So you are thinking about driving for BTownmenus? Well do yourself a favor and don't. Stay far away. With that warning let me dig a little deeper.
So what is BTownmenus? BTownmenus is a web based food delivery service in Bloomington IN. BTownmenus is contracted out by local restaurants to handle the delivery and "marketing" side of their business. BTownmenus then contracts out the actual delivery of the food to a "partner" driver. The driver gets a flat delivery fee around $3 or $4 per delivery that BTownmenus takes a cut of as a "marketing fee" and then the driver keeps all the tip, if there is one. On the opposite side BTownmenus keeps a percentage of everything their partner restaurants have sold through them. For the customers it really is a great service but what about their "partner" drivers? Well let's start with the why.
So what is BTownmenus? BTownmenus is a web based food delivery service in Bloomington IN. BTownmenus is contracted out by local restaurants to handle the delivery and "marketing" side of their business. BTownmenus then contracts out the actual delivery of the food to a "partner" driver. The driver gets a flat delivery fee around $3 or $4 per delivery that BTownmenus takes a cut of as a "marketing fee" and then the driver keeps all the tip, if there is one. On the opposite side BTownmenus keeps a percentage of everything their partner restaurants have sold through them. For the customers it really is a great service but what about their "partner" drivers? Well let's start with the why.
Why "partner" drivers? Well, this a growing trend in companies where they bring in contractors to avoid legal and financial obligations. These companies avoid things like minimum wage, taxes, unemployment, workman's comp etc. BTownmenus makes claims in their ads that their drivers can work when they want, earn $15 to $25 an hour, can grow with BTownmenus and you can be their own boss just to name a few. They say it is as simple as accept the delivery, pick up the food and drop it off. Sounds amazing right? Well nothing is ever as wonderful as it sounds. Let's take a closer, inside look.
First a large majority of drivers are never told they are a contractors. They don't usually find out until tax time when they are on the hook for thousands in taxes. Surprise! They purposely hide the fact you are a contractor so they can maintain a level of control over you. See, if you don't know you are a "contractor" you don't know you have rights and if you think you are a employee you won't question anything they say.
They say you can work anytime you want, which is kinda true. You set your availability a week in advance and they schedule you within that availability. So you might get all the hours you asked for or you might not. It is all supposedly based on a reliability score, a reliability score they refuse to disclose to the drivers I may add. The higher the score the more likely you will get all the hours you requested and vise versa. Here is the catch, say they schedule you and something comes up, life happens right? Well, when you tell them you can't work they threaten you and tell you they will stop sending you deliveries if you can't work the hours you said you would work and they will. They then force you on call and keep sending you deliveries even though you told them you can't take them. You then have to reject the orders which lowers your reliability score. Then they text you every half hour asking you if you are going to work. I have seen them tell drivers whos relatives have died that they have to work. Keep in mind a lot of these drivers think they are employees so they miss their loved ones funeral for fear of being "fired". As a matter of fact they can stop sending you deliveries for any reason or no reason at all, forever.
Besides the delivery process they offer almost no support and the delivery support can be horrible. They throw you out there and leave you on your own. Say you have a issue with their absolutely terrible drivers app and ask for help, you get nothing. Say you have a discrepancy in your pay, which happens often, and you ask for help, you get nothing. Say you need to know who to contact for important information, you get nothing.
They say you can earn $15 to $25 an hour but BTownmenus makes more money the more drivers they hire. The more drivers the less drivers make. There are only so many deliveries to divide amongst all the drivers but they never stop hiring drivers. They purposely over saturate the market with drivers. The less money the drivers make is the more they make so they actively try to cost you money. There is a lot of hours you will be lucky to make $6, I went many hours and made nothing and when you do make $6 you have to take out taxes, gas, wear and tear on your car etc. While you are making nothing they are raking in the money because there are so many other drivers and that means minimal wait time between deliveries and they never have to pause the website. They don't pay minimum wage so they don't care what you make, so when they say "grow with them" what they mean is they will use the money they take from you to market their business and partner restaurants and actively take your business away. When I drove for BTownmenus I had to keep three jobs just to make ends meet. Not to mention the college students that won't answer the phone for you to drop off the food and you sit 30 minutes waiting on them or waiting an hour for the restaurant to make the food. None of which you are being paid for.
The restaurants literally tell you they don't want to make your food or help you because they don't get tipped for your orders and ignore you. BTownmenus loyalty is to the restaurants not you and they will tell you that you don't matter. The BTownmenus Dispatchers, (Dispatchers are employees of BTownmenus in Colorado who watch the system that sends out orders to the drivers) these Dispatchers treat drivers like employees. They watch you on GPS and yell at you if you take to long to get to a restaurant and threaten to stop sending you orders. They get attitudes if you can't get a order delivered, which happens often. They send you orders that are already 35 minutes old and 5 minutes later want to know when you are going to deliver the food while you are fighting the restaurant. They question why you are taking curtain routes to deliver food. They expect you to go through every order to make sure it is correct, which by the way is completely against board of health, and if something is wrong and the restaurant blames it on you they will make you pay for new food.
Just about all this is a violation of your rights as a independent contractor. The IRS is very clear about your rights and companies that violate those rights are considered fraudulent according to the IRS. These companies can't label you as an independent contractor to avoid legal and financial obligations and then treat you like a employee. The IRS calls it employee misclassification. Like the class action lawsuit Uber just went through. All the issues with this company come down to one person, Anthony Wyatt, who is the head supervisor in Colorado over the rest of the Dispatchers. He threatens and degrades drivers and his Dispatchers alike. I can only assume he gets some pleasure out of threatening, lying and manipulating other people and it is no wonder his Dispatchers take on the same disposition as him.
How do they get away with this treatment? Well it is all in the way they structure the company. The parent company is called The Rolland Group and they run 4 different markets in a few other cities like Boulder CO and Lafayette IN. Then they create these shell companies to be the middleman and in this case it is a company called LoDel everything points the drivers LoDel if you need help but all your inquires are actually going BTownmenus Dispatch who in return ignore you. Then there is the customer facing company like BTownmenus or Hungry Buffs. This is all done so drivers and restaurants don't really know who is legally responsible.
Then instead of contracting drivers themselves they partner with an accounting company who the drivers agreement (aka contract) is actually with. Again this all done strategically to try to shield themselves from legal recourse but they aren't fooling the IRS. If they were smart they would realize their partner drivers are a valuable asset instead of a cheap commodity and they would stop violating their rights. Some day a company with a better structure that values its partners is going to come along and when they do the abused, mistreated and misclassified partners of BTownmenus are going to jump ship and BTownmenus will sink fast.
So now you see why I say stay far away from BTownmenus? There are a few companies around Bloomington like this, one worse than BTownmenus is Mr Delivery. I have heard some horrors about Mr Delivery that make BTownmenus look good. My advice is to stay away from these companies and get a job bar tending. Thanks for reading.