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Spokane City Council approves cap on what food delivery services can charge restaurants

By Emry Dinman, The Spokesman-Review
Published: December 6, 2022, 7:32am

SPOKANE — Food-delivery platforms such as DoorDash and Grubhub will no longer be able to charge Spokane restaurants more than 15% of the purchase price of an order, unless the business agrees to pay more for additional services such as advertising.

The Spokane City Council voted 5-2 Monday in favor of the Fair Meal Delivery ordinance.

When food is delivered from Spokane restaurants by third parties, customers pay a delivery fee, but restaurants also pay a percentage of the ticket price for the service — as much as 30%.

DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub, which reportedly have around 95% of all third-party food deliveries in Spokane, already offer an option to local restaurants that charges no more than a 15% commission.

But many business owners don’t know there’s a 15% option for third-party delivery fees, Councilman Zack Zappone has said.

“The restaurants say that’s not clear, and in fact when they talked to Doordash to lower their rates, they’ve had to fight to lower from 30% to 20%,” Zappone said in November. “This would guarantee for the local businesses that you can get (a 15%) option for third-party delivery fees.”

In addition to requiring delivery platforms to offer a 15% commission option, Monday’s ordinance forbids the platforms from delivering a restaurant’s food without that business’ agreement.

Platforms also cannot refuse to deliver for a restaurant solely because the restaurant chose the 15% commission option.

Failure to abide by the ordinance would result in a Class 1 Civil Infraction, which carries a maximum fine of $261.

Councilmen Michael Cathcart and Jonathan Bingle voted against the ordinance, expressing concern broadly with the city interfering with businesses.

“I would never go to Indaba coffee and say you have to charge a certain amount for a coffee, the amount you’re charging is way too much,” Cathcart said. “For the same reason … there’s no way I can tell a delivery service how they can run their business.”

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