One Toronto ice cream shop is trying to fight back against food delivery apps taking huge comissions by taking themselves off Uber Eats altogether.

It's no secret that Toronto restaurants have a love-hate relationship with Uber Eats (and other delivery apps). On one hand, the platform allows the restaurants to reach a far wider client base more regularly than if they were simply operating as a brick and mortar.

On the other hand, well, there are a lot of things.

While local restaurants have sounded the alarm over issues with the platform like sloppy deliveries, food arriving cold and delivery drivers seemingly ignoring pick up instructions — local favourite ice cream shop, Ruru Baked, is raising awareness over yet another issue.

"No Uber Eats until further notice," reads a post on the ice cream shop's Instagram page. 

"We've been facing some challenges with their new system and high commissions, and we'd like to see how things go without using their service for a bit," the caption of the post goes on to read.

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In terms of the "high commissions," a representative from Ruru Baked tells blogTO that the delivery platform takes a whopping 30 per cent from each and every order.

"They claim to only take 25 [per cent] if their customers order through their shop's dedicated Uber webpage, but we've never seen this commission given," they say, noting that they've conducted experiments with friends to try to prove the lower commission claim, but were allegedly unsuccessful.

Moreover, the representative tells blogTO, the app has strict guidelines for who can use their marketing tools and when, and, for Ruru Baked, that's almost never.

"If a certain percentage of your menu is showing as sold out, Uber won't allow you to use [their marketing] tools," they say. "This sucks for us because we have over 80 flavours, but they aren't always in stock."

"Uber's solution is for us to delete sold out products and add them back when in stock," they add. "But that's extremely inefficient.

On top of all of that, the representative tells blogTO, they've experienced lengthy tech issues thorugh the app which have caused customer service headaches abounding, receiving little to no support from the app's call centre which the representative describes as "not very knowledgeable or helpful."

"We [...] had a solid 6 to 8 months of Uber's back end not syncing with the app, so when we would mark things as sold out, customers would still be able to order," they say. "It was a customer service nightmare."

While Ruru Baked has only ever offered deliveries through Uber Eats — not other platforms like DoorDash or SkipTheDishes — the representative tells blogTO that they believe similar issues are likely prevalent among all of them.

"[In my opinion] they're all the same," they say. "You're choosing the lesser of a few evils."

So, in a time where food delivery presents a major revenue stream for most eateries, the Bloordale ice cream shop made the bold decision to put the kibosh on Uber Eats deliveries altogether. 

As of now, Ruru Baked's many fans will only be able to get their hands on the sweet, creamy stuff (blogTO's best in Toronto, by the way,) by visiting the shop in-person, but the shop did note in their Instagram post that they're willing to work out delivery or pick-up options for those who need it.

Ruru Baked is located at 659 Lansdowne, with a second location at Pacific Mall.