Lots of assumptions in this comment, the biggest one is that hungry people are reasonable. They’re not. The main issue is that we never opted into this experience that we didn’t control from beginning to end. That’s kind of an important piece of service delivery. Yes, when Karen is mad about something that’s not our fault, we could just put on our customer voice disarm the situation. But there are other things we could do when we owns the entire process.

What happens when you’re sitting at a restaurant and your server accidentally rang in the wrong dish? They can bring you a new one, offer something complimentary, take it off the bill, apologize in person, buy you a drink… I realize I’m comparing an in person experience to a delivery order, but it applies there too. DoorDash had used an out of date menu for our restaurant for their website, so people had ordered one of our most popular seasonal dishes out of season. Their orders get to their house and it’s not there. They’re upset so they try and call DoorDash (good luck). That doesn’t go anywhere fast (timing is important now because some of the party has hot food they ordered and some does not). It was never communicated to them that it wasn’t actually an option, even though it was (incorrectly) listed on the website/app. So they call the restaurant, who has no idea what the customer is talking about because they don’t know anything about DoorDash being a partner and they also know for a fact that the dish in question is not on the menu. So now the manager has to get involved, unravel the entire situation because there is an upset customer on the phone during peak dinner shift and they are pulled away from their other duties (taking care of guests they know about). The restaurant is in the community (very important) and DoorDash is not. When people talk about that restaurant in conversation (or on yelp, trip advisor etc) that experience is going to come up as a reflection of the restaurant, not DoorDash because the person posting the review is posting a review of the restaurant (NOT DOORDASH).