Merchant Page

Many customers don't understand the 3rd party relationships between the merchant, drivers, and the app. So Mom and Pop style merchants without corporate oversight, and if you have the time to take a few customer calls. I advise putting a little flier inside your delivery orders. That lets customers know you value hearing from them directly if there's a problem with the delivery. And that it's a 3rd party service so you don't control everything. But that you want to do everything in your power to make sure it doesn't happen again. This allows you to connect a drivers name to the problem caused. And shortly I will give you a way to do something with that information.

If a driver is just incorrigible you can take steps to block them from being offered delivery's from your restaurant. If you're one of the hot spots boy did that driver just make a bonehead mistake. The different apps make it more or less difficult to block a driver. They have to meet that delivery time promise they made to the customer. So some aren't in the habit of making it easy for you to block a driver. But some drivers are bad enough, that if you persist enough. The app will block them.

Remember this will shrink the number of drivers available to deliver your orders. So don't be willy nilly with trying to get drivers banned. Save it for when you're truly dealing with the most bone headed of drivers.

Drivers are actually independent contractors, basically our own business. The apps don't have the power to tell us what to do. They don't assign delivery's to us, they offer them. We can decline orders for ANY reason we see fit to. And the quickest way to make a possibly productive conversation with a driver go completely sideways. Is to treat the driver like an employee, instead of a business owner. Most management and owners it's easy to work with, employees is another story. But we usually overlook shenanigans from the workers. But if a manager or owner comes sideways at us. We just decide to not pick up orders from you anymore, basically you go in the drivers blacklist book. Now if a customer has left us a fat tip, we will probably accept the order.

But trust me, there's lots of restaurants wondering why they don't see a lot of drivers anymore. Many times it's because of the attitudes of employees or management.

If you seal up your bags so drivers can't check the contents, ok fine. But that means you can't ever forget anything lol.

Honestly, those seals usually pop off of the paper bags by themselves anyways. So sometimes there pretty pointless in keeping a driver out of the bag anyways.

When it comes to missing items it could be any of the following three reasons.

#1 The merchant forgot it (I've been on your side of the counter, things happen)

#2 A scum bag driver snagged an item, this doesn't happen as much as you think though. Drivers are tip oriented, so they'd have to be an idiot to mess with a customers order.

#3 The customer is telling a fib in the attempt to get credits or refunds they don't deserve.

No matter which reason it ends up being, it does catch up with customers in a brutal way.

Customers will eventually (sometimes quickly) BE CUT OFF from receiving credits or refunds.

Can you imagine as a customer having a legitimate issue and being told "NO CREDITS"

But be careful how you present this subject to your employees. Employees with questionable work ethic may forget things on purpose. In an effort to reduce their work load (I've been in management, I remember how employees act sometimes)

The base pay drivers are offered by the apps kinda sucks. We see the total pay offer which includes the customers tip, upfront before accepting the delivery offer. Drivers have a profit analysis process just like any other business owner. We can't drive out to Plumas Lake and back for the 8 or 9 bucks the app offers us. Some merchants are set up where they don't even receive the ticket, until after a driver has agreed to deliver it. That usually solves this issue, but not all merchants are set up like that.

And I can only semi verify this, but it's what drivers have collectively come to agree on. If a driver cancels an order mid delivery, and it's sent to you again by the app. Sometimes the original tip the customer left, doesn't get added on to the 2nd order. So now all the drivers being offered the order just see $4.50 base pay for a 5 or 6 mile delivery, forget it. We never know if we're picking up a remake order. Some drivers have high service standards and would pick it up, if we only knew it was a remake.

This is different app to app, but Doordash is probably the worst about it. They give us a "pick up order" by time. That should really read as an "arrive at merchant by" time. Many of the orders are low pay, so it's annoying waiting 10 minutes for a 3 dollar order. But drivers need to chill because we clearly see the pay offer before accepting the delivery.

Almost every issue with 3rd party delivery apps is rooted in a lack of information. The apps don't really explain to customers the difference between merchant error, driver error, and yes app error lol.

Cold Food Complaints:
Some drivers SUCK, and don't use insulated bags. Or they use a bag that is WAY to big for the order, without using dead space adjusters inside of it. Merchants can help with this issue by updating your merchant pick up instructions. Include requesting the driver use a hot bag. But DON'T actually try to enforce it when drivers show up. Some drivers are idiots and will argue with you about it. The idea is just for drivers to see it in the pick up instructions. And hopefully it encourages them get their heads out of their rear end, and start using hot bags.

For Pete's sake drivers are in the tip business, why wouldn't you have a collection of hot bags right.

Damaged Food:
Damaged food is ultimately like 90% the drivers fault. However in a few instances, I've had to ask merchants to correct something on pick up.

Some drivers do nothing to secure the order inside their vehicle. And then drive around like maniacs on a race track. Some merchants try to stuff 50 things in one bag, bag ends up looking like the leaning tower of pisa. This is a recipe for disaster. My creativity allows me to stabilize almost any crazy order you hand me. But drivers need to be confident enough to sometimes kindly ask "can you re-bag this please, it's a little tipsy"

There is a tactic you will be tempted to use to try to prevent this, don't. At the end I will explain how we're going to deal with this.

The busier delivery apps sometimes offer drivers extra delivery's while assigned to a current delivery. When they cease doing this depends on the app. Some stop after you click the "order picked up button" Some will offer you extras at any point during the delivery. So it's possible the driver is waiting a few minutes, to see if the app offers them another delivery. Possibly even from your location if you're one of the hot spot merchants. This is a total driver jerk move, as now the first customers order is delayed by at least 5 minutes. And possibly a lot longer if they are offered another order. Because if it's your restaurant, you might of just received the order on your terminal.

Or the second restaurant may be late making their order.

There's no easy and solid way to prevent this. But coming soon in my package of mobile apps. Will be a way for merchants to let drivers know how they feel about certain issues.

Merchants, I have a business mind just like yours. So trust me when I say I'm about to make available to you some serious business tools.

Merchants have told me they hear that often from support. But the app only offers delivery's to a driver, we can always decline. If you're dealing with an order that is a re-make. Sometimes what happens is the original tip left by the customer, doesn't get applied to the re-make delivery. So now drivers are seeing a 5 mile delivery offer for only like 5 bucks pay. Because that original tip disappeared somehow, and the delivery isn't profitable. So driver after driver just declines it, we don't know it's a re-make. We just think the customer stiffed us on a tip.

Proving this happens is extremely difficult. But I sometimes accept low paying orders, even long ones sometimes. I had a conversation at a customers door one time and we discovered this had happened. (the order ended up being a re-make) I've delivered to him many times and he usually tips fat. I recognized the address so I accepted it even though it obviously had no tip. I thought maybe he's broke tonight lol. But after we talked about why the order took so long (re-make) We also discovered the $15 tip he left had magically vanished, and wasn't applied to the driver who actually delivered it "ME"