The draft ordinance calls for the 15% limit on food delivery fees to kick in once the pandemic emergency orders end with an option for restaurants to contract for other services, like advertising, at higher rates. The bill is modeled after similar legislation in San Francisco, Minneapolis and Philadelphia. New York City has a 15% cap on all services provided by food delivery platforms.
Steve Hooper, president of the Seattle Restaurant Alliance, tells the City Council’s Economic Development, Technology and City Light committee that many restaurants took on a lot of pandemic debt – some more than $100,000 – but he says large restaurant groups can get steep delivery discounts. “The average, immigrant-owned, small mom-and-pop restaurant is paying many multiples of what a restaurant group like ours would need to pay for the exact same service,” Hooper says, “That’s just fundamentally unfair and really just taking advantage of the situation.”
Anna Powell with DoorDash says a cap would hurt restaurants the council is trying to help, and she says it would provide fewer delivery opportunities for their drivers. Powell says that DoorDash already has a pricing plan “that gives small and medium-sized restaurants the ability to choose the level of service they want, which includes a 15% commission rate and the flexibility to change their plan whenever they want.”
The bill comes back to the committee for a vote July 27th. Right now, a full council vote is expected August 2nd.
