GOST for food delivery has appeared: independent courier services will be cut off from oxygen

From April 1 this year, the national standard for the delivery of public catering products will come into force. It was developed in collaboration with the largest food delivery operators, but it promises trouble for alternative courier services (for example, restaurants): when working according to GOST, the delivery will be checked by the state. And without GOST, delivery workers may well have their way to hotels and business centers blocked. MK found out how a rapidly growing industry could ultimately change.

On the adoption of the national standard GOST R 71162-2023 “Catering services. Delivery of catering products according to consumer orders. General requirements” was reported by the relevant department – Rosstandart. The text of the document is not yet publicly available, but it is known that it “establishes requirements for various formats of delivery services: “own delivery” (independent by catering organizations), delivery through aggregators (online platforms), delivery through service operators.”

Taking into account the recent covid reality and outbreaks of respiratory diseases, the standard includes an algorithm for a contactless delivery method – when food is not passed from hand to hand, but is left at an appointed place. Transport must comply with legal requirements, as well as other equipment – bags, containers for transporting orders. In particular, food bags must be protected from dirt, dust, animals, including insects and rodents.

The standard emphasizes that bags along with orders should not contain personal belongings of the courier and other products and non-food items.

“When developing the standard, the world experience of food delivery was studied, as well as the experience of Russian flagships in the field of delivery services,” states the Rosstandart statement; Among the participants in the development are the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers of Russia, the Main Directorate of Public Catering of the Administration of the President of Russia, as well as several key players in this sector of the market.

“The Russian food delivery market has grown by more than 20% over the past 2.5 years, providing more and more opportunities for those who want to quickly and conveniently order food from catering establishments to their home or office,” says Maxim Protasov, head of Roskachestvo. – Therefore, the approval of GOST for the delivery of public catering products will ensure competent and high-quality service to consumers outside the establishment.

Like all Russian GOSTs applied to “unlicensed” industries, this standard is initially voluntary – compliance with this standard is not a mandatory condition for working in this market sector. On the contrary, reminds lawyer Alexey Golubev, a declaration of compliance with the standard entails large costs for companies: they will have to comply with the requirements of the standard without fools, and under state control (inspections by Rospotrebnadzor are provided).

“From this point of view, the standard should turn out to be an absolutely meaningless document, unless a way is invented to force market players to comply with GOST,” the lawyer sums up.

As it turned out, there is such a method: as security officers at one of the large hotels in Moscow, previously managed by a foreign holding company, told MK, it is quite possible that only delivery from a company that has declared compliance with the standard will be allowed to hotel guests. “The rationale is very simple: we, as a hotel, are obliged to maintain our own high standards of service, in particular, to protect guests from poor quality service,” the hotel emphasized. – This means that we have the right to demand that those services that we allow into the hotel comply with existing national standards. This way we can be sure that hotel clients receive the best level of service.”

The fact that such a measure can be introduced after the standard comes into force was confirmed to MK by the management company of one of the class A business centers located in the Tverskoy district. In other words, delivery services that declare compliance with GOST will be allowed “to the customer’s door,” while all others will be forced to make “meetings on neutral territory” for clients.

Among those delivery companies that will successfully pass GOST testing, first of all, there will be the largest ones – the oligopolists of this market sector. The same ones who participated in the development of standards. The business processes built in these companies already meet the requirements of the document, and it is always easier to organize inspections for large companies.

But the life of the still existing independent delivery providers – built back in the 2000s and 2010s under individual restaurants and chains, as well as cooperative structures on a local scale – may become noticeably more complicated: operators will have to choose between the comfort of the client and the need to “expose” themselves to unnecessary checks. Moreover, you can now order delivery from many restaurants either using your own courier service or through a large service.

“I felt very well the difference in approaches between both options a few weeks ago, having ordered several boxes of pizza through a large delivery service, and not their own,” Muscovite Daria Nikitskaya told MK, who involuntarily compared both models. – In the pre-New Year bustle, boxes of pizza arrived standing “on their butts”, the food lost its shape. After my complaint, the operator carefully returned the money for the order. And the regular delivery service of the pizzeria would simply have delivered everything carefully, since they only deliver pizza and would never make such a mistake.

Of course, the GOST requirements indicate all the necessary parameters for high-quality food delivery (I want to believe this, until I have the opportunity to study the document itself). But we can see what mono- and oligopoly leads to in terms of quality and availability of service right now using the example of a taxi. If the same unification is taking place in the delivery sector, this is probably not too fun.