Exactly what kind of restitution are you proposing here? A pimped out grave?
I'm curious as to how does one do the dance of saying you coordinate logistics but are not a logistics service provider when the people showing up are wearing your logo, paid by you, and use your app for order information, confirmation, and directions.
Their fries are made fresh on site, but they do tend to need salt.
I've used DoorDash before but not for In-N-Out...I wonder how many Stanfordians have done so, given that DoorDash is a product of Stanford graduates and of the incredibly annoying fact that In-N-Out is in the 2 nearby localities (Redwood City and Mountain View), but not Palo Alto or Menlo Park...Anyone who has been around the area know why In-N-Out hasn't managed to get a place near Stanford? This is the first California city I've lived in without its own In-N-Out. I would definitely use DoorDash for In-N-Out delivery.
On the topic I think the quality of food delivered is going to hurt the delivery businesses. Fries are the perfect example where you cannot stick them in a bag and delivery them 30 minutes later and have anything but a soggy mess.
I agree with others that these businesses are not going to scale but may survive in very small places where higher end food can be delivered and the fee is a smaller percentage of the total food bill. Delivering cheap fast food isn't a good business model.
I wouldn't be so sure.
That's fine; I mostly meant out of the fast food places you're supposed to go to in CA I preferred them. As far as INO's fries are concerned I have yet to find a fast food fry that I thought was worse than INO's :)
That's the biggest reason I see. In your case, Kellogg is "allowing" Walmart to resell its products.
(Per sibling, a more relevant difference would be Walmart's having permission, but I'm not sure that's relevant to the consumer expectation; "telling you how cheap this stuff is from the source" is the kind of "facilitating you getting it cheaper" that we don't expect retailers to do.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-N-Out_Burger#Bible_verses
I read the linked Wikipedia page, but I still can't work out what the point is. Is that some form of subliminal missionary tactic? Sure the Snyder family were Christian, but why print bible citations on take-away wrappers? What's the context? What's the so-called "take-away"?
There is a first sale doctrine in Trademark, but it might not (probably?) won't apply here. First, courts have found that not all reselling falls under first sale if the products aren't exactly the same. Here, by delivering they are serving different food because it gets cold and soggy. They could also argue that In N Out doesn't provide delivery service and this place is selling that service using In N Outs trademark.
The damage to In N Out is brand devaluation. People might think that In N Out sucks.
A clear example is: You can resell macbooks. You can buy them, sell them, even repair them.
But you can't set up a fake Apple Store that looks like a regular one.
Doordash is argue they are doing the former, and In N out will say the latter.
A modified menu would be tougher. You can argue that there may be copyright infringement, and that may be valid to a limited extent, but DoorDash could put up a version of the menu that wasn't copyrighted, as its heart, menus are factual arrangements, and facts are not original creative works subject to copyright (though a specific arrangement of those facts may be). In N Out could also claim that there's trademark infringement if DoorDash is using trademarked food names, but I think it'd be a harder argument to win, since DoorDash can argue it's a nominative use.
IANAL.
Only way to avoid being sued into bankruptcy after you've pissed off someone big enough is for your company to be doing dozens of millions each year at minimum, and thus, have the resources to tolerate the associated legal fees. If you make someone mad before this happens, expect to be forced to shut down.
Note that many of the verses cited are the more vanilla Christian selections. Probably the most objectionable one (especially to non-Christian believers) is John 4:16 ("no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me"), but that one is not printed on anything a customer would see.