COLORADO SPRINGS — Apps like Uber Eats and Door Dash have brought many benefits to small businesses during the pandemic, but have also brought rising costs to business owners.
Keeping prices low for small business owners is one of the ways they survive, but for restaurants using these delivery apps, they’ve had to raise their prices.
“It definitely has brought it business that I did not ever expect to have,” said Kevin Megyeri, the Owner/Operator of Bambinos Urban Pizzaria.
For mom-and-pop shops like Bambinos Urban Pizza trying to get people in the door, customers using delivery apps can hurt their already low profit margin.
“It’s one of those fine lines where if I’m only making eight percent profit, but a company’s going to charge us 22 percent commission on any order we’re actually losing money on every order we sell through there,” said Megyeri.
Megyeri says he’s been forced to raise prices, and even though he’d rather not have to he has no choice. He’s not alone, management at Bingo Burger say they do it to offset the cost, but they also have a backup option for people who order through the different apps.
“I know for us personally you can order online and then also get a door dash option, but not pay the door dash prices,” said Chris Arroyo, the Assistant General Manager of Bingo Burger.
Bambinos said they have turned off their third-party delivery services when times get busy, but Bingo Burger doesn't turn off their services.
Bingo Burger and Bambinos Pizza do plan to continue using the apps for delivery services going into the new year, but they still want to see customers come inside and eat or pick up their food.
“Supporting small business all the time, continue with that energy because a lot of us are still, we’re still kind of in that pandemic run and a lot of places are still on the verge of closing,”
While it has been a learning process, both Bingo Burger and Bambinos Pizza are happy they have the option of third-party delivery service.
