Chef ...says UberEats made him ‘invisible’, leaving him broke and $730,000 in debt

So here we have a story where a chef/cook/entrepreneur decides to run a burger kitchen with a leased kitchen without providing table service, just deliveries through Uber

1 he had 30 years experience in food with a major chain.
2 he admits that he used Uber as a marketing tool although he saved heaps on not having a regular restaurant – with service
3 the burgers would have been at the higher end of pricing as ingredients were fresh hand crafted and
4 “Everything from the packaging to the ingredients have been carefully crafted with delivery in mind”
5. He never had a plan B, should Uber not be able to fulfill timely delivery
6. nothing was in writing between himself & Uber

If he was turning over so much sales why didn’t he pay creditors in a timely manner,
What about the small traders he’ll leave out of pocket?
He was grossing $30,000 per week. Why not put money aside for your tax liabilities?
What does he hope to gain by going public; maybe setting the scene perhaps to crowdfund a legal action against Uber?


www.news.com.au... ry/93888b78308d67e303a7144b1c253b53

Tony Plunkett was once UberEats’ star performer, raking in $32,000 a week. But the burger chef says Uber flipped on him, driving him “broke.

The chef behind some of the country’s most popular burgers has flipped on UberEats, accusing the global ride-sharing giant of destroying his business and leaving him hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Tony Plunkett says he was stabbed in the back by UberEats after helping spearhead its Sydney launch by setting up the country’s first ever “dark kitchen” — a delivery-only restaurant — out the back of a shuttered Kings Cross nightclub.

Mr Plunkett spent three decades running McDonald’s stores before branching out to start his own business in Melbourne’s Ferntree Gully in 2015, with On It Burgers — named Australia’s favourite burger shop by Menulog — quickly becoming one of the most popular restaurants on the UberEats platform.
.......

“Everything was verbal — we were excited, we were running hard,” he said. “I made investment decisions based on assurances from UberEats. That’s where I’m at.”
“I annualised over $1.5 million in sales within 12 weeks, then to suit their purposes they shut me down,” he said.
Mr Plunkett has sent a legal letter to Uber alleging multiple breaches of Australian Consumer Law and the Franchising Code of Conduct, suggesting damages claims for the “relevant contraventions exceed $7.08 million”

“It’s not a small sum, it’s well in excess of $1 million,” he said, adding he needed the money to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars he still owes to his creditors, “from the tax office to butchers and bakers”.
“I just want to pay my creditors and move on,” he said.

“(Uber) is using their financial muscle to block me in the courts. My lawyer said it will be hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight them. I don’t have the wherewithal to take them on. The only thing left to me is to go public with it.”

Back Story

Disrupting the disruptors: Uber ushers in latest foodie upheaval

www.reuters.com...
SEPTEMBER 2, 2016

SYDNEY (Reuters) - After three decades running McDonald’s Corp restaurants, Tony Plunkett thought he knew everything about flipping burgers for a profit, and last year went out on his own with a start-up franchise in the Australian city of Melbourne.

But he soon learned his industry was being turned inside out by the Internet, and he has since signed on with UberEats, the food delivery service of Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL]. Last month, he opened Australia’s first restaurant - a leased kitchen in a shuttered Sydney night-club - run entirely on deliveries by the U.S. ride-sharing firm.

“When you’re running your own delivery service, you need your driver to come back and that’s dead time,” the founder of On It Burgers told Reuters. “You don’t need the Uber guy to come back, he just keeps going.”

Some firms are even trying to convince restaurants to dispense with sit-down tables and use their centralized kitchens to dispatch food to increasingly mobile consumers. In Australia, a high minimum wage has restaurants even more anxious to cut overheads, and global players are flocking in to find a new growth market

EDIT: Fixed link above

www.news.com.au... ry/93888b78308d67e303a7144b1c253b53





Try copyiing this

" www.news.com.au... ry/93888b78308d67e303a7144b1c253b53 "

My coffee isn't kicking in as fast as I'd like, but I can't seem to find what UberEats did to screw him over? Or maybe I'm that daft? The top link doesn't work on my end.

Probably shouldn't have made investment decisions based on verbal assurances. I guess at this point just take the money you've made and move to Indonesia. Screw the creditors.

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

In business there is one rule that tops all others: Get it in writing!

The days of conducting business on a promise and a handshake are long gone!

originally posted by: Drucifer
My coffee isn't kicking in as fast as I'd like, but I can't seem to find what UberEats did to screw him over? Or maybe I'm that daft? The top link doesn't work on my end.

It's not just you! I'll try to fix the link: UberEats: Man who pioneered "dark kitchen" speaks out against company

And this would be the problem:

According to Mr Plunkett, from the middle of October onwards his store would regularly “go invisible” in the app at peak dinner times, decimating his sales. At other times he would find his delivery radius inexplicably restricted.

“We became too popular,” Mr Plunkett said. “I was sucking too many drivers and riders into the store, so they shut us down. They would make us go invisible. If you go from 4km to 3km you lose about 60 per cent of your business.”

He claims that prior to agreeing to set up the Sydney restaurant, he was given assurances that he would be granted a minimum radius of 4km, except in extreme weather. Crucially, however, he says there was no written contract.

originally posted by: Drucifer
My coffee isn't kicking in as fast as I'd like, but I can't seem to find what UberEats did to screw him over? Or maybe I'm that daft? The top link doesn't work on my end.

According to Mr Plunkett, from the middle of October onwards his store would regularly “go invisible” in the app at peak dinner times, decimating his sales. At other times he would find his delivery radius inexplicably restricted.

www.news.com.au

Anyway, I live right near his restaurant in Ferntree Gully... It's like an American themed burger joint.

Good burgers, although a little expensive. But I always go through menulog when I order from there, rather than uber eats.

The place always seems packed when go past on way to work, so I don't see how he can't be turning a profit from his Ferntree Gully store at least, even if uber eats are making him invisible.

a reply to: Drucifer

Try copy it not clicking it - I think the links too long for ATS

He's basically claiming they diverted drivers away from him to cover other restaurants and "made him go dark" to uber drivers.

a reply to: underwerks

Whats suspect is that he had 30 years experience at maccas - so he would have know documentation inside out.

a reply to: Subaeruginosa

Good burgers, although a little expensive

This is what I was suggesting - there's enough profit for him to expand and yet he never put $ aside for creditors or tax man and just let it pile up to $1 million?

originally posted by: underwerks
Probably shouldn't have made investment decisions based on verbal assurances. I guess at this point just take the money you've made and move to Indonesia. Screw the creditors.

Ummm...screw paying the bills...huh...?

How very...progressive...of you...






YouSir

He should have read up on Uber before putting "trust" in them. Uber has a consistent bad history of doing whatever it takes to get ahead and a cutt-throat corporate culture.

The dollop podcast does a funny episode on the history of Uber if anyone wants to learn the history and laugh.

I definitely believe that Uber may have minipulated their setting to make the restaurant invisible. Uber had minipulated their system to screw with city officials.

Uber is a bad company to get in business with unless you have a bullet-proof contract.

a reply to: YouSir

Thank you. I learned the "screw the creditors" thing from our current President.

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

Sounds like he made some mistakes, but maybe the biggest one was a verbal agreement with Uber.

Pfft no excuse for failure did Yelp block him grubhub uber eats is not the only game

Now if yelp blacklisted him yea that would hurt they replaced the doorknob flyer for food delivery

But uber eats shut up there way down the list

So he the entire lure of his profit motive is in not having to pay a delivery driver for a trip back to the restaurant to pick up and deliver another order? Because the trip back is empty and they are not making any money. They were going to use uber so they only had to pay one way and not for the return drive?

How could a return drive cost these restaurants so much money that it was impracticable to hire their own delivery drivers? Another thing the article stated is he felt torpedoed simply by uber raising their rates.

Maybe if the profit margins are thin enough that a return trip on a delivery will make or break a business, it would have been smarter to stay working for his previous employer, mcdonalds.

I must be getting old b/c I couldn't care less about uber or those who use it. It's been a scam/loophole from the start and those who use it will get what they deserve - schitty serices all around. The food services guy is just trying to makemore $$ off crowdfunding somehow after probably blowing all his profits..

Poor business planning.

Relying on the exploitive gig economy to get you rich and failing, has a little bit of a lesson in it somewhere.

He spent 30 years flipping burgers at McDonalds, therefore he thought he knew everything about burgers? I'm thinking he was a bit under-educated here.

Uber eats takes 30% of the money... before sales. He is paying more using them than hiring a driver

uhh

relying on uber to be professional hahaha

what kind of idiot brain.

uber is for people who cant get regular jobs because of some weird # they got going that that just doesnt mesh well in actually society

sure 1/10 might appear to be normal but whatev.