Why your favorite restaurants are not using Postmates and other delivery services.

Several of our restaurant clients have had terrible experiences with various food delivery services. Here's an inside look at the reason some of your favorite restaurants are not participating in UBEReats, GrubHub, Postmates, etc., as well as some solutions YOU can use as a consumer.

Dear Delivery Service,

There is a lot more involved in proper delivery of our menu items.

1) The fleet needs to be prepared to immediately exit the premises and drive directly to the diner's location. We have experienced drivers from various services getting comfortable at the bar, and delaying their deliveries.

2) Based on the Yelp reviews we have received from diners who received their meals from delivery services like Postmates, other events are happening between our restaurant and the food's destination. I'm not sure what events this could entail, but it is not conducive to our customers' expectations.

3) The other problem is tipping. Our hard-working staff has no incentive to service delivered meals, and in fact, is often penalized for it. The IRS withholds based on the total sales, not on the total tips. So, a delivered sale will be taxed as if the server is receiving a full tip, but in reality, the tips are often small--as consumers don't understand the extra work involved in packing a to-go meal, and it's being split with the driver.

How Postmates can help:

• Educate consumers on tipping practices for delivered meals.
• Allow restaurant owners to provide training to drivers; only allow specifically trained drivers to service higher ranked restaurants.
• Create a policy an educational campaign about Yelp/Google reviews. Disallow users to continue to use your services if they post a 1-star review without going through the preferred channels first: talking to the delivery service, talking to the restaurant, etc. to seek a solution. It is because of these poor reviews from "delivery" customers that we cannot risk the damage of continuing with the service. Our in-house guests are extremely happy, and we want to give them preferential treatment in response to their 4 and 5 star reviews. Every negative review takes our time and attention away from our patrons who are loyal enough to drive to our destination.

Our hope is that Postmates will take this feedback seriously and enact immediate changes.

If your system changes, please let us know! We would be happy to reconsider participating in your platform.