Delivered: Dubai’s Order for Food Tech Policy

Source: ChatGPT

Dubai's new food delivery guidelines tackle fees, accountability, and platform bias, offering a sector-specific alternative to the sweeping ex ante frameworks reshaping digital markets globally. But, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating (or the delivery).

It’s almost cinematic: delivery riders weaving through Dubai’s blazing summer streets, racing against time to bring dinner to your doorstep. The service is often impressively seamless—but occasionally, things go off-track: the meal that never arrives, a delayed driver held up by a backlog at the restaurant, or even the wrong dish turning up at your doorstep when you are really, really hungry. So, when something does go wrong, who bears the blame?

Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism (DET), through the Dubai Corporation for Consumer Protection & Fair Trade, has issued new guidelines– seeking to answer this, and other pressing regulatory questions related to the online food delivery ecosystem. The guidelines are carefully drafted, and factor in the economic dynamics of multi-sided digital platforms—where customers, restaurants, and delivery partners— each benefit from one another’s participation.

// Rate Your Order

From the restaurants’ lens, the guidelines clarify liability. Restaurants cannot be blamed for system glitches or 3PL delays, and customers cannot be charged for failures outside their control. The guidelines also ensure contractual fairness for restaurants (or even third-party logistics (3PL) providers). Platforms are required to give thirty days’ notice before changing terms, and restaurants have the right to walk away if they disagree. With this, B2B agreements between platforms and restaurants are likely to evolve to more custom arrangements, instead of the standard “take-it-or-leave-it” style terms, common in digital platform economies. The guidelines further state that restaurants should not bear the cost of any platform services marked “free” or “discounted” to customers unless cost-sharing has been agreed on by both parties. This frees up capital commitment from restaurants for platform-initiated promotions.

Equally importantly, from the customers’ lens, the guidelines require, for example, that all charges—delivery, service, and platform fees—must be disclosed to customers upfront. This disallows “drip pricing,” where fees appear only after you’ve invested time in building an order. Advertising and promotional placements must be optional and clearly priced. This enables consumers to make informed decisions by differentiating between organic and paid listings.

Interestingly, the guidelines go beyond consumer protection and strike at the core of fair trade and market competition. For example, they restrict self-preferencing by food delivery platforms (promoting affiliated cloud kitchens) and foster platform neutrality. They also require platforms to disclose their ranking mechanisms, explicitly allow business-partners (restaurants or 3PLs) to operate on multiple platforms without being penalised, and limit exclusive arrangements between platforms and businesses, among other restrictions.

Notably, the guidelines also require platforms to share non-personal data — such as order volumes and performance metrics—with restaurants (and not personally identifiable data such as names, addresses, phone numbers, in line with data protection laws). This empowers small businesses to plan better, improve operations, and negotiate fairly, all without jeopardizing customer privacy.

In addressing market competition concerns, the guidelines strike a careful balance: they guard against foreclosure and platform bias, while avoiding the broader, sector-agnostic ex ante regimes that are becoming popular globally. But, what are ex ante regimes?

// Not Upping The Ex Ante

While Dubai’s rules are sharply focused on food delivery platforms in particular, the issues the guidelines address are at the heart of how digital platforms do business globally.

Take my missing dinner: was the delay the restaurant’s fault, or the driver’s? Did the platform prioritize another order because it came from an “affiliated” restaurant? Did its ranking algorithm push me toward certain restaurants because of promotional fees?

These questions are not just about customer frustration; they are about how platforms can impact competition in markets.

Self-preferencing has become one of the hottest issues in digital platform governance. Google is set to appeal a €2.95 billion fine in Europe for allegedly steering traffic to its own advertising service. Amazon has been criticized for allegedly privileging “Amazon Basics” products over independent sellers. In India, similar legal battles are ensuing against food delivery platforms Zomato and Swiggy for alleged preferential treatment to affiliated cloud kitchens. These court-cases are being used to highlight how platforms can quietly unlevel the playing field. But, the fundamental question is, is the un-levelling of playing field really unlawful?

Traditionally, antitrust laws penalised abuse of dominance (conduct), not dominance (bigness) itself. So, digital platforms across the above cases have sought to demonstrate to courts how (i) they're not dominant, merely prominent, and; (ii) even if they were dominant, they had not abused their position. Notably, such matters came up reactively, ex post, or simply, after the alleged abuse had occurred.

However, competition jurisprudence is rapidly evolving. Lawmakers now want to prevent such conduct proactively, before any abuse can even occur, or ex ante. This amounts to penalising bigness itself. The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) for example bans “gatekeepers” from ranking their own products ahead of rivals. The UK’s ex ante law enables imposition of tailored conduct requirements on firms with “strategic market status”. Other provisions globally prevent large firms from tying their services together, blocking interoperability or mixing personal data across apps without consumer consent.

// Balancing Innovation and Regulation

DET guidelines are sector-focused, nuanced and granular, unlike other global ex ante frameworks, which impose sweeping obligations on a few large companies across the board. By targeting food delivery’s real pain points—fees, delivery accountability, contracts, and ranking-transparency—they better reflect sector-specific realities.

Further, DET's framework addresses competition concerns, without being overly prescriptive like other ex ante regulations. While it prohibits platforms from preferencing, below-cost predatory pricing and exclusivity, it does so without any "gatekeeper" designation. By avoiding rigid size-based labels, DET does not penalise bigness. Instead, it applies the guidelines across the sector without compartmentalising the market into big versus small.

The guidelines also stop short of banning anti-steering provisions, unlike the EU DMA. Anti-steering refers to restrictions a platform (like an app store or market platform) imposes to prevent business users (e.g., app developers or businesses) from informing consumers about alternative offers, pricing, or payment options outside the platform. Platforms argue that banning anti-steering hurts them because, (i) they spend money to bring in customers, and businesses could then use the platform only for visibility but push users to book or pay directly elsewhere, avoiding fees. Illustratively, Booking.com says hotels use its site to attract customers but then try to redirect them to cheaper direct bookings on their own sites or apps.

Lastly, the DET wisely leaves out interoperability obligations. Restaurants or 3PLs are therefore not guaranteed a single, unified interface to manage menus, orders, or promotions across platforms such as Talabat, Deliveroo, and Noon simultaneously. While interoperability might theoretically lower costs for smaller players, it threatens to erode platform loyalty, disincentivizes investment in superior interfaces, and introduces new cybersecurity risks.

By avoiding these sweeping requirements, DET acknowledges that over-regulation can stifle the very dynamism that makes digital platforms valuable. Its framework promises accountability for consumers, fairer terms for restaurants and 3PLs, and a more predictable, innovation-friendly environment for platforms.