NoCo restaurants band together to push back against food delivery giants

A group of Northern Colorado restaurateurs is fed up being charged high commission rates and receiving poor customer service from major application-based food delivery services such as GrubHub and DoorDash.

Taking matters into their own hands, the Fort Collins, Greeley and Loveland restaurant owners have banded together to launch NoCo NOSH, an alternative delivery service for local, independent operators.

“I think it’s going to give local Northern Colorado restaurants the opportunity to take back our businesses from the big guys who have come in,”  Brian Seifried, a NoCo NOSH co-owner, Wing Shack founder and co-owner of Luna’s Tacos and Tequila in Greeley, said of the NoCoNOSH platform.

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The concept behind NoCo NOSH, which is owned by a cooperative of more than 50 Northern Colorado restaurateurs, was sparked by Iowa City restaurant owner Jon Sewell. After GrubHub bought up a smaller delivery service and jacked up commission rates, Sewell launched CHOMP Delivery. This service became the model for NoCo NOSH.

“As [app-based delivery services have] become a bigger part of the industry, we started to worry that it isn’t a sustainable model for us,” Seifried said. “We just don’t have the margins to make something like that a major part of our business.”

He said some major delivery apps charge restaurants commissions of upward of 25 to 30 percent.

Local independent restaurants have a tough time competing with large chain restaurants, which are often charged a much lower delivery commission.

“They’re able to negotiate huge deals and pay a fraction of the commission that the mom and pops are paying,” Seifried said.

In addition to providing savings on commissions, NoCo NOSH aims to improve service for restaurant owners and customers.

These [major delivery services] are giant corporations, and they operate out of state,” Seifried said. “So when there’s an issue on the ground — when there are too many orders and not enough drivers, if there’s a snowstorm, if a customer has an issue with a delivery — it’s difficult to call someone and get help or ask a question.”

NoCo NOSH’s customer service team is local.

Large delivery services often hire drivers sight unseen, Seifried said.

“The folks delivering these orders might not reflect very well on the brand that we’ve worked hard to build,” he said,

When local restaurants farm out their delivery operations to GrubHub-type app service, they can feel as though they’re losing contact with their customers.

“Our customers become their customers,” Seifried said. “We don’t have any customer contact. We don’t get their email address — we don’t have any way of getting a hold of them or marketing to them.”

With NoCo NOSH, “local restaurants are able to take some control and power back,” he said. “I’m pretty pumped about that.”