(Added: WSB/WCN photo)
Thanks to Sue for the tip. Just published on our partner site White Center Now, the proprietor of the Bok a Bok fried-chicken mini-chain has just closed two locations, including White Center, where he founded Bok a Bok eight years ago. He says “third-party apps” took too big a cut. Details here.
This is sad and depressing. I can’t believe that something like an app, a recent invention which essentially does nothing, takes such a significant cut that a business like this can’t make it anymore.
They used to have a large space for dine in. We used to eat there a lot. Now they have maybe 2 tables back. If they redid their lobby area to be more palatable for dine in, they probably would have been popular for dine in again. As it is, I have been boycotting them since earlier this year they came out in favor of cutting wages for DoorDash drivers. I am a driver, and if they don’t want me to make more money that’s fine, I guess I can’t afford their chicken then. (I can, used to be a regular customer for years, not anymore!) play stupid games win stupid prizes- I’m not surprised and I’m not sorry to see them closing stores after the media tirade they went on against pay up earlier this year. And no, orders are not down for everyone after pay up, Big Mario’s does a ton of delivery, so does Ezells, so does Popeyes, so does Lil Woodys. Shocking that when you come out against people making minimum wage repeatedly, people might stop supporting your business.
where’s the source that Bok a Bok every said drivers we compensated too much? their messaging has always been at the apps’ fees on the business. if they’re losing money being on the apps, are they supposed to continue to stay on the apps for the sake of drivers? they rolled their own app and were hiring delivery drivers as employees; how does that not show they value delivery drivers?
No one cares about your dining in boycott for just 50 bucks worth. You weren’t their main revenue driver.
I have never eaten there but my husband has. White Center has two other fast food chicken places right down the street within easy walking distance. I wonder why they are leaving; too much competition, increasing rents and street people. Maybe not enough business because of how expensive it is to even eat at Fast Food Places. I don’t understand how you can blame 3 party apps, not exactly sure what that supposed to mean.
In many cases the third party apps can take a commission from the restaurant of up to 30% of the sale. All those fees you pay when you’re ordering? They don’t go to the restaurant. The amount of money the restaurant actually makes off those orders is barely breaking even. Bok a Bok tried to move to in-house delivery which I’ve used a number of times. But they just weren’t getting enough sales, and not being on the third party apps you don’t get the exposure of people who might not have realized you exist and are enticed to order.
If you think KFC and Popeye’s are in any way comparable to Bok a Bok, you have clearly never been there and can see your way out of the discussion now. Bok a Bok had a unique menu. Korean fusion, everything from the Kimchee mac and cheese to the sandwiches to those yummy mushrooms were on point. Many people don’t realize how much third party apps charge restaurants to use their platforms. Restaurants already have tight margins, the delivery apps squeezed everything that was left out of each sale, leaving the restaurants practically operating a charity. Seattle tried to redirect those hefty fees away from shareholders to the workers, but all that did was cause the apps to tack on more fees for the consumer, pricing out many consumers in addition to the restaurants. Bok a Bok chose to eat those fees themselves rather than allowing their customers to pay the extra. During the Pandemic, Bok a Bok invested heavily in delivery so they could keep their kitchen working and the places open with limited dining space. City Council was, at the time, working on limiting third party apps’ fees for the restaurants so it probably seemed like a good choice at the time. Sad to see a great food place owned by good people have to go out in a way that seems so avoidable. :(
This is exactly correct! I feel absolutely awful that the third-party delivery services have basically shut this business down. It’s heartbreaking because this business was the best in my opinion in regards to their food quality and creativity regarding their menu options.
I don’t know how the delivery apps work but I’m guessing they take a cut of the order price.
We’ve actually stopped using DoorDash, UberEats, etc, after all the ridiculous add-on fees. The city pushed some of those fees for “living wages,” which puts the cost outside the reasonable range. Thus, I save money by opting to make my own food or do the old fashioned method of calling in an order and getting it myself.
If the drivers were willing to do a job despite it being less than a living wage, that’s their decision. There are too many middle-men now, and city council adding the convenience tax to make it more “fair” ultimately makes the cost unjustifiable.
Calling an uber for your food is a luxury expense and the cost should reflect that. And the workers providing that service should earn a living wage. If that isn’t possible within a reasonable price then maybe it just isn’t a viable business strategy? Like you said it really isn’t hard to just get the food yourself after all.
Thank you very much for saying this. I am a delivery driver and am doing a lot better after pay up passed. I keep seeing people saying they have stopped ordering- where? I get plenty of orders all day and all night long. Many places are doing fine with delivery. Bok a bok chose to come out in the media complaining, now they are reaping the consequences of their actions.
I’m not really sure where you get your info, but Bok a Bok was always very clear they support paying livable wages and their issues were with the predatory fees the apps charged restaurants. They’re quoted saying so several times in various interviews.
They claimed they were “not consulted” on the pay up law and were unhappy with it. I don’t know why restaurants should be “consulted” with how much DoorDash has to pay me- and the truth is, while most restaurants were slow during Feb and March, delivery business for the vast majority of places rebounded quite quickly. They initially came out in support of pay up, but then changed their tune later.
“why restaurants should be “consulted”” idk that sounds like it could be anything not necessarily caring about how much DoorDash pays you. if anything, based on what Bok a Bok has said publicly, they could’ve wanted the legislation to have a way to prevent the apps from passing the fees directly on to customers or the restaurants as a response like they’ve done. either way we’re both speculating…
Please stop saying orders are not down based on your SINGULAR personal experience as a driver. It’s been widely reported they are down, and the city is scrambling to roll back the ridiculous over reaching regulations. Just one of many stories about this:https://www.pymnts.com/news/delivery/2024/delivery-apps-see-orders-drop-after-wage-hikes/#:~:text=DoorDash%20and%20Instacart%20both%20announced,the%20city's%20new%20pay%20requirements.
If you don’t want to get up and get the food yourself, you should pay a premium. And yes DoorDash should absolutely fail if they can’t pay decent wages. Labor is labor.
I recently broke my right leg and can’t drive, let alone walk. There are no busses where I live, and the metro flex will not come here either. I live alone and am relying on delivery apps for groceries and some food. Don’t assume that people who use these apps are simply being lazy, that’s ableist and unfair. That said, these apps are greedy and exploitative and need to be reined in
$10/mo Amazon Fresh and/or Whole Foods has unlimited delivery if you have a prime membership. They both have prepared meals. They also had (might still be offering) a free trial for grub hub. I passed on that because nothing is free. Someone is paying. I do understand there are those who aren’t fans of Amazon. For those willing to cook or at the very least heat up something it works well.
Being disabled, yes, I’m willing to pay extra for convenience of delivery. But there are limits. When I tried to order a Subway foot long and a cookie and after inflated cost/fees/tax/tip it was going to cost $38, I just deleted everything and came up with a plan B. That’s predatory, not convenience. Fees were doubling the cost of delivery.
Delivery apps take between 20-30% of each order, plus additional fees if a restaurant chooses to advertise on the site for better visibility, plus the delivery fees and the “Seattle surcharge” they charge each customer at the end of the transaction. If you tip your driver, the apps are allowed to factor that into their minimum wage and pay them less, so they indirectly keep your tips too. Doordash and Ubereats (who account for 90% of food delivery market share) have the choice to pass the cost of paying reasonable wages onto the consumers or their shareholders. They picked their shareholders over you, which is not Seattle City Council’s fault.
The apps are not actually allowed to count tips towards our wages. And you are not required to tip for delivery anymore. You can if you want to, it’s still a nice thing to do, but not necessary in order to get your food picked up.
If are too lazy to go get your own food you do need to tip your driver.
Just wondering if anyone stopped to think about if someone where not lazy, but physically disabled and were not able to go out and get food, let alone make there own food. If said individual has no family or friends and no other options to eat. Not a lot of older people can afford a nursing home. As a service industry worker, my wages allow me to eat through Uber eats maybe once or twice a month, but a tech worker, with a starting wage of 100k plus a year has that luxury, they’re not lazy and usually they don’t tip. There’s more than meats the eye
Hey I’m a delivery driver, the apps do take a lot from the restaurants but what you said about them being able to factor customer tips into our wage is straight up false. It works that way right now for restaurant businesses under 500 employees, but not for food delivery.
I would also just like to mention, food delivery is actually not that much more expensive than it was before, especially because it is no longer required to tip to receive good service. For DD and Grubhub that is. On Uber the fees are indeed ridiculously high. And yes even without tips we earn a living wage because of the guaranteed payment the PayUp law has secured for us. So you can tip if you want, but if the tip amount is keeping you from ordering I can definitely say most of us drivers would prefer that you still order and don’t tip, that way we can stay busy and earn good money from the PayUp law.
They have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, which is different than just deciding to screw over the consumer. I would encourage everyone to look up DoorDash’s financial statements because he will notice that they had never once made a profit. Even with these huge increases in fees, they still do not make a profit. Delivery applications have not, and will probably never be profitable anyway.
Never once made a profit* after accounting for ridiculous overhead expenses like C-suite compensation
The fees are not added by the council, they’re added by the delivery broker apps to pressure the council to cut wages.You can tell it’s a scam because they’ve added these same fees to areas outside of Seattle, such as White Center, where Bok-a-Bok is. They just want to take more of your money while pointing fingers at the people doing the deliveries and the government.
The city did not add any kind of “tax.” The city said that apps as employers need to pay minimum wage, pay drivers for use of their vehicles, and guarantee them pay for times when they’re waiting between orders.It was the tech companies that chose to level these excessive fees on customers, all the while making record profits for themselves and their investors.
Having a third party pick up your order and deliver it to your door is an extravagant luxury, the people who do that deserve a premium wage and the price should absolutely reflect that.
Sad to hear they’re closing two locations, but happy that they’ll still be open elsewhere. That chicken is delicious. It’s curious how so many local pizza joints and Chinese restaurants back in the day offered fast, local delivery – without GPS enabled phones, no less – for the cost of a tip to the delivery drivers. But “disruptive” Silicon Valley can’t seem to manage food delivery without burdening restaurants and their customers with astronomical fees. Some might remember that Bok a Bok founder Brian O’Connor was one of the early chefs at the Swinery when it opened back in 2009.
Average fees on DoorDash order nowadays- $6-9 all in. Goes up more the more you order as DoorDash takes 15%.bok a bok was charging a $7 delivery fee, not much lower than fees on many DoorDash orders nowadays. If you order $80 worth of food, yeah the fees on DoorDash will be high, but DoorDash/uber/the like have *always* charged 15%, that hasn’t changed. And you used to have to tip upwards of $4 to get your food picked up while hot. The average person ordering from your average restaurant 2-3miles away actually pays less in total delivery costs now than they used to. As well, $7 for their in house delivery compared to $9 which is what it would have cost me to order bok a bok DoorDash delivery to my house in arbor heights is not a significant price difference.
In house delivery has only 1 goal: enrich the business by offering an additional service. Silicon Valley disruption has the primary goal of providing a service to extract as much wealth from the transaction as possible. therein lies the difference.
I was heartbroken when I saw this on social media this morning. I’ve been ordering from them for quite some time, and then I stopped ordering when the third party apps just got too ridiculous with their fees. I was thrilled when they started doing in-house delivery and started ordering again. I had planned on ordering tonight so I’m even more sad.
NOOOOOOOO Bok a Bok is amazing and is the the only restaurant we’ve found that’s actually safe for symptomatic celiacs. 😭😭😭
I mean, you could have hired your own drivers and cut out the middle man. Seems like the business was already hanging by a thread.
Don’t use the apps for your restaurant if you don’t want to share the cut. It’s that simple. If you want exposure, pay for marketing like everyone else does. If you want delivery to be an option, then pay for someone to deliver & charge a delivery fee that is reasonable for customers and still allows you to maintain a profit. I get smaller businesses don’t have as much luxury as large company profits but figure it out before you open. Take a look around at your competitors in the area. Are they successful? Will you win over their customers with your product? Is it easy to pickup for customers? Is parking or safety present near your business?
You realize that Bok a Bok has been in business a long time; this location being 8 years old? I don’t think you get that far without knowing what you’re doing… Based on what they’ve said publicly over the last couple years, their pivot to their own in-house delivery, they were doing all those things to survive but ended up having to cut locations. Your comment is nothing but judgement without even giving Bok a Bok any context. Why even make a comment like this?
I already can’t stand these goofy apps but it’s really sad that they played ANY part in the closure of this business. I’m not sure what you do as a restaurant owner – get off the apps as best you can and hope to generate a following organically or suck it up, succumb to the apps and accept that they’re robbing you?
Don’t businesses have to opt in to third party delivery? Or can’t they at least opt out? I know the fees are obnoxious, but guess I’m not understanding this as a reason for closing.
Too bad when something like this happens. I have never used those services like Door Dash and the likes, I always assume there’s an extra fee for having them deliver to a house. On another note, there’s a chicken Korean restaurant in Burien at 1st Ave S and SW 148th St., Chicko Chicken and looks very good too.
Factor in the lower traffic at Beer Star pre and post COVID … margins getting pressure from all directions, all adds up.
Food delivery has never once been profitable for any company that’s ever done it. I feel bad for businesses like BokABok that have seen their revenues decline significantly with the delivery driver rules that the Seattle City Council enacted. I would encourage people to look up the publicly available financial statements of DoorDash. If you look in their statement of operations, you will notice that they have not made a profit ever. So even before they were paying higher wages, they weren’t viable in the long term. The Seattle City Council has just expedited the failure, and the rules out in place over driver pay has led to millions in lost revenue for businesses over the last few months. In any case, the Seattle City Council acknowledged that they made a mistake, told the public that they were going to change it, and then decided to sit on the revision and not make any changes. At the expense of our local businesses, which are YOUR neighbors. Anyone who has done gig work knows that it is usually worth it to work for less than minimum wage for the opportunity to not have a boss. Drivers now make significantly less because there are so many fewer orders coming through in the system. If the Council would revise the rules so that these delivery companies could reduce their fees…it would help a lot of people. Drivers would make more because more people would order. DoorDash, Uber and the others could drop the higher fees, and businesses would see their revenues increase. Remember who you’re voting for. This was Lisa Herbolds idea and she was its greatest champion. Remember it the next time you vote too!
Wow so gig workers are self sufficent and capable enough to do their jobs well without a manager? That’s impressive, you would think without needing to pay anyone to oversee them that there would be enough money left over to at least pay them minimum wage…
“Anyone who has done gig work knows that it is usually worth it to work for less than minimum wage for the opportunity to not have a boss.”
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Well, aren’t you special? You don’t seem to give a F that you’re making it worse for everybody else who might not mind having a boss, so that they can. you know, make enough money to live on. Those are the people the City Council was trying to help, and if you think the hapless dead weight who represents District 1 now even comes close to Lisa Herbold, I have an oceanfront lot in Kansas to sell you.
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The entire “gig economy” business model needs to die a quick and painful death. The tech bros who have grown rich off of it need to be bankrupted, shamed, marginalized, and ridiculed, and so do those who worship at their grungy feet.
If you look up financial statements for Amazon, they posted losses year after year forever as well. Posting a loss doesn’t automatically mean you’re losing money, it often means you have managed to categorize or spend the money you’re making in such a way you won’t get taxed on it. The executives are making money. The shareholders are making money. The army of lobbyists they’re sending into cities to spread misinformation about laws like Pay Up are making money. Everyone is making money except the restaurants and the drivers (you know, the people doing the work).
Erik, your assertion is disingenuous at best.In the three months proceeding June 30th, 2024 door dash reported 1.19 billion in GAAP profits (https://ir.doordash.com/news/news-details/2024/DoorDash-Releases-Second-Quarter-2024-Financial-Results/default.aspx)They then do some funky accounting to claim that they are actually losing 158 million over that time period, even though they don’t actually have to pay out to “redeemable non controlling interests” till they actually redeem their debt notes (which those holders don’t appear to actually be doing since the company is making around a billion dollars every three month).
There is a difference between gross profit and net loss. If you scroll down to the bottom, you will see their consolidated statement of operations. That shows how they took a loss. I think that you are taking one piece of information and extrapolating upon it in a way that is not actually how accounting works.
“I think that you are taking one piece of information and extrapolating upon it” gave me a chuckle b/c isn’t that exactly what you do in the comments where you emphatically state that delivery has never been profitable for any company that’s tried it b/c all the apps report net losses? You never take into account that a company is incentivized to report losses when they are young, and that there are tons of opportunities for companies to shift profits directly to individual executives. Look at the CEOs compensation alone: it’s all stock. In the financial reports, DD has a line item for the cost of having to purchase stock/give away equity that more than covers their net losses. DD “losing” money isn’t hurting them at all, they are making money hand-over-fist, and are indeed profitable to the layman. The reason they companies make such massive profit is because they extract it from the customers, the drivers, and the restaurants.
Bok a Bok was terrific. I will miss them. Glad I had one of their sandwiches a week ago. I have no opinion regarding delivery apps because I don’t use them. But I certainly wouldn’t build my business around them.
So, what am I missing? If third-party app ordering causes you, the maker, to lose money, why participate? I don’t understand why owners feel compelled to fill orders where thy make a loss. I have heard that apps will then list them with mark up without their participation. But doesn’t that mean the owner has made the expected margin on the transaction no matter how much it is “resold” for? I need an explainer.
One benefit to the owner is the exposure. For instance, I had a gift card for UberEats and was looking for a something different. Came upon Roll Pod in White Center; never heard from them before. So without that app, I never knew they existed and wouldn’t continue to get food from there. With Bok a Bok I knew about them from elsewhere, but it can definitely introduce you to places new to you. Bok a Bok did try to ditch the apps and do in-house delivery, but it was still a struggle.
At the risk of sounding cynical, Doordash is a publicly traded company and was recently listed on Nasdaq. It’s a large tech corporation with happy investors and billions in cash to play a kind of politics that average businesses, citizens, and even large cities(!) cannot. Seattle tried to force more of their wealth to delivery drivers. That was principled and commendable but also naive. If you are a cash-cow tech corporation with a population of stock holders to reward you can fight laws with economic force. Doordash’s recently added fee is straight-up politics, literally designed to close businesses and purge less profitable drivers. Are you mad at the Seattle City Council for sticking it to restaurants and forcing drivers out of their jobs? That was the purpose of the fee, lest other cities get any ideas about telling THEM what to do. Tech is a global power that essentially runs governments like ours. Seattle’s effort to curb that power surely seems quaint to them. Perhaps citizen ire at the Council will result in one more seat being gained that will proclaim themselves to be “pro-business.” Such are things in the dawning age of tech feudalism.
Well it did work a little bit. People forced Hollingsworth to drop her proposal. Sometimes “bullying” the conservative council we got now will work. We do need to vote power-hungry Nelson out immediately. Electing Rinck will be a start.
I’m quite certain that the tech bros think exactly as you say they do, and that they are quite prepared, nay, eager, to act accordingly. I would point out, though, that we have stark parallels in American history — to wit, the arrogance, hubris, and self-imagined sense of invulnerablity and inevitability shared by the British Empire in the 1770s — they ruled the seas, after all — and the same qualities shared by the slave power of the 1850s — didn’t everyone realize that cotton was king?. They fell, and they fell hard. We might be in the “dawning age of tech feudalism,” as you put it, but for every dawn, twilight, and the gloom of the darkest night, have always followed. Always.
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.
Sad to see them go. As a general rule do not blindly accept business folks reasons why their business failed, they are trying to make excuses but it’s just very difficult to run a profitable restaurant in general. I doubt delivery apps had anything to do with it, but they do make a popular scapegoat these days for ordinary business failures. It just wasn’t meant to be, accept it and move on.
I agree with this. Although I do think the fact they came out complaining to media repeatedly about pay up is one of the factors as to why people were choosing to support other restaurants over them, in addition to their lack of dine in. The reasons why they closed are nuanced and likely not just “we didn’t make money on delivery” as they say.
That’s just not true, AH Resident. I read a number of interviews where they stated very clearly they wanted workers to be paid living wages, and were only complaining about the fees delivery apps charged restaurants (and the fee they added later for customers, which Bok a Bok chose to eat themselves so their customers wouldn’t be tricked into railing against the law at UberEats and DoorDash hoped). Their ongoing efforts to support workers is one of the reasons I stepped up my support of Bok a Bok.
The number of comments here that lack a basic understanding of economics always terrifies me. Your misinformed votes are a detriment to our economy and then when they come to fruition you disregard the evidence and double down encouraging the same asinine policies. Then you wonder why are these businesses close down. But anyone telling you the truth is a bad guy. Uh-huh.
What I fail to understand is why I, and, presumably, others who live in unincorporated King County and have a “Seattle” address are being charged the extra fee that the City of Seattle mandated. We are not in the city limits of Seattle and not subject to laws and rules passed by it. The “Seattle” designation on our addresses is simply because Seattle is the nearest city to our unincorporated neighborhood. My silly example is that, if Seattle passed a law that it is illegal to wear purple on Wednesday, I could wear all the purple I want on Wednesdays as long as I don’t go inside the city limits of Seattle. I’ve talked to Instacart several times and they say that they have to tack the fee on because Seattle has mandated higher pay for drivers. In unincorporated King County that is not true. Even with a Seattle address, those who live outside the boundaries of Seattle are not subject to Seattle laws and don’t vote in Seattle elections. I’d have more respect for the company if they just admitted what they were doing.
There is no “extra fee that the City of Seattle mandated.” Seattle mandated working conditions and base pay. The delivery company execs CHOSE to add those fees on, and CHOSE to inflict them on unincorporated areas. That’s who you should be angry with.
It shows how damn effective these apps are at messaging to avoid responsibility and push a political agenda. Misinformation wouldn’t be an issue if the apps were clear that they were responsible for the fee, but misinformation benefits them. Just like corps. using “inflation” as a guise to fleece consumers and skirt any blame or agency.
I realized that I needed to clarify the above post. I’m talking about delivery from unincorporated King County to unincorporated King County, not delivery from inside Seattle boundries to unincorporated King County.
I’m a little surprised no one has read between AH Residents comments that they are happy Bok is closing and people related to their industry have lost their jobs. Pretty cold stuff. Would love to hear who they deliver for so I can boycott then and run them out of business.
Well our house has uninstalled DoorDash on all our phones and will never use 3rd party apps again. We were one of the customers who picked up their own food from Bok a Bok but because of what we learned, we will never use those apps for anything ever again
Sorry, comment time is over.
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