The plea to bypass delivery apps came after the city held a conference call with local restaurant owners struggling amid the COVID-19 crisis.

Instead of helping restaurants survive in a crisis, some say popular delivery apps marketed to consumers to order food during the crisis are actually making things worse.

The new services want to do things differently from the household names, so they have eliminated commission fees or offered rates well below the 10- to 30-per cent charged by Uber Eats, SkipTheDishes, DoorDash and others.