Halifax restaurants calling out DoorDash for unauthorized partnerships

Halifax restaurants are going public after a food delivery service advertised their businesses without permission.

DoorDash is the latest company to expand to Halifax’s growing food delivery market. But some restaurant owners say they’re not going about it the right way.

“We have a menu on there that’s not up to date, it’s not accurate, the prices on there aren’t even accurate,” said Black Sheep co-owner John House.

READ MORE: Edmonton restaurant criticizes DoorDash delivery service for unauthorized partnership

House says DoorDash reached out to their restaurant by email inquiring about possibly partnering up. But the restaurant decided not to reply as they had already decided to not work with any third-party delivery services.

“A lot of our food doesn’t necessarily travel well,” explained House.

“Ultimately we built a restaurant with the capacity, we have a kitchen that services that capacity. Doing delivery just adds one more step that just takes away from the service we’re offering our guests.”

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But against Black Sheep’s wishes, DoorDash allows customers to order from the restaurant through their app while noting that the “store is unaffiliated with DoorDash” but that “customers can still place orders.”

“I think the DoorDash model is a little bit shady because they’re just blatantly doing it against the wishes of small business owners,” said House.

The restaurant took to Facebook warning customers they were not affiliated with the app and asking them not to order online and instead support local businesses.

The post was shared by Kitsune Food Co., a restaurant in the north end that says they’re facing similar issues.

In a message to Global News, Ami Goto with Kitsune says they’ve had customers ordering through the app, which has been confusing for both the restaurant and drivers.

She says they contacted the company to be removed but were told by the representative that nothing could happen until next week and they would have to check with someone higher up to “update the file.”

READ MORE: Food delivery app DoorDash reports data breach affecting 4.9M users

“Which is funny that we never signed a contract with them,” said Ami. “Now we are still on their site and (there is) nothing we can do.”

Battery Park is among those restaurants listed on the app despite not having any official partnership.

The restaurant says they were only recently made aware and are working to figure out what do do next.

DoorDash did not respond to a request for an email, but according to the company’s website they were “founded as a platform to help grow and empower local businesses by connecting merchants to the online convenience economy.” It goes on to say that “for those not interested in being on DoorDash for any reason, we immediately remove them from the platform upon their request.”

But House says, like Kitsune, they have also reached out to DoorDash to remove their restaurant and were told that would happen, but as of Tuesday morning DoorDash still offers delivery from both restaurants.