Time to End Fee Caps on Restaurant Delivery Platforms.
By Arun Sundararajan
Delivery platforms such as DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats were a lifeline for independent restaurants during the early years of the pandemic, offering a critical alternative channel for consumers during the shutdowns and then contributing to small-business resilience during recovery efforts. Today the long-term survival of many New York City independent restaurants is being threatened again—not by Covid-19, but by ongoing government-imposed fee caps on delivery platforms enacted early in the pandemic.
Those price controls might have been well-meaning. It is now clear, however, that they trigger a number of unintended consequences that hurt independent restaurants.
It’s time to reverse this flawed policy and allow small businesses to grow by taking better advantage of the options delivery platforms offer.
Read the full article in Crain's New York Business.
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Arun Sundararajan is Harold Price Professor of Entrepreneurship, Professor of Technology, Operations and Statistics and Undergraduate Faculty Advisor, Entrepreneurship