As Waitr Faces Employee Lawsuits DoorDash Expands in Southwest Louisiana

Updated March 30, 2019, at 5:35 p.m.

A class-action lawsuit was filed against food delivery service Waitr Holdings’ Inc. by two drivers. The lawsuit alleges that the company violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by failing to meet minimum wage requirements. There is also a claim in the suit alleging that some drivers were misclassified as contractors while they were doing the work of employees. The lawsuit was filed on February 27, 2019.

In fairness, several other companies that offer delivery and rideshare services have also faced similar lawsuits or accusations in the past. These companies include Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Instacart. 

Recently while browsing Google for suggestions on where to eat I noticed that many restaurants have added a link to order with DoorDash. There was also a link to DoorDash directly on several of the Google search results pages for businesses in Lake Charles, Sulphur, and surrounding areas. DoorDash is a direct competitor to Waitr in the food delivery field. They use a similar business model, in that neither own restaurants, but both provide technology, employees, and contractors to help business offer online ordering and delivery services.

When I had previously checked the number of restaurants available for delivery through DoorDash in February of 2019,  there were very few. A recent check on their website shows that there are now over 70 businesses listed with DoorDash on the East side of the Calcasieu River around Lake Charles and over 20 locations on the West side of the river near Sulphur. Though in comparison, Waitr still offers more variety with approximately 160 restaurants in the delivery zone on the East side of the bridge and 29 on the West side, DoorDash is still growing pretty quickly. Competitor Grubhub also offers online ordering and food delivery service in the area. Though at the time this was written the offerings of Grubhub were somewhat limited, with a selection of twenty restaurants in Lake Charles and only five in Sulphur.

DoorDash also appears to be running a special in Southwest Louisiana that offers deeply discounted delivery rates for new customers. One offer was for free delivery and another offered $1 delivery. You’ll want to check out the DoorDash website for specifics on the promotional offers and places that currently deliver in your area.

More information about DoorDash

More information about Waitr

More information about Grubhub

Disclosure – At the time of this writing, the proprietor of this website owned shares in Waitr Holdings’ Inc