Postmates, what's the endgame here?

In My Humble Opinion
1

A buddy of mine owns a bar. Over the past few weeks he’s had postmates drivers and regular customers that ordered on postmates stopping in for the order only to be met by a very confused staff that have no idea what they’re talking about.
Some digging showed that postmates has a menu for his restaurant on their website. A menu, but not his menu, or at least not entirely his.
He recently put a big notice on his facebook page stating that his restaurant doesn’t work with postmates/grubhub/doordash or any 3rd party service and that he never game them permission to use their name or menu etc etc etc.

In the comments, someone posted a link to a cease and desist from letter that’s for this, specific issue. That is, it’s specifically to be used for people asking postmates (or one of the other sites) to take their menu down and stop selling food in their name.

When I checked the postmates facebook page, I see a lot of other restaurant owners complaining about the exact same problem, so it’s hardly an isolated incident.

So, is this a scam? Are they just out to collect money/credit cards with the intention of disappearing into the night at some point?

My WAG, is that it’s more a mistake than anything else. A really big, really problematic mistake, but a mistake. Either they have bots/cheap labor crawling the internet for menus which they transcribe and post without realizing there’s more to it than that or maybe it’s an issue where they post a menu from a restaurant that agreed to work with them, but then picked up the wrong address, maybe for a restaurant with a similar/same name.

The last possibility I can think of, and maybe this is the most likely scenario, whoever is running the show is just that absolutely terrible at their job. I saw a lot of complaints from people with this issue on their facebook page, but also plenty of people complaining about all kinds of other problems. Credit cards getting charged multiple times, email issues etc. It seemed to go on and on.

So, poorly run company or outright scam, something else?

2

They are doing this quite deliberately with full knowledge and intent.

They are trying to force restaurants to join or run into headache after headache. Restaurants run on thin margins. It doesn’t take much to sink one.

In particular, customer reviews play an increasingly large part.

Also, in many, many cases there is another restaurant, well kitchen, that is providing the food instead of the victim restaurant. The drivers are supposed to go to that place and get the food and deliver it to the customers who think they are getting the real thing. (Which is why the menus don’t have to agree or anything.)

But some drivers don’t get the message and actually drive to Al’s to pick up food someone ordered from Al’s.

These companies encourage this sham.

Growth demands from investors push this. They need to sign up X% more restaurants, have Y% more deliveries, etc. each quarter. So they work out ways to fudge the numbers. Just list a bunch of places that aren’t actually part of the system. Hope that that drives orders up.

3

Its a protection racket

4

Yikes. Apparently, not a terribly new racket.

2015 article: The Postmates Problem: Why Some Restaurants Are Forced to Fight the Delivery App - Eater

5

Just curious, is it a place that only sells food because they need to for their liquor license?

6

Well, that was an interesting read.

They don’t operate in the same city as me, but so far as I know there’s no requirement to sell food to hold a liquor license around here. However, they are a bar and restaurant. They’re not selling food specifically to be allowed to have a liquor license. The owner was a chef before he bought the place

7

I also did a little googling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ‘legit’ company with so many horrendous reviews and from every angle. Restaurants are complaining, customers are complaining, drivers are complaining. They’ve got 1500 complaints on BBB, complaints on glassdoor, complaints on reddit.

It seems the only reason they’re surviving is due to people not checking reviews before using their service…and why would you, you wouldn’t think there’s a whole lot that could go wrong.

If they’re not there yet, I’d imagine soon enough their reputation will get bad enough that they’ll either close up or Uber Eats will by them and collapse the company just to get rid of it as a competitor.

8

Postmates isn’t a delivery service for the restaurants; they are a pick-up service for diners.

If ABC restaurant offers take-out service, what’s to stop my friends from calling me and asking me to order the chicken parm from ABC, and that they’ll pay me 20% on top to pick it up and deliver it for them? That’s how Postmates got started.

Restaurants that oppose this business model, have refused to take orders from Postmates, or fulfilling their orders when they show up.

9

See what happens when you walk into a sit down restaurant that takes 20 minutes to prepare food and tell them you’re there to pick up an order they know nothing about or don’t make and, as many people are complaining about, doesn’t travel well.
A lot of restaurant owners don’t like it because their food was never meant to travel. They don’t want a steak and fries sitting in someone’s back seat with a dog (real customer complaint) for an hour.
The thing is, if they went about this the ‘right’ way, there wouldn’t be an issue. Part of the problem is that they’re are effectively buying food (or other merchandise) from a business and reselling it to a customer. Because they’re a pick up service, not a delivery service, they’ve wiggled out of dealing with health codes. Because they technically have nothing to do with the restaurant, when your cold, incorrect order shows up, they refuse responsibility and tell you to take it up with the restaurant. The customers, having no idea how this system is set up leave bad reviews for the restaurant when, in reality, it’s not their fault.

Also, if they’re selling food that is, in turn, being resold, that would technically make them a wholesaler. It’s illegal to wholesale meat without a USDA stamp on it, that could get them in a whole huge load of trouble. The USDA coming down on you can mean closing up your business.

ETA, and while I understand that they use the ‘we’re a pick up service, not a delivery service’ line to defend themselves against these complaints, and while I don’t think there’s a whole big difference, the front page of the website is all we deliver this, we deliver that etc. The title/tab in my browser even says Postmates.com Food Delivery anywhere.

10

Sorry one more thing. So, if you go to ABC restaurant, grab some chicken parm and deliver it to your friends 3 hours later, then what? Who should your friends complain to if it’s cold? Who should your friends blame when they really don’t want it anymore? Should your friends have to get their money back from the restaurant or from you? Who should your friends blame if they get sick?
This is also part of the problem. In all these cases, cases that are very clearly the driver’s fault, they’re being told to pound sand. You got your food, it’s not our problem that it’s cold.

11

I’ve been using Door Dash for several years (and one of my neighbors is a driver so I know they’re fairly legit), and I’ve had a few issues, but out of the dozens of orders, it’s a tiny percentage and Door Dash has always corrected whatever issue and sometimes given me credit over and above a refund.

I tried Post Mates once, and they screwed up. Never got my food and had to pull teeth to get a refund. I tried them once more several months later, and the same thing happened. Fool me twice…well, you know. I’ll never use them again.

I find Door Dash, while an extra expense, is efficient and convenient.

12

I wonder if Martha Stewart (Post Mates spokesperson) is aware of this issue?

13

Well she is a felon, so wouldn’t surprise me.