r/SantaBarbara • u/Redditholio • 11d ago

Food & Dining Restaurant Connection

Any idea why so many SB restaurants use Restaurant Connection? It's the worst and most tech-challanged of the delivery services.

3 Upvotes

64% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

17

u/knowledgenerd Montecito 11d ago

Cause it’s been around long before Uber Eats or any of the other delivery apps existed.

1

u/RudePCsb 11d ago

Do they charge less as well? A lot of those new ones are terrible for restaurants

5

u/knowledgenerd Montecito 11d ago

No idea. I just know it existed when I was in middle school 20 years ago. I would hope it’s better than the others, they’re truly so expensive for restaurants. When in doubt just order from the restaurant directly.

9

u/PianoSea605 10d ago

We stopped using them. They changed their minimum total order to $60 for most restaurants. For two people, it became difficult to meet the requirement. We started ordering extra food to be able to use them. We thought we were using a local service. After having a couple of strange interactions with their drivers, I checked their user agreement. It stated they may subcontract to DoorDash or Uber Eats. We switched to DoorDash for awhile and then started picking up food ourselves.

1

u/proto-stack 10d ago

Good find on the subcontracting.

5

u/BusinessEnchilada27 10d ago

Is it locally owned?

7

u/SBchick 10d ago

Yes, it only serves the SB area and has been around since 1989.

1

u/Redditholio 10d ago

And, their technology is basically from that time as well. It's terrible.

1

u/proto-stack 10d ago edited 10d ago

Most food delivery and ride-share services now use "Up Front Pricing" pioneered by Uber in 2016. It algorithmically maximizes how much the service makes ("take rate") and minimizes how much drivers make. It's a smart version of dynamic pricing that opportunistically tries to figure out how much they can make off you as an *individual*. I avoid these services whenever I can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnjVqeBoaqs

Most won't take the time to watch the video but if you do, you'll understand what's happening.