What must be in a delivery platform’s terms in Europe
Restaurant chains negotiating in Europe have a checklist available to them that most never use. Regulation 2019/1150 does not merely require platforms to have terms, it specifies what those terms must contain. Article 3 lists five requirements and Article 5 adds ranking. Together they tell you what should already be in the document you were given, which means a missing item is not a gap to negotiate but a compliance point to raise.
What does Article 3 actually require?
Five things, and the third is the one that matters most operationally.
Terms must be in plain and intelligible language. They must be easily available at every stage of the relationship, including before you sign. They must “set out the grounds for decisions to suspend or terminate or impose any other kind of restriction upon, in whole or in part, the provision of their online intermediation services to business users”, which is Article 3(1)(c) and the only one of the five we have the wording for. They must describe additional distribution channels and affiliate programmes through which your goods might be marketed. And they must cover the effects of the terms on your intellectual property rights.
Why is the grounds requirement the important one?
Because it converts closure from something that happens to you into something the document has to have anticipated.
If a platform closes, restricts or demotes your listing on a basis not set out in its terms, that is a question you can ask with the article behind it. And the phrase covers restriction “in whole or in part”, so it is not limited to being removed.
In practice this is the clause to read before signing and the clause to reread the first time something goes wrong.
What does the distribution channel requirement cover?
Where else your restaurant might appear, which surprises operators more than it should.
Platforms syndicate listings, run virtual brands, and place merchants through affiliate arrangements. Article 3 requires that to be described in the terms. A brand that finds itself listed somewhere it did not expect has a document to check and not a mystery to investigate.
What does Article 5 require about ranking?
Article 5(1) requires the terms to set out “the main parameters determining ranking and the reasons for the relative importance of those main parameters as opposed to other parameters”.
Article 5(3) extends that to paid influence, so if money moves a listing up the terms have to say so and say what it does. And the parameters alone do not discharge Article 5, because the reasons for their relative importance are part of the requirement, which makes it a quality standard rather than a box to tick.
Wolt, Glovo and Bolt Food have each published something as a result, and those documents are the best public material available on delivery search ranking anywhere.
What is not required?
Anything about what a platform owes you when its own decision costs you trading time.
The regulation is about transparency and process, not about liability. It requires explanations, notice, a complaint route and mediators. It does not require compensation, and it does not require platforms to publish an availability record you could measure a loss against.
So the evidential side stays with the restaurant. Kitchain (kitchain.co) records when each listing was orderable from the customer side, which is the piece the regulation does not oblige anybody to give you.
How should I use the checklist?
Read your terms against these six items once, and note which are present, which are thin and which are absent.
That takes an hour per platform and it produces a document you keep. It tells you what you can already cite, what to ask for, and which platform relationships are the weakest on paper before anything has gone wrong.