Restaurants Not Happy with Uber Eats and Other Food Delivery Apps

In an interview with CTV News, chef Mollie J Jacques from Toronto Pizza has shared her thoughts on why most restaurants are not happy with popular delivery apps like Uber Eats, Foodora, and Skip the Dishes, among others. She recalled all those times when the drivers failed to show and the restaurant’s staff had to deliver the orders themselves.

“At least once or twice a week, we would have to walk orders over to people, drive orders over to people,” Jacques said. “We’ve had customers that have walked down themselves”. She continued that in her experience, it’s common to spend more than an hour on a weekend on the phone with Uber Eats customer service to rectify one problem or another.

“Every week, there’s a new company walking in, trying to get on this bandwagon,” Jacques said.

“To me, a lot of these apps have done so much damage, but there’s no backing out of it now. They all sound like a great idea walking in the door. But when you look at the bottom line, they aren’t.”

Jacques recalls watching some delivery drivers put pizza boxes vertically into bags or dashing in and grabbing the wrong order, including another customer’s doggy bag filled with leftovers.

Meanwhile, Uber Eats’ Canadian head Dan Park says his company is constantly learning how to improve the experience for customers, drivers and restaurants, and scaling up things like customer support to do so. Restaurants that do a good job working with drivers tend to be more successful with delivery, he added.

Uber Eats charges restaurants a one-time fee between $350 and $500, depending on how many extras they want, such as photography.