The owner of an Etobicoke bakery said she was shocked to find out her business had been partnered with a food delivery service without her knowledge.
Patricia Drewnowska is the co-owner of Patricia’s Cake Creations, a specialty bakery located near Dundas Street West and Kingsway Crescent that sells custom-made cakes, macarons and scones. She said she was notified by a customer that the bakery was listed on a food delivery website operated by the company DoorDash.
“We were quite surprised because we are not on DoorDash,” she said. “We were quite taken aback.”
In addition to adding the bakery to their website without permission, Drewnowska said that the service advertises and sells items her shop doesn’t provide.
“I found our menu, which consisted of things like scrambled eggs and bacon, things that we don’t do. It’s not our specialty. We aren’t a breakfast place,” she said. “Where is this food coming from?”
Drewnowska said she contacted other local businesses in her area that were listed on DoorDash and they told her they were unaware that they were part of the service as well.
“It’s not just us,” she said. “There are a ton of other people having the same issues.”
Drewnowska said she has been making attempts to contact DoorDash regarding the incident.
A number of other restaurants across Canada have expressed concern about the delivery service. In Edmonton, several restaurants complained that they were being added without their permission.
“It was a huge surprise to us,” Matt Phillips, owner of Northern Chicken in Edmonton, said. “We weren’t in any way partnered with them or wanting to be on their service at all.”
A marketing professor from the Alberta School of Business said that business owners have a right to be concerned if the service is adding their menu without consent.
“If they don’t get the food to the customer on time or it doesn’t get there warm or as well prepared as a restaurant would normally serve it, that could negatively affect the restaurants reputation or brand,” Kyle Murray said.
When CTV News Toronto contacted DoorDash, the company said it’s been in business for six years and that “for the majority of our merchants, being on DoorDash offers…an additional marketing opportunity. For those not interested, for any reason, we immediately remove them from the platform upon their request.”
Drewnowska said that she wants her restaurant to be removed from the company’s website and is warning other local business owners to check to see if they are listed as a partner with the food delivery service.
“It puts people’s reputations in jeopardy,” she said. “We don’t want our name to be ruined.”
With files from CTV News Toronto's Pat Foran
