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DoorDash offers restaurants more flexible commission rates
Paying a lower rate shrinks the delivery area and bumps up customer delivery fees.
Food delivery apps, the pandemic and finding a new normal
Like the rest of the world, because of the coronavirus outbreak, the restaurant industry is in the midst of a serious reckoning. As of writing, 23 American states have shut down restaurants except for takeout and delivery. In the UK, McDonald's has completely closed every location, including takeout and delivery. Despite campaigns like Tuesday's nationwide hashtag #thegreatamericantakeout, urging consumers to order takeout from local restaurants, many are shuttering for good. Even delivery logistics are proving a challenge, as illustrated by the large, non-socially distanced crowds assembled outside of Carbone in New York City, waiting for comfort food to go.
DoorDash buys food delivery app Caviar from Square
The food delivery world is getting smaller. DoorDash has agreed to buy rival food delivery platform Caviar from Square for a total of $410 million in cash and stock. Square CEO Jack Dorsey said during a second-quarter earnings call today that the move would allow the company to focus on its core money delivery business.
OpenTable now offers delivery with help from Uber Eats and Grubhub
As of today, you can use OpenTable's updated iOS app to book dinner reservations or have your food delivered. OpenTable announced that it's partnering with Uber Eats, Caviar and Grubhub to offer meal delivery from over 8,000 restaurants in 90 cities across the US.
Caviar will cover medical costs for injured couriers
Insurance for app-based couriers and drivers tends to be inconsistent. It's not always available, sometimes costs drivers extra and may be focused more on protecting the company than the worker. Square's restaurant delivery service Caviar is addressing this gap by launching Occupational Accident coverage that will cover costs for injuries suffered on the job. If they're hurt picking up or delivering food, they'll receive up to $1 million per accident, $100,000 in accidental death and survivor's benefits and disability pay that equates to 50 percent of their average weekly earnings. This won't cost extra to couriers, and it starts the very moment they start accepting customers.
Food delivery apps face lawsuits over employee benefits
The fight over employee benefits when it comes to app-based on-demand services continues. The Chicago Tribune reports that food delivery companies GrubHub, DoorDash and Caviar were all hit with separate lawsuits in San Francisco this week. The suits allege that each failed to offer employee benefits after treating them like full-time workers. In other words, the companies misclassified employees as contractors. If that sounds familiar it's because Uber facing a similar lawsuit in San Francisco over its drivers. In fact, the same attorney that represents plaintiffs in proceedings with Uber and Lyft is working with the delivery drivers in these three new cases. Like Uber, the suits against GrubHub and DoorDash are class actions while the demand arbitration request with Caviar is on behalf of a single driver. Based on the filings, GrubHub allegedly treated its workers as employees but failing to offer proper benefits like reimbursements for gas, parking and phone data. It also allegedly failed to meet wage requirements and offer overtime pay. [Image credit: Jin Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Square's food delivery service can get you a $15 NYC meal in 15 minutes
You might have forgotten that Square, the company best known for its mobile credit card reader, also owns the restaurant delivery service Caviar. With so many food delivery options out there, it's simply hard to stand out. But now Square is bringing one of its more unique Caviar capabilities to NYC: Fastbite, a feature that will deliver a meal from a popular restaurant for under $15 in 15 minutes or less. There are, of course, a few caveats: You've only got a handful of single-serving options to choose from (not full restaurant menus), and Fastbite is only available during peak lunch and dinner hours in Manhattan. But if you've ever had a busy day where your lunch delivery didn't make it on time, or you just simply didn't want to deal with the lunch rush, Fastbite could be incredibly useful.
Square's restaurant delivery service arrives on Android
You no longer have to carry an iPhone just to check out Square's restaurant delivery service, Caviar -- it's now available for Android. Like before, you can both order fine meals and track the couriers in real-time as they bring that dining to your door. You'll still have to live in one of Caviar's few eligible cities (New York City, LA and San Francisco are particularly well-covered) to give it a shot, but you'll at least get to use your device of choice when splurging on a Mediterranean feast.
Square's new restaurant delivery app lets you track your meal
Square's seemingly odd decision to buy a restaurant delivery service is starting to make sense. The company has just released Caviar's first mobile app for iOS, letting you order high-quality cooking from your iPhone in eligible cities like Chicago, New York and San Francisco. You've probably seen the basic concept of a delivery app before, but there's a clever twist here. This is more like Uber for haute cuisine; you can not only check the status of your order, but follow couriers as they bring your meal. In theory, you won't be caught off-guard when your food arrives.
Square just bought a restaurant delivery company
Here's something unexpected: Square -- the company that turned your cell phone into a credit card reader -- just purchased Caviar, a company that delivers food from restaurants that don't normally deliver. It's an unexpected acquisition; Caviar is a consumer facing service, while Square tends to market its services to independent businesses. Still, Square CEO Jack Dorsey says the purchase is completely on track with the company's goals.
Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green review roundup
Now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag on Western Digital's 2TB Caviar Green HDD, hardware fanatics have had a chance to take the 3.5-inch drive for a spin. While its performance leaves something to be desired -- transferring files took longer than the 1TB Caviar Black or 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda -- instead we've got low heat and noise. Of course, the biggest boon is a ginormous storage capacity for just three Benjamins, the same price as some 128GB SSDs. Solid state be damned, rotating disks aren't going away anytime soon. Read - Register Hardware Read - Trusted Reviews Read - Extreme Tech
Western Digital's 2TB Caviar Green hard drive launches, gets previewed
There's no veil of secrecy covering this one, but Western Digital has finally come clean with the industry's first 2TB internal hard drive. Launched today in the USA, the planet's highest capacity single HDD -- otherwise known as the 2TB Caviar Green ($299; available now) -- sits on a 3.5-inch platform, includes 32MB of cache and is based around WD's 500GB per platter technology (with 400Gb/in2 areal density). HotHardware was able to take a sneak peek at this here device (a pre-engineering sample, as it were), and was gracious enough to host up some juicy benchmark results for those eager to see how this capacious beast performed. Against the formidable Spinpoint F1 (Samsung) and Barracuda 7200.11 (Seagate), the WD managed to hold its own, which is saying a lot for a drive of this magnitude. Check the full release after the break.
Western Digital's 2TB Caviar Green HDD on sale in Australia
Just as we'd heard, Western Digital is indeed producing (and shipping) a standalone 2TB internal hard drive. Available now for purchase from Mwave Australia, the 3.5-inch WD20EADS sports a 7,200RPM spin speed, 32MB of cache and a AU$377.80 price tag, which converts to just under $250 in greenbacks. We get the feeling that this drive is just hours away from launching here in the US of A (we're guessing the time zones are to blame), so we'll be keeping a close eye out for early reports on performance.[Thanks, Danny]
Western Digital about to ship 2TB Caviar Green hard drive?
Western Digital has known that Seagate was toiling away in hopes of being the first to market with a standalone 2TB hard drive, and evidently it has chosen to work its engineers that much harder. In a presumed effort to beat Hitachi (and everyone else) to the 2TB barrier, WD is reportedly aiming to launch its Caviar Green 2000GB WD20EADS later this week, and with it will come 32MB of cache, an 8.9-millisecond seek time and an expected price tag of around €170 ($224). Best of all? It should be "available immediately" just as soon as it's outed for real.[Via Electronista]
Western Digital intros 1TB 7200RPM Caviar Black HDD
Watch out, archive junkies. The 1TB internal HDD game just got one more player. Hailed by Western Digital as the "fastest 3.5-inch 7200RPM drive on the market," the Caviar Black SATA drive is available in both 750GB and 1TB flavors, with the latter obviously being the most appealing. On these beasts you'll find "twice" the processing power, 32MB of cache, StableTrac / NoTouch technologies and a respectable five-year warranty. Both units will be ready to grab next week, with the smaller of the two going for $199 and the kingpin $249.
Western Digital intros 320GB-per-platter 3.5-inch hard drives
It looks like Western Digital's hard drives are about to get a good deal denser, with the company now rolling out its first 3.5-inch WD Caviar drives based on 320GB-per-platter technology. That, as the company points out, is the very same areal density seen recently in WD's 160 GB-per-platter 2.5-inch Scorpio drives, which topped out with a total of 320GB of storage due to the obvious size constraints. While the 3.5-inch drives have plenty more room to grow than their smaller counterparts, Western Digital seems to be starting things out slow, with only a single-platter 320GB drive available at the moment. That'll apparently be followed by upgrades across WD's various product lines throughout the year, including drives at "additional capacity points.," Unfortunately, the company doesn't seem to be ready to specify exactly what those points may be just yet, although The Inquirer speculates that we should see three-platter 1TB drives from the company before everything is all said and done.[Via The Inquirer]
Utas Caviar ITRC 7000 "intelligent digital home controller"
If you're looking for something a bit more versatile that your standard $10 all-in-one-remote, this new handheld unit from Utas may be worth a peek -- if you live in Korea, that is. Based on Windows CE, the Caviar ITRC 7000 will let you control just about any IR-based device in your house, either straight outta the box or by programming it using the existing remote. It'll also let you set up macros to reduce your daily button mashing routine, and packs a calendar, calculator and clock (John Hodgman would be proud). Seeing as it'll set you back a hefty 400,000 South Korea Won ($420), lets hope it has at least a few more bells 'n whistles than that (RF would be a nice start) -- although the paltry 64MB of RAM and apparent lack of expansion options do suggest otherwise.[Via AVING.net]
