If you regularly order carryout from a local restaurant, considering ordering from them directly through their website or over the phone as opposed to using DoorDash, GrubHub, Uber Eats, and the like. These companies can charge 30% to the business for orders that come through their platform even if the customer is coming to pick it up. Restaurant margins are tight to begin with, please help them keep more of their money. Using these companies for DELIVERY provides a net tangible benefit to the restaurant and the delivery drivers, but using them for carryout provides no real benefit to the business and costs them quite a bit.
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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I’d like to welcome you back. I am Jaron Rice, aka Ronny Ruckus, the founder and CEO of Magothy Payments, Maryland’s highest-rated merchant services provider. I want to take a minute on this COVID-19 update and tell you why you should not use GrubHub or DoorDash when you’re ordering from your favorite local restaurant.
The reason is simple: these companies charge an arm and a leg. We visit a Korean fusion place. They have amazing bulgogi and bibimbap, and we order from there roughly once a week. It’s called Red Tigers in Pasadena, MD. I believe it’s DoorDash that they’re using.
Normally when we do carryout orders, I go to the restaurant. I stand in line. They make my bowl. I pay, and I leave. Sometimes there’s a bit of a line because they’re fulfilling DoorDash orders for the drivers to come and pick up or for other people to come and pick up. This last Friday before I left the office, I placed an order so it would be ready when I got there.
When I walked in, they recognized me. They know that I’m a regular. She said, “Oh, you’re a regular.” I said, “Yeah, I placed the order already.” She looked at it, and she literally looked at me the way that I’d imagine my wife looked at me if I told her I was in love with another woman. She looked so betrayed that I’d ordered on DoorDash. She said, “No, why did you order? You can call us. You can use our website. We’ll place the order. We’ll have everything ready.” She said, “They charge us 30% to process orders through them.”
Thirty percent, right? We’re going to use a round number on a $30 order for my wife and I to make two bowls. DoorDash got $9 out of that just for using their mobile app. I picked it up. They didn’t send a driver. They didn’t do any of that. It was literally using their platform to place the order.
If you care about small businesses, you should absolutely order from them directly when you have that opportunity. Now I understand there are certain cases if they don’t offer delivery themselves and you want it delivered. If they don’t have a website or a way for you to place an order directly with them, then DoorDash, GrubHub, places like that, are the only option that you have. But if you can do it outside of those organizations and go directly with the small business, more of that is going to the actual business because it’s literally killing them. Their margins in the restaurant industry are small as it is. Using that type of service really is only hurting them.
I’m begging you. Please, please, please place your orders with your local carryout place instead of using one of those big software platforms.
I hope everybody is staying safe. I hope that’s some valuable information and we’ll catch you in the next one.
