{"id":677798,"date":"2026-11-07T15:40:18","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T15:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/677798\/"},"modified":"2026-11-07T15:40:18","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T15:40:18","slug":"restaurants-are-banding-together-to-solve-the-delivery-app-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/677798\/","title":{"rendered":"Restaurants Are Banding Together to Solve the Delivery App Mess"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve had the misfortune of ordering delivery food in Seattle lately, you know how expensive it has gotten in the last couple of years\u2014Seattle routinely ranks<\/a> at or near the top<\/a> whenever anyone ranks the most costly places in the US to get delivery. And if you\u2019re unlucky enough to own a restaurant that relies on delivery orders, you\u2019ve also been suffering, as consumers react pretty rationally to these higher costs by ordering less food.<\/p>\n

Uttam Mukherjee, the co-owner of the well-known Indian street food mini-chain Spice Waala<\/a>, has been struggling with spiraling costs and decided to do something about it: he\u2019s cofounded a new service, called Yaku<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. 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 \u201cdeactivation\u201d (losing their jobs) in some cases. DoorDash and Uber\u2014which control most of the app delivery market\u2014responded 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since then, restaurateurs like Mukherjee\u2019s 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\u2019 part. On top of that, some restaurant owners feel that they lose control of their product when it\u2019s delivered by third-party gig workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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<\/a> for in-house delivery drivers in 2024, only to close completely earlier this year<\/a>. A delivery driver named Tony Illes made headlines<\/a> 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<\/a> and says he\u2019s 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.)<\/p>\n

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 \u201can opportunity for someone else to come in and provide that service at a better business model.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other thing motivating Mukherjee is that local politicians don\u2019t seem to be interested in passing legislation that might lessen the pinch on delivery-dependent restaurants. He\u2019s said publicly that he supports the goal<\/a> of paying app drivers more, but feels that policymakers didn\u2019t consider the impact PayUp would have on businesses like Spice Waala. Since 2024, he\u2019s been in multiple meetings with city council members, he says. \u201cEvery single time, everyone agrees it\u2019s a big problem, and every single time they say it\u2019s just not something we\u2019re going to be working on.\u201d Seattle leadership didn\u2019t 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<\/a> during her mayoral campaign. A recent study by the city\u2019s Office of Labor Standards found that average wages for drivers went up<\/a> since PayUp\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Yaku operates on a different model altogether\u2014its 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\u2019s a big improvement over the apps, where \u201cyou can\u2019t talk to the Dashers,\u201d says Mukherjee.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other major distinction between Yaku and the big apps is the pricing\u2014Yaku 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yaku has only been active since October 30. It\u2019s available at five Ballard restaurants and employs just two drivers\u2014Mukherjee 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\u2019s Bagels and Burritos<\/a>. Over the first weekend, Mukherjee says, Yaku had \u201ca lot of website visitors, a lot of interest,\u201d and \u201csome orders.\u201d 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 \u201cultimate goal\u201d would be an app, he says.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cbuy one get one free\u201d 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?<\/p>\n

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