Uber Eats: Why Thousands of Restaurants Are Being Cut from App | WSJ Tech News Briefing

foreign

[Music]

briefing for Tuesday March 28th I'm Zoe

Thomas for The Wall Street Journal

has this ever happened to you

you're looking for something to eat on a

delivery app and you come across several

restaurants that all appear to be

different but all seem to have exactly

the same food

well on Tuesday ubereats is set to

announce it's doing something about this

it plans to take down about 5 000 online

only menus that represent about 10

percent of listings on the app in the US

and Canada with me to discuss how things

came to this point is our restaurant

reporter Heather Hadden hi Heather

thanks for joining us thanks so much so

to start off when we talk about multiple

listings from one restaurant are these

ghost kitchens some of them can be but

often these are actually from real

restaurants with a physical address and

an actual door these are online only

brands that a lot of restaurants started

during the pandemic as a way to shore up

their businesses and dine in seating was

closed and it's basically run out of an

existing kitchen it could be a ghost

kitchen but it's often an actual

physical restaurant where they're

offering what's supposed to be a unique

menu out of that restaurant for online

app orders can you tell us a little bit

more of about why restaurants would

choose to do this to have multiple

listings maybe give us some examples of

restaurants that are doing it yeah so

again during the pandemic when dining

rooms closed a lot of Brands including

established Brands like casual dining

restaurants like Chili's or Denny's or

Ihop decided that they needed additional

Revenue to keep themselves afloat so at

a restaurant like IHOP or Denny's often

their kitchens are pretty slow in the

evening even though they're 24-hour

Concepts and so they added these new

unique brands that are serving burgers

or grilled cheese or quesadillas to

appeal to Consumers many of them younger

than their typical demographic to order

through apps and to have it delivered to

them so they're using their kitchens

often they're using existing ingredients

in their restaurants but advertising and

marketing it in a new way and offering a

a new and distinctive menu so

Uber has made this

this to kick off around five thousand

online

restaurants from its

app so Uber and you know a lot of the

apps say this as well that things just

got really overheated amongst these

virtual Brands all these menus will come

up and some of them are just the same

menu under different names and emerging

out of the same restaurant or for the

same overall company and there's really

no differentiation between them and so

you know these apps say thousands of

these have mushroomed and ubereats is

taking

very definitive action to clean up what

they say has become a wild wild west out

there of these virtual brands that they

say that they need to call some of these

just so their customers can really trust

what they're ordering is an actual

distinct restaurant with its own

you know own food and own menu as

opposed to a copycat is there

or real estates

these virtual Brands might be take over

yeah I mean search is huge I mean how

you engineer search is a whole art these

days and

there's outside third party services

that will help you and your search on

these apps how customers actually

discover your brand you can pay

Consultants to make that even better you

want to be on top you want to be towards

the top so when someone is hungry and

scrolling you show up apart from just

kicking off many of these online brands

are there any other rules that ubereats

is bringing in yeah so in addition to

making sure the menus are distinctive

ubereats is also going to require that

online Brands list photos of five items

that are unique to its menu ubereats

will also take down virtual restaurants

whose average ratings drop Beyond a

certain threshold and that's kind of

similar to some what some of the other

companies are starting to do we talked

to GrubHub who said it's also making

sure that there's not too many Brands

stemming from one same physical address

and making sure that orders and

cancellation rates aren't too high from

particular virtual

restaurant before they would sanction

them you spoke with users of the app

what did they say about this phenomenon

yeah I think for going online you know

maybe it's also like online shopping

these days it can just feel kind of

overwhelming there's just so many

listings you don't really know where

it's coming from the National Restaurant

Association actually did a survey and

the majority of customers say they want

to have food delivered from an actual

place they want to know that there's

some Integrity to the listing into the

restaurant before they're eating the

food so I think you know there's been

some comedians that have spoofed this

phenomenon but I think for the regular

customer they just want to know what

they're getting is is real all right

that was our reporter Heather Hadden

thanks for joining us Heather thank you

and that's it for today's Tech news

briefing but a quick note on AI before

we close the show we still want to hear

your questions about generative

artificial intelligence AI programs like

chat GPT Microsoft's new Bing search or

Google's Bard and we're going to answer

them on an upcoming episode do you want

to know more about how these AI programs

work what they're capable of or maybe

what this latest wave of AI development

could mean for how we live our lives

leave us a voicemail with your AI

question at

415-439-6482 or email us a voice

recording to tnv wsj.com we look forward

to hearing from you I'm Zoe Thomas for

The Wall Street Journal thanks for

listening foreign

[Music]

[Music]