<story><title>A small restaurant owner on Google, DoorDash, and Grubhub</title><url>https://www.saddlebackbbq.com/how-google-doordash-grubhub-conspire-screw-local-restaurants</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rmason</author><text>The author is a friend and was the original marketing director for the hosting company LiquidWeb.  He&amp;#x27; a superb marketer and I suspect this article grew out of his frustrations dealing with this problem.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think the average restaurant owner who may not be very digitally savvy realizes how these companies piggyback on top of their brand.  I predict that soon there will be a large class action lawsuit with thousands of restaurants going after the delivery services for these underhanded tactics.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>donmcronald</author><text>Exactly, but I&amp;#x27;m not sure about the class action lawsuit part.  The contract probably forbids it and since it&amp;#x27;s B2B I bet those types of provisions stick.&lt;p&gt;The most frustrating part is that these types of situations are tough to avoid and we&amp;#x27;re starting to see them everywhere.  Ex: DoorDash has a huge marketing budget &amp;#x2F; money to burn when starting up, so the early adopters see great returns because someone else is paying for a bunch of advertising for them.  They tell their friends and slowly the system grows to a critical mass where you&amp;#x27;re losing out if you&amp;#x27;re not on it.  Then they abuse their market position and do stuff like this.&lt;p&gt;You see it everywhere; Google, Amazon, Microsoft, app stores, adhesive terms of service, etc..  It&amp;#x27;s happening in the software development industry right now and no one&amp;#x27;s paying attention.  Tons of services like SaaS Git, Saas CI, SaaS dev environments (Codespaces), templated SaaS deployment targets, etc..  The early adopters are seeing gains in efficiency, so they&amp;#x27;re out there advocating the use of all these subsidized services, but no one is considering what&amp;#x27;s going to happen in 5 years when the ownable workflow is neglected and the SaaS workflow is the only practical option.</text></comment>
<story><title>A small restaurant owner on Google, DoorDash, and Grubhub</title><url>https://www.saddlebackbbq.com/how-google-doordash-grubhub-conspire-screw-local-restaurants</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rmason</author><text>The author is a friend and was the original marketing director for the hosting company LiquidWeb.  He&amp;#x27; a superb marketer and I suspect this article grew out of his frustrations dealing with this problem.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think the average restaurant owner who may not be very digitally savvy realizes how these companies piggyback on top of their brand.  I predict that soon there will be a large class action lawsuit with thousands of restaurants going after the delivery services for these underhanded tactics.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>naravara</author><text>&amp;gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think the average restaurant owner who may not be very digitally savvy realizes how these companies piggyback on top of their brand. I predict that soon there will be a large class action lawsuit with thousands of restaurants going after the delivery services for these underhanded tactics.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s honestly gotten pretty bad. I almost can&amp;#x27;t find most independent restaurants&amp;#x27; web presences anymore because Yelp, Caviar, Google&amp;#x27;s page, Doordash, et. al. all outcompete them on SEO for their own brands. And that&amp;#x27;s AFTER the paid ads those same sites manage to take out.&lt;p&gt;Most of the time, I end up using restaurant menus listed on UberEats or Doordash instead of their own websites before I call them for a delivery because it&amp;#x27;s just impossible to find their websites. It&amp;#x27;s especially bad with things like Chinese or Thai restaurants since so many of their names are variations on a handful of motifs. So you might be looking for the Peking Garden across the street, but you&amp;#x27;re just as likely to get Peking Gardens in cities all over the country, none of which are affiliated with each other. But the Yelp or Doordash hit is always the one right by you.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s unfair. I want restauranteurs to be good at restauranting. The line between their success or failure shouldn&amp;#x27;t rely on their ability to outsmart expert SEO hustlers. It basically winds up being a shakedown that adds no value to the customer or the restaurant.</text></comment>