It's not really that we gave up, it's just that the little guys can't compete with the big guys, and the big guys all merged together and collude to make everything as expensive as possible. I try to support smaller businesses when I can but they are usually significantly more expensive and I can't always afford it. There's not really a solution for regular people when our politicians are all bought and paid for.

We've been badly in need of some widespread trust busting for a few decades now

While there is a lot of genuinely anti competitive behavior in the market (e.g. huge mergers that should never be allowed).

The reality of a lot of "competition" as we tend to describe it in capitalist economics is that someone usually wins. At least for a while. It's often not related to their core competency or quality either. It's often about financial leverage, regulatory favors, technical advantages, etc...

For example, Taxis weren't crushed by Uber because of better drivers, fuel efficiency, or more comfortable rides. It was the challenge of hailing a cab, the regulatory barriers of taxi drivers getting licensed (which Uber just didn't bother with), commercial insurance, and the ability of Uber to operate at a loss while building their market share. Taxis had a 100 year head start in this competition, and they were pretty much obsolete in a few years. They lost due to competitive disadvantages they didn't even know they had. And Taxis still exist, they're just fighting for the scraps left by Uber and Lyft.

I love that you try to run a honest business, it’s rare to see nowadays

Thanks, I genuinely appreciate that. The restaurant is just a side project, and I only almost break even on it, so people appreciating a straight-forward business is the main joy I get out of it

Has the US completely given up on this market competition thing?

Yes. Over 90% of the market is consolidated into 3 major players: Sysco, US Foods, and Performance Foods. Given how monopolistic American markets are, you can probably guess what I'm going to say next: US Foods and Performance Foods are exploring a merger. Given the regulatory landscape and current US politics, I expect a proposed merger to eventually go through

The US restaurant market is going to get even more consolidated under only a few distributors, which will mean restaurant prices are going to keep rising

Silver lining: That consolidation has allowed a much larger R&D budget than before. Some of the new coatings and things coming out are crazy good. I did a tasting with my Sysco rep, and the frozen french fries are insane now. Fresh cannot realistically compete, which means less food waste and a better end product. As long as they don't start filling the fries with fake shit, it's great

If that is common practice it would seem to indicate that "cart abandonment rate" is actually a very important metric, since users often abandon carts and so a restaurant needs something about the menu/presentation that makes people abandon them less and "wins" a larger share of the market of users on the platform.

My metrics depend on the source. On my own website, I could theoretically see precisely what's happening. I'm too lazy for that, so I just run a DB query to see how many carts have things in them without ordering vs. number of orders today

For Doordash/Uber Eats/Toast/Etc. carts, I generally get basic stats like % of carts abandoned (someone added food items, but never ordered from anywhere), and % of carts ordered elsewhere (they added items from multiple restaurants, then didn't order from mine)

They give me a baseline to compare against, but I think it's a national average, which isn't useful. When I signed up, they gave me a few hundred dollars in credits, so I applied them towards offering free delivery for the first week or so, which is the main metric I compare it to

Broadly though, I agree with you. My business partner always looks as those as all potential lost customers, and I have to remind him plenty of people are just comparing multiple restaurants. I do also wonder how many are just bots as well

They also calculate tips by including taxes and all their fees. Actual cost ends up about 200% the original menu price. Gah.

I didnt have an actual point, just complaining.

I don't believe they're able to under my DSP contract, but that's a good reminder to keep checking it. Contracts only mean as much as your ability to enforce them, and for a small business is basically zero

I bet I could write a quick web scraper on a cron job to pull the prices each week. Thanks!