Here's What Happened When A Restaurant Owner Ditched Seamless
Pedro Munoz, owner of Luz in Brooklyn, New York, told Bloomberg Businessweek that he became frustrated by Seamless taking 14% commission and taking a month to give him his share.
So Munoz encouraged customers to order directly from his website instead of from the popular delivery service.
How did it go? Pretty well, according to Businessweek:
On its first night without Seamless (Aug. 16, a Saturday), Muñoz says Luz took $669 worth of delivery orders. That’s down about 16 percent from the $800 in orders the restaurant typically received on Saturday nights when using Seamless and GrubHub, another online delivery service that recently merged with Seamless. Instead of losing 14 percent of the total to commissions, though, Luz paid only $16 for credit card processing and other ordering-related fees, meaning the restaurant netted $653—just 4 percent off the $680 it would have made with the help of Seamless and GrubHub.
Munoz said he doesn't plan to go back to using the service.
Seamless is appealing to businesses because it gives them automatic presence online, according to the company's website.
It also gives customers a quick and easy way to order from the restaurant's menu. But high commissions and long wait times for payment have restaurants thinking twice.