NOT DELIVERING FEATURE
WWW.BENDSOURCE.COM / FEBRUARY 03, 2022 / BEND’S INDEPENDENT VOICE
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Jack Harvel
With indoor dining back, restaurants grapple with delivery apps and their costly policies By Jack Harvel
Sierra Phillips has been battling with delivery apps since opening Bo's Falafel Bar.
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t the start of the pandemic, restaurants had to find new ways to serve customers without traditional indoor dining. Food service pivoted with outdoor seating, more carryout options and delivery. Now, after two tumultuous years, some restaurants and food carts are less than enthused to be a part of third-party delivery apps’ platforms. In October 2019, just months before the pandemic pushed restaurants to rely on delivery, Grubhub launched a new pilot
program to add unpartnered restaurants without their knowledge or consent. Previously the service only hosted restaurants that agreed to work with them. Grubhub told Eater that the program was adopted to compete with apps like DoorDash, Postmates and Uber Eats, which already used unpartnered restaurants on their platforms. “We’ve used them, at times, and we had such terrible experiences using them that we gave up and just decided we didn’t want to be enrolled anymore,” said Sierra Phillips,
owner of Bo’s Falafel Bar. “But it didn’t matter; we would still be displayed. And so people will place orders, and then they’ll show up here, we get all the ire of the customers.” Phillips said it took a letter peppered with legal threats informed by her time working as a lawyer to get her restaurant off Grubhub, but at the time this article went to print it was still listed on Uber Eats and Postmates. “I definitely opted out on the business portal, I unchecked us and did all that. We
showed up for months after that, and I reached out and it took several escalating contacts with them of, ‘basically I’m going to sue you if you don’t stop doing this,’” Philips said. “It’s kind of insane that they do that on multiple platforms. There’s no one checking on them. There’s no one you can call.” When restaurants do call, they say navigating the customer service process is time-consuming and rarely gets results. “I try to call the customer service. I talk
