ALEXANDRIA, Va.—McDonald’s restaurants that take too long to prepare DoorDash orders will have to pay the company higher fees, reports the Wall Street Journal.
If a DoorDash driver has to wait more than four minutes, McDonald’s starts paying late fees, reaching 17.6% on orders from non-DashPass subscribers that take more than seven minutes, reports the Journal. If DashPass-subscriber orders make drivers wait more than seven minutes, the rates rise to 20.1%.
Location services allow DoorDash to see drivers, and once they are roughly 80 feet away from the restaurant, the clock starts.
DoorDash also has created a new tiered commission system for McDonald’s: The fast-food chain pays an 11.6% base rate for nonsubscribers, and the fee on orders from DashPass subscribers will be 14.1%. The previous rate for both was 15.5%.
The wait-time commissions will begin next year.
Customer refunds will also be covered by McDonald’s if that restaurant makes a mistake, but only after guest complaints reach a certain threshold.
“Delivery is one of the largest growth engines of the McDonald’s business globally, and it’s our goal to provide world-class customer experiences,” a McDonald’s spokesperson told the Journal.
Uber Eats lowered its commission on McDonald’s orders from customers who don’t subscribe to its monthly Eats Pass to 14% from 15%. McDonald’s pays 16% commission on orders from Uber Eats’s monthly subscribers. Uber didn’t include DoorDash-like penalties on wait times as part of its re-negotiation.
According to NACS’ “Last Mile Fulfillment in Convenience Retail” report, 61% of retailers are satisfied with their third-party delivery partners. Concerns include high fees, little access to consumer data, difficulties delivering age-restricted products and service and operational issues. Read more about these challenges and what c-stores are doing to make delivery work for their businesses in “Delivering Convenience” in the December 2021 issue of NACS Magazine.
Meanwhile, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi recently said that customers will eventually have the ability to pay for their ride via bitcoin, reports the Bloomberg, but “this isn’t the right point,” he said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.
“We’re having conversations all the time,” Khosrowshahi told Bloomberg. “As the exchange mechanism becomes less expensive and becomes more environmentally friendly, I think you will see us leaning into crypto a little bit more.”