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Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

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Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#21

Post by muststopmyths »

jdmichal wrote: post #6
julianlam wrote: post #3

I'll admit I don't know the full story behind grubhub's practices with adding restaurants without the owners' permission. It does sound like a case of "fake it till you make it", in a sense that adding restaurants without the owners' consent would be a way around the chicken and egg problem. Not saying it's a particularly nice thing to do, I'd be super annoyed if it happened to me

I'm curious why they would need the owner's permission for listing? I can understand the issues around things like the alleged practice of replacing the businesses' information. But the idea of just having a third-party delivery service acting as a middle-man... The restaurant is still getting paid whatever they charged. I don't understand why they would get a say anymore than, say, a book store regarding me resellin…

Because the service represents the restaurant as actually participating in the transaction. If the food gets delivered cold or the order gets messed up, the restaurant is likely to get bad Yelp reviews which can actually affect business.

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#22

Post by fennecfoxen »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #17
s_dev wrote: post #7

Trading under another brands name -- by listing them as an ordering place with an unofficial dark kitchen associated in your app -- seems like the most egregious form of trade mark infringement. Why aren't GrubHub concerned about the legal reprecussions of this?

How many mom and pop restaurants do you know of who have the extra financial capital to find a lawyer to sue over an issue like this against a company as well-funded as grubhub or doordash?

How many lawyers do you know who would love to represent the restaurants in general as a class, that they may make class-action-lawsuit money?

Well, I don't know any either, but if there's a good solid case then it only takes one.

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#23

Post by JoeAltmaier »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #17
s_dev wrote: post #7

Trading under another brands name -- by listing them as an ordering place with an unofficial dark kitchen associated in your app -- seems like the most egregious form of trade mark infringement. Why aren't GrubHub concerned about the legal reprecussions of this?

How many mom and pop restaurants do you know of who have the extra financial capital to find a lawyer to sue over an issue like this against a company as well-funded as grubhub or doordash?

Isn't that exactly what the OP says is being done?

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#24

Post by jdmichal »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #18
jdmichal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why they would need the owner's permission for listing? I can understand the issues around things like the alleged practice of replacing the businesses' information. But the idea of just having a third-party delivery service acting as a middle-man... The restaurant is still getting paid whatever they charged. I don't understand why they would get a say anymore than, say, a book store regarding me resellin…

In this analogy, it would be more like you creating an eBay store called "Strand Books", listing the entire Strand Books' catalog, and then when someone purchases a book from you, popping into The Strand to get the book and shipping it to them. Except sometimes they're out of the book, and so the customer never receives it. Or you damage the book between the book store and the post office, and they receive a badly da…

But the customers are ordering the food from Grubhub, no? So why would they be confused that there's a middle-man?

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#27

Post by jdmichal »

muststopmyths wrote: post #21
jdmichal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why they would need the owner's permission for listing? I can understand the issues around things like the alleged practice of replacing the businesses' information. But the idea of just having a third-party delivery service acting as a middle-man... The restaurant is still getting paid whatever they charged. I don't understand why they would get a say anymore than, say, a book store regarding me resellin…

Because the service represents the restaurant as actually participating in the transaction. If the food gets delivered cold or the order gets messed up, the restaurant is likely to get bad Yelp reviews which can actually affect business.

Well, the restaurant is participating, in the sense that they are making food for a customer. They just don't understand who the customer actually is.

Secondly, are the customers not ordering the food from Grubhub? Why would they be confused about a middle-man being present?

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#28

Post by nobody9999 »

doytch wrote: post #5

What's the "best" ordering app to use these days if I want to prioritize how well they treat restaurants? I've tried looking this up recently to no avail. I know at the end of the day, "call and pick-up directly" is going to be it but occasionally I just don't want to go pick it up.

Not sure if they're "the best", but there are sites that claim not to be abusive to restaurants (some do have "apps," but why use an inferior interface to a website?) like chownow, slicelife, 9fold and beyondmenu are (or claim to be) extensions of the point-of-sale systems and only charge monthly fees or credit/debit card processing fees.

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#29

Post by sharkweek »

mrguyorama wrote: post #13
s_dev wrote: post #7

Trading under another brands name -- by listing them as an ordering place with an unofficial dark kitchen associated in your app -- seems like the most egregious form of trade mark infringement. Why aren't GrubHub concerned about the legal reprecussions of this?

>Why aren't GrubHub concerned about the legal reprecussions of this? When is the last time a company was SERIOUSLY threatened by the repercussions of doing something illegal in the US? When was the last time a company was fined/sued out of existence for something they were doing to average people?

All I know is I’m still waiting for my Equifax settlement check. Any day now, I’m sure!

Re: Grubhub sued for listing restaurants without permission

#30

Post by chrisshroba »

Tbh I don't see a major problem with this. If folks want to pay someone (Grubhub) to go pick up food for them, why should the restaurants be allowed to say no?

> Food may not travel well.

Fair point, but if the customer still wants it, that's on them.

> But that may lead to unfairly low ratings for the restaurant.

If (say) 30% of the restaurant's patrons choose to get the food via food delivery, why shouldn't those folks' ratings of the food be factored into the restaurant's rating?

> If people want food and the restaurants doesn't want to support delivery apps, then folks should respect that and visit the restaurant in person.

Many people aren't able to visit in person, either due to time constraints, mobility constraints, COVID precautions, or other reasons.

> Restaurants may not be able to handle the additional load placed on them by these services.

I empathize with this one and don't really have a rebuttal.

> Delivery services sometimes make their own websites and phone numbers more prominent than the restaurant's own, deceiving people into using them instead of going straight to the restaurant's site/number.

I agree, this is a horrible tactic and aggregators like Google and Yelp should work to prevent this.

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These are just the opinions of me, a privileged engineer who has little knowledge of the restaurant industry, so I definitely welcome any criticism to my points and am certainly open to changing my view!

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