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Which of these food delivery platforms was founded first? Grubhub, UberEats, DoorDash or Postmates. Grubhub was established in 2004, several years before any of these other companies.
But all of those companies are involved in a new lawsuit against New York City. This concerns what third-party delivery platforms, like Grubhub and UberEats, are allowed to charge restaurants for their services. Let's say you use DoorDash to order a hamburger to go. New York's government says the most that DoorDash can charge the restaurant is 15 percent of the cost of your order, plus an additional five percent for fees like marketing.
These limits can help restaurants by keeping their costs down on to go orders. That's why they were up in place last year when restaurants were forced to close or limit their dining room capacity because of concerns surrounding COVID.
But the limits can hurt delivery companies, which have their own operating costs. They say they may be forced to reduce their services or charge higher fees to people who order to go food, and because New York City recently voted to make its fee limits permanent. DoorDash, Grubhub, and UberEats sued. They say the government is illegally interfering with agreements reached between restaurants and delivery companies that the city shouldn't have the power to decide business economics. New York's law department says, it's confident its limits are legal and that it will defend them in court. San Francisco is another city that's put delivery limits in place, and DoorDash and Grubhub are suing there as well.
An ongoing challenge for restaurants and delivery companies in some areas is a shortage of workers. Help is wanted in many parts of the United States. It's not just in the food industry. There's a shortage of truck drivers, manufacturers are having trouble filling factory jobs. Some businesses and states have blamed government benefits, pay for unemployed workers during the COVID pandemic as one reason why people weren't motivated to go back to work, but those benefits have expired. And while analysts say there's more than one factor to blame, some restaurants are getting creative to keep their doors open.
