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Coupang Eats and Baemin (Baedal Minjok) are two of the leading food delivery services in South Korea, and both are now facing boycotts due to their soaring delivery fees. Both the restaurants and customers are said to be preparing to cut them off as they complain about the rates.
According to The Korea Times, a growing number of Koreans are now opting to pick their orders up instead of delivery since they no longer find the fees to be fair. Baemin and Coupang Eats recently raised delivery fees again and this led to the people’s decision not to use their services anymore.
It was in February when Coupang Eats implemented a new pricing scheme for single orders and Baedal Minjok followed suit and announced a delivery price hike late last month. The companies were said to have started charging commission fees of 6.8% and 9.8% of the foods’ total amount.
The move forced restaurants to shoulder the delivery costs that can go from ₩5,400 ($4.36) to ₩6,000. Other restaurants split the delivery fees with their customers but if they would like to increase their earnings, they must charge a bigger percentage to customers which is not a good idea because they may just lose their customers in the end.
"Baemin lists the names of restaurants on its app in order of low delivery prices and that means restaurant owners have to shoulder more delivery expenses to attract customers,” a 34-year-old restaurant owner explained. “Baemin 1 is a one-order-per-delivery service run by Baemin and its new pricing system for single-order delivery services only profits delivery firms so I am thinking of boycotting both Baemin 1 and Coupang Eats."
For its part, the owner of Baemin, Woowa Brothers, said that its new pricing system was designed to benefit the delivery riders and not the company. A company official said, "If we get a ₩10,000 online order, we take ₩680 as a commission fee and restaurants have to pay delivery drivers ₩6,000. It is up to each restaurant whether they will shoulder the entire ₩6,000 or charge customers a certain percentage of it."
