Third-party delivery services are under fire after listing restaurants on their platforms with which they did not legally cooperate. Toni Carr, owner of Strange Brew, weighs in.
Video transcription
JULIE HYMAN: Well, this year, of course, we talked a lot about the increase in food delivery services. Of course, DoorDash is well known. Uber Eats has had a lot of success. But what did that mean for restaurant owners? Let’s talk to one of them now.
Toni Carr is the co-owner of Strange Brew, a coffee shop in suburban Indianapolis. And Toni, I saw a tweet you sent yesterday. I believe this was where you said that you are not a partner of Uber Eats, but at Uber Eats. And this is a phenomenon that we have talked about a bit in the program, and for which the food delivery services sometimes came under fire. So describe to us what exactly is going on here.
TONI CARR: Well, basically, a few months ago, we started bringing Uber drivers into our store to pick up orders that we obviously did not have. And we looked at their site and saw that we were listed. Therefore, we immediately contacted them and asked to be picked up. We were not photographed. It’s been a few months. We send a message to them, send it by email, fill out their online forms at least once a week, and nothing is done.
So our managers come in, you know, and of course my employees try to handle it. They do not understand what is happening. There is no order because of course we do not have a partnership with Uber Eats. Each time the driver then tries to place the order, the card will refuse. And then we have an unhappy customer on the other side who is unhappy with us and thinks we have participated in this in some way.
– So Toni, Uber and the Uber team got no response. Am I right?
TONI CARR: We get – it seems like a bot reaction because they keep doing the same thing over and over. It’s like, well, fill out this online form or give us the phone number associated with your account, which of course does not exist because we do not have an account with them. So it’s just over and over again the same thing, and nothing is actually solved.
– How about you – just because of Uber Eats and Uber Mobile, because they do not actually act, it hurts your business. I imagine you enter these drivers into your restaurant just because we continue with COVID. If we were not in COVID, you would have had protectors in there, you would have people. And now you’ve got these drivers in there, which’s actually clogging up your restaurant.
TONI CARR: Yes, absolutely. And you know, since we decided, we kind of arranged our restaurants. We have this small area for pickup orders. And then they clog this delivery area for about ten minutes while my employees might do something else. This tends to always happen during a rush. It takes 10 to 15 minutes of our time. And our other customers waiting there, trying to pick up their orders or place their orders, suffer for it.
JULIE HYMAN: Toni, by the way, we should mention that we reached out to Uber for comment on what’s going on. We have not heard of them yet. Why did you decide not to work with Uber? And I understand that you are not cooperating with some of the other food delivery services either. And that, of course, is a decision many restaurant and cafe owners face during this time, especially if their physical locations are closed in some cases. Why did you decide not to work with them?
TONI CARR: Well, they take a large percentage from the top right. And if you have a food service, there is no big deal to start with. We also have our own delivery. This is over a smaller area because if you have coffee, you want it fresh and hot. That is why we do our own delivery to make sure that we can control the quality of what is going to be forwarded.
– We just thought about it and talked about why Uber wants to do it. Do you think Uber only waits for small businesses like yourself until you finally give in and accept your fees?
TONI CARR: I definitely think that’s what’s happening, because otherwise we’re dealing with this big problem. But if we would just accept it and cooperate with them, then the troublesome side of it would disappear. You know, we’ll get these orders and put them out. But instead, we have to deal with the problems a few times a week of looking like we’ve worked with Uber Eats but do not actually have a partnership.
– Would you ever give in to Uber Eats?
TONI CARR: No.
JULIE HYMAN: Good. Toni Carr, short and sweet answer to that one. Strange Brew co-owner. Not going to work with Uber Eats. We will see if we get any response from the company, and we will update our viewers and also update you, Toni, when we hear about it. But thank you so much for joining us. It’s great to get a real world example of something we’ve talked and heard about before. Thank you.
TONI CARR: Thank you very much.