Ordering food through apps like Uber Eats or Volt has become the norm in the pandemic. Corporations are preying on this situation and taking restaurateurs up to 37 percent. utarg, they also exploit couriers. - This applies to everyone. We had to raise prices, " a restaurateur from Warsaw tells us.
Restaurants have been closed for more than a month. On October 23, the government closed them for the night, without warning the restaurateurs. Only takeaway and delivery were allowed. It's better than nothing, but far from enough for entrepreneurs. For someone who is not in this business, this may seem like a small difference. The diner can still cook, and customers can order. but what about transportation? Most restaurants do not have their own suppliers. All this is due to the deterioration of the economy, among other things. In connection with the quarantine, the question of work is acute,and many move to the online sphere, knowing that you can earn additional income, as deltamarket reviews does.
Have they helped solve the industry's problems? Not necessarily. I'm sure many of our readers have ordered food this way in recent weeks. It seems innocent, it can be a quick way to support a place we like. Unfortunately, we must remember that if we spent 100 zlotys in this way, then even more than 30 went to corporations from the Netherlands, Spain or California. And our favorite place is still fighting for its life.
Up to 37%. commission
"until now, the use of these platforms has been the will of the restaurateur. Even if the situation in this market was not the best for gastronomy, it was possible to do without it, " says Jan zygmuntovsky, an economist at the Kozminsky Academy and co-founder of the cooperative platform coop tech hub (we will mention it later).
"Today, with the limitations, there is little choice," continues Zygmuntowskie. "the organization of delivery is very complex, requires additional work, and the results do not come quickly, because a large group of people are already included in popular restaurant aggregators, because it is the fastest. Therefore, now restaurants are forced to use these sites. and now they have de facto divided the market among themselves and impose such business conditions that at least look like a price collusion."
As restaurants begin to rely on the delivery date, the owners of delivery platforms neighbors that you are in a comfortable position. they can dictate terms and charge huge fees.
Zygmuntowskie: "these commissions are different. the smallest are at 20%, the largest reach 37%. The Level of customer Manipulation also varies. very often, the shipping cost that we see in the app is not the actual shipping cost. The client sees 6 zlotys, but some of these 6 zlotys go to the platform, and some go to the courier. And the rest of the courier's salary is included in the commission. That's why the effective commission can be so high, because the Restaurateur covers part of the delivery."
"The lesser evil”
This is the second time restaurants have faced this barrier. It was the same in the spring. At that time, too, the closure was announced with little advance notice, and besides, the situation was completely new. Spring was even worse.
- Everything has changed a little due to the spring lockdown. back then, you couldn't agree on anything-everyone had about the same commission," katarzyna zbikowska from warsaw's pacific bar tells oko.press. "Now the platforms have started to compete with each other. in the spring, on average, it was about 30%, now it is more like 25%. but that doesn't give us any comfort, because it doesn't mean that these offers are great right now. you can, for example, have no commission for three months, but you need to sign a contract for a year. If you break it, you will be punished."
Restaurateurs are faced with a dilemma: more orders on different platforms or do one, which can give, for example, a smaller commission. And it's not like the more you sell, the more you earn.
Zbikowska: "now we have decided to cooperate with Volt, who offered us the lowest commission, but this is the lesser evil. this applies to everyone. we had to raise prices. And the deal is exclusive, we can't work with anyone else. As a result, we have three to four times fewer deliveries than when we offered deliveries on all platforms.
And yet he pays more-with a commission of 35 percent..as at Uber Eats, it doesn't pay off at all. The restaurant's margin is not 60%. You need to add VAT, income tax, employee expenses, grocery purchases. You can have a big margin at a pizzeria, McDonald's, or a high-end, luxury location rather than a regular restaurant."
The Amendment Sandberg
The problem with dramatically high commissions of food delivery apps wants to collapse the club of the left.
"Today, many people order pizza to support the local pizzeria, to help it survive. meanwhile, most of the amount we see on the account goes not to the pizzeria, but to corporate accounts. in this market, it is clearly visible how often the biggest enemy of small entrepreneurs is big business, " deputy adrian zandberg said in the sejm on wednesday, november 18. "Let me remind you that the americans themselves introduce such rules at home, at the local level. maybe this will give you the courage that the government has been clearly lacking in its relations with the us embassy lately, " he continued.
The left, working on the so-called" shield 6.0", another anti-crisis law, proposed an amendment limiting the size of permissible commissions.
Indeed, in some places in the states, it was possible to introduce rules limiting commissions. in new york,up to 20 percent. in los angeles,up to 15 percent.
The amendment failed in the sejm. The bill is now in the Senate. adrian zandberg tells us that he and the ppp senator intend to re-introduce it. the meeting continues.
Your own delivery? "Logistics is incomprehensible”
The problem is not only in the commission. The platforms operate primarily in their own interests and, from the point of view of the catering industry, set traps at every turn during the closure of the industry.
Zbikowska: "platform not withdraw money every day. Usually once or twice a week. Some companies pay once every two weeks. This is a six-month capital freeze. And this sometimes means that there is nothing to pay for weeks or buy goods."
Such a strong position of shipping companies is due to the fact that the current situation is sudden and new. It is very difficult to organize transport for yourself, for most it is not achievable at all.
"Some restaurants are trying to organize their own delivery. We do this only on weekends, with large orders" - tells us zbikowska. "Logistics it is impossible to understand, because I call people out Vilanova and zoliborz. We'll have to hire a dozen couriers, and it won't pay off. That's why we encourage personal collections, and it works-people go for a walk and take their order on the way. From our point of view, this is the best, but for obvious reasons, few people can do it, especially on weekdays."
Precariat of couriers
Work in which the application is the boss is also not among the most stable. this is how couriers work. Pyszne.pl this is not a polish company at all, it is based in the european tax haven-the netherlands. glovo started in 2015 as a spanish startup, volt was founded a year earlier in finland. uber eats is part of uber california. it may seem like a nice company that just helps deliver food. meanwhile, it is an international giant. uber eats is so big that it can afford to become the title sponsor of the french football league. Fans of French football from this year are not watching Ligue 1, but Ligue 1 Uber Eats. California owners spend millions on soccer, and couriers in Poland have to fight for every penny.
Zygmuntowskie: "couriers have no fixed amount that they earn. It all depends on what orders they get, how far they have to go, how quickly someone picks up the order, how quickly they take the next order. From the average order you get a few zlotys, you can make them in an hour a few, so most likely you will get something of this in the area of the minimum wage. And everything happens under garbage contracts, so this is an extremely fragile occupation. It's not for nothing that most platform couriers call them "partners," but they're just employees-they're immigrants."
The cooperative platform
Zygmuntowska together with a group of friends-experts from the field of Economics and technology decided to build a platform to help gastronomy. This should be fair and treat all participants in the transaction subjectively.
"We are creating a cooperative technology center in Warsaw, which we call Coop tech hubu. We want to provide technology and skilled support to institutions, employees, and local governments that want to use anti-capitalist cooperative solutions. for example, in september we learned that zentrale-the warsaw courier cooperative-had suspended its activities. we want to help them get back on their feet. We provide them with technical assistance.
The margin of our cooperative platform is 10%. Therefore, we want to simultaneously pay couriers who are also co-owners with dignity; and have much more competitive conditions for restaurateurs. And couriers should be treated subjectively and democratically. There is no such danger that someone, once getting a leg, will fall out of the system and be left without income for the night."
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