https://seattle.eater.com/2024/2/21/24079162/tony-delivers-seattle-delivery-app-fees-downtown
Tony Illes was working as an Uber Eats delivery person when an ordinance passed last year by the Seattle City Council came into effect in mid-January. The new rule required app companies to pay workers like Illes a minimum wage based on the miles they travel and the minutes they spend on the job. The apps say that this amounts to around $26 an hour, and both Uber Eats and DoorDash responded by adding $5 fees to every order (even when the customer is outside Seattle city limits) while calling for the law to be repealed. According to a recent DoorDash blog post, the ordinance has resulted in an “unprecedented drop in order volume,” a drop that Illes felt personally. He told Geekwire that “demand is dead” and told local TV station KIRO 7, “I didn’t get an order for like six hours and I was done.”
So Illes had an idea: Who needs these apps, anyway? He printed up signs with QR codes directing people to a bare-bones website with his phone number, promising that he would deliver food by bike in Uptown, South Lake Union, Belltown, and a chunk of the downtown core for $5 a pop from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. daily. All you had to do was order the food and send him the screenshot. He called himself “Tony Delivers.”
I can honestly say I’ve never used one. I looked at the prices, realised they were all jacked up before the delivery fees were added, and then just got it myself.
My local Chinese takeaway employs their own guy. I really don’t know why we had to farm this problem out to silicon valley shysters.
Yeah me neither.
Slower. More expensive. Exploitative.
Nah.
My dad has been that guy! We sure ate a lottt of Silver Wok during that time 😋
This is how it worked when I drove pizza in high school and college. We were directly employed by the restaurant and got minimum wage plus tips. When GrubHub first started it was through that system. Eventually it expanded so that our drivers would take order for a few different GH restaurants, and then they started pushing the independent contractor thing.