Restaurant associations protest Coupang Eats' free delivery promotion

A delivery rider carries a package in Seoul, June 19, 2025. Newsis

Restaurants selling food through mobile delivery platform Coupang Eats protested the company’s free delivery promotion for consumers on Friday, claiming the costs of the promotion would ultimately be shifted onto them.

Korea's five small business associations, including the Korea Federation of Micro Enterprises, the Korea Merchant Association and the Korea Foodservice Industry Association, issued a joint statement saying the promotion will eventually make the platform’s market influence even stronger and result in higher platform usage fees for its partner restaurants.

The associations said the promotion will make Coupang Eats consumers excessively reliant on the company. They added that its market dominance may eventually make the company feel entitled to demand even more from its partner restaurants.

Coupang Eats' promotional image for free delivery service / Courtesy of Coupang

“Small business owners are now standing on the brink of closure amid a quadruple whammy of high interest rates, high inflation, rising labor costs and shrinking consumer spending," the statement read.

"The aggressive marketing offensives by major platform companies, capitalizing on this crisis, are not a remedy to revive local commercial sectors as they say, but rather a poison that suffocates them."

“The monopolistic marketing costs of platform operators have been deviously passed on to partner merchants through methods such as raising platform usage fees, inducing advertising expenses and restricting exposure on delivery apps. We’re concerned Coupang Eats’ latest marketing measure will spread to other delivery platform companies and lead to needless competition using free delivery.”

The associations demanded Coupang Eats stop its “deceptive free delivery marketing” and step forward to build a sustainable delivery ecosystem.

“We will not sit idly by while major delivery platforms devastate local commercial sectors and threaten the very survival of small businesses,” the statement read.

The free delivery program is planned to continue until August, targeting Coupang Eats members with free basic memberships. The service was originally reserved for Coupang Wow members, a paid membership tier at the country's largest e-commerce platform.

Coupang immediately responded to the small business associations’ protest by rebutting their concerns. The company said the free delivery measure will not shift any additional costs to the platform restaurants. It added that the promotion has been planned to attract more platform consumers as high oil prices and rapidly increasing market prices are reducing consumption across the food industry.

“The promotion is only until August, so it will not raise food delivery prices as worried by some," the company said. "The free delivery promotion also does not increase financial burdens on our partner restaurants. Instead, it lowers them. Every time we have conducted a free delivery promotion, our partner restaurants saw their cost per order decrease by 5 percent over a year. Their sales also jumped 98 percent compared to before the promotion."

Coupang is currently awaiting a decision by the Fair Trade Commission, the country’s top antitrust watchdog, on whether promoting Coupang Eats during its Wow membership signup process was illegal.

The country’s Fair Trade Act bans companies from tie-in sales of any additional service that consumers are not interested in. Coupang initiated the practice in March 2024 and, in a year, saw Coupang Eats membership numbers spike from 6.49 million to 11 million.