If you’ve had the misfortune of ordering delivery food in Seattle lately, you know how expensive it has gotten in the last couple of years—Seattle routinely ranks at or near the top whenever anyone ranks the most costly places in the US to get delivery. And if you’re unlucky enough to own a r estaurant that relies on delivery orders, you’ve also been suffering, as consumers react pretty rationally to these higher costs by ordering less food. Uttam Mukherjee, the co-owner of the well-known Indian street food mini-chain Spice Waala, has been struggling with spiraling costs and decided to do something about it: he’s cofounded a new service, called Yaku, that he hopes will hit a trifecta of lower costs for customers, more transparent pricing, and fair pay for drivers. Yaku is starting out with a tiny footprint in Ballard, but its goal is to fix the mess that food delivery has become in Seattle. Restaurant food is expensive because of high costs (including labor costs) that are passed on to diners. But delivery food is even more expensive due in large part to a city law called PayUp that went into effect in 2024. PayUp raised pay rates for app delivery drivers by requiring those platforms to pay a minimum per minute worked, per mile driven, or per order delivered. It also mandated paid sick time for these workers and protected them from “deactivation” (losing their jobs) in some cases. DoorDash and Uber—which control most of the app delivery market—responded by tacking on a $5 fee to all orders in Seattle city limits. The apps said this was necessary to deal with costs incurred by the legislation, while PayUp supporters accused the apps of price gouging.  Since then, restaurateurs like Mukherjee’s have seen an undeniable drop in sales. Restaurants have to pay to be on platforms like DoorDash, and when those apps attach additional fees to orders, their customers pay more for their food through no action on the restaurants’ part. On top of that, some restaurant owners feel that they lose control of their product when it’s delivered by third-party gig workers.  Some people in the industry have tried to break free of the app model with limited success. Fried chicken specialist Bok a Bok ditched DoorDash for in-house delivery drivers in 2024, only to close completely earlier this year. A delivery driver named Tony Illes made headlines when he quit Uber Eats to go independent; he plastered downtown with signs advertising a low, flat delivery fee and telling customers to text him directly. He now has an app called Tony Delivers and says he’s signed up 1,000 drivers, though the app only works for a handful of restaurants and only in select neighborhoods surrounding downtown and Capitol Hill. (Illes is trying to recruit more restaurants, he says.) Mukherjee and Yaku cofounder Tim McConnell, a former Amazon employee who is handling the technical stuff, have been talking about a delivery business since 2020. But the PayUp regulations and the attendant app fees pushed the duo to launch Yaku. The high delivery prices, Mukherjee says, offer “an opportunity for someone else to come in and provide that service at a better business model.” The other thing motivating Mukherjee is that local politicians don’t seem to be interested in passing legislation that might lessen the pinch on delivery-dependent restaurants. He’s said publicly that he supports the goal of paying app drivers more, but feels that policymakers didn’t consider the impact PayUp would have on businesses like Spice Waala. Since 2024, he’s been in multiple meetings with city council members, he says. “Every single time, everyone agrees it’s a big problem, and every single time they say it’s just not something we’re going to be working on.” Seattle leadership didn’t revise PayUp despite pressure from app companies when Bruce Harrell was mayor; it seems even less likely to do so under Katie Wilson, who praised PayUp during her mayoral campaign. A recent study by the city’s Office of Labor Standards found that average wages for drivers went up since PayUp’s passage, while the overall volume of orders also ticked up slightly; though disputed by the app companies, this study provides evidence for lawmakers that the legislation is working. Yaku operates on a different model altogether—its drivers are employees, which Mukherjee says makes coordination easier. Restaurants can tell drivers which orders need to go out when and can help if a driver needs to come back because they forgot part of the order. That’s a big improvement over the apps, where “you can’t talk to the Dashers,” says Mukherjee.  The other major distinction between Yaku and the big apps is the pricing—Yaku currently charges a $9.99 flat delivery fee for all orders. Compared to the more complex fee structure of DoorDash, Murkerjee says this will generally be cheaper, though it might depend on whether someone subscribes to a service like DashPass, which reduces delivery fees on DoorDash.  Yaku has only been active since October 30. It’s available at five Ballard restaurants and employs just two drivers—Mukherjee says he and McConnell may step in as drivers during rushes. It only delivers to Ballard. When I spoke with Mukherjee on launch day, Yaku had fulfilled just one delivery order: a breakfast burrito from Rachel’s Bagels and Burritos. Over the first weekend, Mukherjee says, Yaku had “a lot of website visitors, a lot of interest,” and “some orders.” The fledgling service is trying to figure out how to make this new model work, which might mean adding more restaurants, changing the delivery radius, or altering the pricing structure (the fee might go up or down, Mukherjee says, depending on how many orders Yaku attracts). The Spice Waala owner is already looking at expanding to Capitol Hill. If Yaku catches on, the “ultimate goal” would be an app, he says. As a test, I compared what it would cost to order a wrap and two snack items from Spice Waala on DoorDash and Yaku. It was $31.50 on Yaku and $35.36 on DoorDash, even though DoorDash was waiving its $1.99 delivery fee. (In fairness, there were some “buy one get one free” deals on snacks that were exclusive to DoorDash.) Maybe at those rates, Yaku can siphon off some customers from the big apps, especially those who are sick of giving their money to tech companies. But the bigger problem hanging over all of this is, at those prices, how many Seattleites can afford delivery food period? The post Restaurants Are Banding Together to Solve the Delivery App Mess appeared first on The Stranger. ...read more read less