Summary – Doordash: You need to call 650-681-9470. Dial 1 (for restaurants) then 3 (for removing your account). Tell the customer service rep you’d like your menu removed or account deactivated. They say the menu will be removed within 24 hours, but double-check to make sure. If it’s still not removed (which happened to us) call back and try again.
Summary – Grubhub: Email them at [email protected] and ask to have your restaurant listing removed.
Interested in a deeper dive into the world of restaurant marketing, operations, and food delivery services? Keep reading below.
I recently started helping with the family restaurants, specifically focused on restaurant marketing. I’ve worked in restaurants in some capacity for 10 years — mostly as a server, but I’ve also cooked on the line and tried my hand as a sushi apprentice.
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Recently, I’ve learned more about marketing, specifically growth marketing, from my day job (which I love). I get to learn from former heads of Growth from companies like HubSpot, Uber, Pinterest, Grubhub, and others, who share how they grew their companies. I wanted to apply what I learned to our little mom & pop stores.
I spoke to my uncle, Will, about marketing plans for the restaurant he runs in Albany, New York. The restaurant is called Shogun. We talked over a few ideas, and then the topic of food delivery services came up. That’s when he mentioned DoorDash.
The problem with DoorDash
DoorDash started listing Shogun’s menu on their site, despite the fact that we’re not partnered with DoorDash. In and of itself, this is annoying but not a big deal — if we get additional customers we wouldn’t normally serve, fine. Because we’re not partnered with DoorDash, they wouldn’t take a cut from us — instead, DoorDash earns money by inflating prices on their site plus charging a delivery fee.
Like I said, this is annoying, but if that’s where people elect to order their food and it’s not doing long-term damage to our brand, we can solve that problem later.
Here’s the problem with DoorDash: when scraping menus to host on their app, they scraped the wrong Shogun menu. Instead of Shogun’s (from Albany, NY) logo and menu, it’s a completely different logo and menu. Therefore, people perusing our DoorDash menu will discover totally brand new items we’ve never heard of like:
- Shogun Sandwich
- Godzilla Tails (white meat chicken tenders with a special Shogun sauce)
- The Las Vegas Roll
Everytime an order comes in for Godzilla Tails, it’s an operational mess. We have to explain we don’t sell Godzilla Tails. We have to offer another item. Customers get upset. It causes operational, customer service, and branding headaches. If you’ve spent any time working in restaurants, you know 90% of the work is firefighting. Everyday you’re dealing with turnover, wrong orders, bad Yelp reviews, etc.
It doesn’t make sense to add people ordering sandwiches and Godzilla Tails to that list of problems. Which is why we decided to get DoorDash to remove the menu.
Are delivery services worth it?
A short aside: I don’t have anything against delivery services like DoorDash, Grubhub, Seamless, Postmates, UberEats, etc. These are marketplace services that can provide restaurants with a delivery option if they don’t have one. It can be a win-win.
Delivery services come under fire when restaurant owners complain they’re just bullies, armed with better technology and SEO, who’ve come between them and their customers and are taking a piece of the pie without dealing with the hassle of actually operating a restaurant.
I understand the feeling. Afterall, none of these Grubhub or UberEats guys were on the floor when the restaurant was built from nothing. They don’t deal with upset customers when food arrives cold or late or wrong. They don’t have to be on the defense to ward off bad Yelp reviews which can tank your ratings or worry about the new “Health Grades” on Yelp. They just take their cut and feck off.
However, as a marketer, I also look at the situation pragmatically. I once wrote about David Chang’s prediction[note]https://www.recode.net/2018/5/30/17386634/david-chang-momofuku-interview-food-restaurant-code-conference[/note] that food delivery services would force mom-and-pop restaurants out of the market:
“…mom-and-pop restaurants are the ones that will feel the squeeze and get forced out of the market. When you realize that:
(1) these delivery service fees eat up the entire margin on an order and
(2) their dominance in SEO means customers will completely bypass the restaurant and order directly from the delivery service”
Casey Winters (former Growth Lead at Grubhub) made the case this is just a (common) misconception. He argues that food delivery services don’t cut into profits, they help restaurants capture unrealized profit. Two pieces of supporting evidence he mentions:
- For food delivery marketplaces, the under-utilized fixed asset is not the restaurant, but the kitchen.
- Restaurant loyalty is one of the least important and last steps in the process of the person ordering food. This means people ordering food do not have loyalty, and you need to compete for every order as if it’s the first.
I mention this because I don’t think using DoorDash or any other delivery service is a bad thing. However, we’re getting our restaurant removed from DoorDash to solve operational headaches.
Removing your restaurant from DoorDash
There’s actually no way to remove your restaurant from DoorDash online — you have to call.
- Dial 650-681-9470
- Press 1 (for restaurants)
- Press 3 (for removing your account)
Tell the customer service rep you’d like your menu removed or account deactivated. Based on my experience, they’re outsourcing their customer support overseas where English is not the primary language, so you should double-check to make sure they understand what you’re asking, and that they’ve deleted the restaurant off the database.
The first time I called, the rep tried to fob me off and told me she’d delete the account. When I persisted, it turned out she was unable to pull up our restaurant with our phone number. Even after she said the menu would be deleted, it was still there 24 hours later, and I had to call back and try it again.
On the second go-around, the menu was finally deleted.
Summary
I have nothing against delivery services, I think they can provide a valuable service. But if DoorDash is putting up the wrong menu for your restaurant, that’s bullshit. Restaurant owners and managers have better things to do than deal with wrong orders. Give them a call at 650-681-9470 and (politely) ask them to remove the menu.
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Photo Credit: DoorDash
Get Your Restaurant Removed From Doordash and Grubhub
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