Skipping the delivery apps:

is the convenience of third-party delivery more trouble than it’s worth?

BY ELIZABETH CHORNEY-BOOTH

There is no current restaurant topic more hotly debated by customers, restaurateurs, and fair labour advocates than the existence of third-party delivery apps like Skip the Dishes, DoorDash, and Uber Eats.

Customers love the ease of clicking a button to get just about whatever they want delivered to their door, but also balk at the price and lack of customer service. Restaurants like not having to deal with setting up their own delivery systems but have to take a hit on profits and quality control. And drivers appreciate the ability to pick up casual work, but don’t always feel like the working conditions are optimal. Delivery apps may promise a simple way to get the food to the people, but they also create some complicated issues.

Pre-2020, there were some grumbles about the apps taking a bigger share of the profits than restaurants were comfortable with, but those criticisms were easy to ignore. However, once the pandemic hit and dining in a restaurant was no longer an option, we collectively logged on to the apps to order everything from high-end prix fixe dinners to bowls of ramen and pho, thinking it was the best way to keep our most beloved restaurants alive. Even as restaurants fully reopened and most of us started to feel comfortable going out in public again, those two years of eating at home fortified the demand for instant culinary gratification.

But even in the early days of the pandemic, backlash against delivery apps started to mount. Restaurants urged customers to pick up their food themselves, revealing the apps tend to charge as much as 30 percent on each bill, much more than a typical restaurant profit margin, especially when alcohol isn’t part of the equation. Since then, many restaurants have backed off the apps altogether — a quick browse through choices in Calgary and Edmonton shows a dwindling number of upscale restaurants and a higher concentration of chains, fast food, and ghost kitchens, which are businesses that only trade on the delivery apps, with no public-facing location for dine-in or even self-pickup.

While skipping delivery altogether works for some categories of restaurants, others do need a delivery option to maintain their customer base. Bona Roma, an old school pizza and pasta joint in Calgary, was doing just fine without a dedicated delivery driver since it first opened in 1983, but like everyone else, it jumped onto the delivery apps at the start of the pandemic. Bona Roma’s Colby Graham says that requests for delivery jumped when the pandemic started but the family-owned restaurant was struggling with having to fork 25 percent of its sales to its app delivery partners. Beyond that, the system of customers having to tip in advance meant third-party drivers often wouldn’t show up in a timely fashion for orders with smaller tips or even good tips on smaller orders, leaving food to linger and lose its integrity before it could reach customers. With both the restaurant’s reputation and bottom line at stake, Bona Roma had to make a change.

“The driver is able to see the tip before they determine if they want to take that order and if the tip is too small, they pass it over,” Graham says. “It became a neverending circle of drivers saying they didn’t want the order so we’d have food sitting on the oven for up to 45 minutes and at a certain point I had to remake it. Then you’d have some drivers who were nice and others who were angry if the food wasn’t ready when they walked through the door. You never knew what you were getting.”

For Bona Roma, the solution was relatively simple — knowing that they’d never have enough orders to keep a full-time delivery driver on staff, delivery duties are given to an existing staff member already working in the restaurant who can step out to deliver an order, usually a cook or even Graham himself. Through this system Bona Roma is able to offer free delivery while also retaining its profits and control over how its food is presented to the customer.

Not every business can operate this way and, obviously, some restaurants are still opting to play ball with the delivery apps. Alli Said, the chef and co-owner of Mikey’s on 12th and Mikey’s Taco Shop, in Calgary says that there is still value in offering third-party delivery if customers can accept paying a premium for the convenience and roll with inconsistencies in customer service. In addition to the delivery charge and driver tip administrated by the apps, Mikey’s needs to charge customers a few dollars more per menu item to offset the percentage paid to the delivery companies.

“The problem is that they take such a high percentage off the sales, so we have to raise our prices,” Said says. “Three tacos for 10 or 11 dollars become 12 or 13 dollars to even out the price. But people pay for it. Especially on days when the weather is bad, people will pay $5 extra to not have to go out. Raising the price is the only way to make it affordable, otherwise we couldn’t do it.”

From a customer point of view, these apps wouldn’t exist if people weren’t using them — though it’s become taboo to admit as much in foodie circles. The backlash against the apps has created a divide amongst the public: many restaurant lovers advocate for ditching them as part of the “support local” movement, while others hold on to them for convenience, arguing they also provide extra revenue streams for both restaurants and drivers. It’s not all just about convenience. Easy delivery is an important option for customers who may have physical barriers or disabilities preventing them from picking up take-out, those who don’t own cars, and anyone who may be ordering while drinking and unable to drive.

Dawn Johnston, a University of Calgary professor who has taught courses in food culture and also occasionally uses Skip the Dishes, says that people shouldn’t feel guilty about using the delivery apps. In her experience as a customer, she’s found the delivery websites can even lead customers towards new restaurants to pick up from app-free for future orders.

“I used the pandemic as a chance to use the apps to order from restaurants that I had no familiarity with,” Johnston says. “I found a Chinese restaurant that I loved far more than any of the other ones I’d been eating at. I tried four different Indian restaurants, all of which were familyowned and operated that I’ve since gone to in-person after trying them on Skip the Dishes.”

There’s no doubt that delivery apps can be better — and some start-ups around the U.S. and Canada are starting to emerge to offer more equitable delivery options for both restaurants and drivers, but so far, none have had the power to compete with the bigger players. For now, Johnston says that it’s important to recognize that the delivery apps do play an important role. A lot of restaurants, customers, and drivers would be left in the lurch if they suddenly disappeared, but we should collectively recognize the problems they pose and strive for better solutions.

As consumers and community members, we should try to pick up food or choose restaurants with their own delivery systems when we can, but also shouldn’t beat ourselves up for wanting a bag of curry or chicken wings to show up on the doorstep at the end of a long week. The trick is to recognize how these apps work, use them in moderation, and accept the higher pricing and potential customer service downfalls.

“There are many benefits to these apps,” Johnston says. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t problematize and find ways to offset them and demand better working conditions for the people working for the apps, and better partnerships for the restaurants.”

Cookbook author and regular contributor to CBC Radio, Elizabeth is a Calgary-based freelance writer, who has been writing about music and food, and just about everything else for her entire adult life.