It is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it does make it harder for newer businesses to enter the space. However, from what I have been able to piece together, the real culprits here are DoorDash and GrubHub, by listing restaurants without permission/agreements in the first place, necessitating the creation of this law. You're probably right that GrubHub and DoorDash are cheering at the moment, unless the law gets applied retro-actively (though I highly doubt that).
> Indexing and aggregating data is already covered by numerous laws. If Google can aggregate restaurant listings without permission then why can't others? Linking is ok, showing a call button is ok, but delivering isn't?
Searching for information on the internet and having food delivered are not the same experience; I'm usually not "hangry" when my search results take too long to come up, and/or are not what I was expecting. Even so, I usually blame Google for the bad results. It "should" be the same for food delivery services as well, where people "should" blame DoorDash/GrubHub, but that rarely happens. For better or worse, it is the restaurant that takes the blame, and risks losing future business.
Most people I have spoken to regarding this issue were under the assumption that the delivery service already had agreements in place with these restaurants. A lot of these people are business owners themselves, and were surprised to find out that no such agreements existed; much like I was when I first found out about this issue.
> The law around copyright is clear: you can't copy a restaurants menu without permission the same way you can't copy someone's blog post. This should be enough.
True. It "should" be enough, but in practice, it rarely is. Most companies operate knowing that legal processes are lengthy and expensive and take that into account when modeling their business practices.
> Why don't restaurants want delivery companies doing this? The typical argument is bad Yelp reviews. Instead of blaming delivery companies why not blame Yelp for not authenticating their reviews?
When you're a small-business owner losing business due to the activities of some third-party service you did not authorize to represent you in the first place, you're usually not looking to blame another third-party service for the bad reviews you didn't know you were getting; especially one whose "business-model" was to blackmail restaurants to take down bad reviews. As a business owner, it is my right to know my customer and know anyone who is (mis)using my brand without my permission.
> Restaurants should be benefiting from delivery companies distributing their products, and there is nothing preventing them from offering direct to consumer deliveries themselves.
A handful of restaurants I order from on DoorDash/GrubHub usually have their own delivery crew. It isn't a requirement for every restaurant to offer delivery. Elsewhere in this thread, there was the issue of certain food items (usually the restaurant's speciality) having very precise kitchen-to-table time requirements. It is hard for a restaurant owner to control their product when they don't have any control over the delivery process. And when they choose to not have delivery, they are bypassed entirely by these third-parties. Seems perfectly fine for the restaurant to fight back against such practices.
EDIT: fixed typo