Delivery dilemmas

When Montreal first imposed a city-wide curfew, Jon Cercone, BA 10, manager and partner of Tavern on the Square in Westmount opted for Uber Eats and Door Dash for his restaurant. Sales went up. “They already have the infrastructure, so at a certain point you just have to bite the bullet,” he says. These companies, however, can charge up to 30 per cent of the full price of a meal.

In March, Quebec looked at capping this at 20 per cent for the duration of the pandemic, but has yet to actually do so. That would be better, but still not great, says Raegan Steinberg, BA 08, co-owner of Arthur’s Nosh Bar. “This is a penny industry. Twenty per cent is basically your profit.” And reliability is iffy.

“There have been glitches, tech problems. There was one week I was on the phone with them for hours,” says Cercone.

Steinberg says drivers can be rude. She’s even had food stolen. Cercone puts his better menu items and full wine list on Montreal startup ChkPlz, which he says has a more favourable business model for local deliveries.

“If someone wants my prized wines, I want to be making the full balance. I don’t want to be giving anything to a tech company that doesn’t even know I exist.”

Steinberg praises ChkPlz for ease of use for pickup orders, but for deliveries far from Arthur’s Nosh Bar, she gets charged a lot. “If you’re ordering from Mile End, Montreal, for example, we could end up paying as much as $15 for that delivery.”