Most still do not have an independent online ordering function. They want me to call.
Most still haven't set up meaningful profiles on Yelp and other review sites. So I would need to root around to find contact information.
That is in addition to needing to give my credit card over the phone, not knowing how long the order will take, and needing to be concerned about the person hearing the order right.
The restaurants are barely trying to compete for customers.
Suppose you want to go to McDonald's. I buy the McDonald's domain name. I put a credit card form on my site, and I "deliver" McDonald's to you. I charge a $40 surcharge for the privilege.
There is no way in hell that McDonald's would have to go begging at realmcdonald's.com because of my shenanigans. They'd have no patience for this bullshit. In real life they'd sicc a DMCA notice and a ton of lawyers on this and I'd lose my webhost and the sheriff would come visit me and who knows what else. They'd get McDonald's.com fast enough to make your head spin, and I'd be pushed out of that business.
Why is it different for restaurants?
Same problem: instead of me it's a company, and instead of McDonald's it's a small restaurant. But the principle is the same.
In domain name hijacking, it's presumed wrong because customers think they're reaching McDonald's when they're really calling me. In the GrubHub case it's exactly the same thing.
I don't understand why it's wrong when I do it, but it's not a problem GrubHub does. After all, McDonald's doesn't deliver, and I may own a very fine delivery business, but I'm still not allowed to coast off their name for my own business.
The same reason that you'd be arrested for running an illegal taxi, but when Uber does it, it's fine. And the same reason that you'd be arrested for running an illegal hotel, but when AirBnB does it, it's okay.
Uber and AiBnb spend a lot of money lobbying governments at every level, and on marketing to make what they do seem acceptable.
If I impersonated Disney online and used their trademarks on my website, the FBI would raid my home, I'd be in prison and courts would bar me from ever touching a computer again.
Restaurants should be able to call the cops and report fraud, have it investigated and stopped, and have their cases passed on to federal authorities if necessary. This doesn't happen.
Youtube is more strange since they illegally hosted IP for a long while.
They still do, their ContentID system has a lot of holes.
If McDonald's were a mom & pop restaurant and you were a multi-billion dollar, VC-backed startup, then you can be sure McDonald's would not be able to do this so easily.
That's the difference.
Edit: Ah, yup - see link to eater.com post elsewhere in the thread
It's very easy to understand why consumers and businesses would be annoyed by this behavior, though, and it may be deceptive or immoral in other ways.
How did they ever get into existence then, you may ask? Simple, VC money ...
The issue here is they agreed to allow GrubHub to pretend to be them. You'd never get that deal with McDonald's since they'd just not agree to it since they know it's a horrible idea but tons of people running restaurants don't understand they are getting a raw deal.
Sadly, that's false. GrubHub is a bad actor.
https://www.eater.com/2019/10/30/20940107/grubhub-to-add-res...
No stupid app to download. No account to create. No bullshit fees. No marketing emails. I just tell them what I want and then go get it. It's refreshing.
Restaurant owners are usually not tech people, nor can many of them afford to hire tech people. To expect all restaurants to pay exorbitant amounts of money setup/ maintain online ordering systems is not realistic.
Also, I have never had a restaurant ask me for a card over the phone. Order times are a rough guess based on current traffic, no matter over the phone or an app. And 9 times out of 10 the server repeats your order before hanging up. If they don’t, it is easy to ask them to.
To be fair, I have been surprised many times how difficult it can be to find an online menu for places I like in my area. Lots of places might not even have a website, but in these cases, I actually use GrubHub and the like to read the menus only. I never order through them.
Here is an easy way to beat these broken GrubHub shenanigans. Find an online menu, or use GrubHub only to read the menu menu if need be. Find the real phone number on Google maps. Place your order over the phone. Pick it up yourself and save tons of money on fees (and now apparently save the restaurant from getting screwed too). Make sure to pick up a paper menu on your way out for next time :)
Don't. Do. This.
Grubhub menus are often incomplete (and we all know the prices are wrong). I just checked a nearby restaurant I often frequent and the items I usually buy are not on the Grubhub menu.
If they don't have a web site and you want to see the menu:
Go to either the Google Maps listing or the Yelp listing.
If Yelp, don't click on the menu if they have one within Yelp.
Instead, click on the photos. You'll almost always find photos of the menu uploaded by Yelp users.
That's true, but rare. If there are no recent photos of the menu, then there's a good chance not many people eat there.
In any case, Grubhub menus are probably more likely to be inaccurate than those photos.
Which actually, is pretty impressive when you think about it. It’s not worthless. Even if not totally accurate, it will give you a rough idea of the most popular dishes!
If you want to pay for delivery (not pickup) with a credit card and the restaurant doesn't have online ordering then you'd read the credit card over the phone. Of course you have to say the words "I'd like to pay with credit," otherwise they'll assume you'll pay cash on delivery. Really standard before online ordering became big.
Some restaurants even have a POS system that when you've used a credit card in the past to pay for a delivery order with the phone number/address combination your using for your current order they'll ask you "would you like to use Visa ending in 1234?"
As an aside I didn't know it was a thing until I overheard my roommate doing it. This was 15 years ago now.
I think a lot of the lashback things like grubhub, uber eats is getting lately is precisely because people have become more tech savvy. The "magic" of the app isn't magic anymore to the current generation of users, and they just don't see the value in it that the previous one did.
My opinion: As it becomes more and more commonplace to have "just enough" technical expertise and the tooling is easy enough to DIY, we're going to see services like grubhub become commodified and open - and they know it, so they're doing everything they can to try to keep as much market share as possible.
That's how it always was, I really don't get this disconnect between people wanting to always hide behind a keyboard or smart phone when it comes to food. It's always been the most social thing I do in my entire day, as it has been done since for thousands of years, and I just can't see why people feel either super embarrassed and outright aloof when it comes to ordering food.
I mean if you know you're going to try and use an expired coupon or not going to tip well, I guess that makes sense, but in my experience most people just seem to have some inexplicable aversion towards food ordering and pickup. Yet seem to want to chat with the checkout lady about mundane matters, whereas I just want to get out asap and cook with the stiff I'm trying to buy and keep things to a minimum.
I don't want to 'hide', but my social anxiety makes phone conversations with people I don't know a harrowing experience; to make it bearable I need to work through a mental image of how a 'successful' call might go, from greeting through hanging-up, with some variations of what might happen in-between.
For a medical test related call I can force myself to go through with it, but to order food, when I can find something else that I like and that I can order via an app - I will avoid calling. I know this is quite an odd excuse, however did want to note that I at least want the personal phone contact, but can't deal with the unpredictability / stress involved that well.
I've never heard of this perspective used to describe what takes place when ordering food, you're clearly trying to equate it to a non GUI way of trying to navigate the process as you would when on a computer. Interesting perspective, its seems you think there is some underlying 'protocol' called conversation that you simply don't grasp, or are unaware of, right?
More points to follow below.
> I don't want to 'hide', but my social anxiety makes phone conversations with people I don't know a harrowing experience...
See, this I clearly understand despite personally having had to essentially speak at conferences for a living at one point; as I think people with a clear medical condition need to be accommodated in these situations, but just know that the FOH people taking your order are more likely to be receptive to your order than not because it ensures they A: get to have a job, and B: ultimately rely on satisfying you and providing a good UX in order to get a tip in exchange for said transaction, which is the majority of their overall wages.
Now, the Industry is filled with examples of feckless and quite frankly discontent people so it doesn't always show. But just understand FOH are there to serve you, its called hospitality for a reason and the relationship needs to be approached as such (within reason). Whereas BOH (chefs/cooks) is entirely different domain, which is what I did in that Industry, and requires more nuanced ways of communicating that I won't get into.
As for the payment processing, believe me I did fintech and on the back end its only really beneficial for the end consumer, with several hidden externalizes, as its hardly 'easy' for the business owner and the staff. But credit cards are just a paradigm so ingrained into the collective psyche that it will never go away, what's even more notable is that it was the Diner's Club model in restaurants that made Credit Card usage ubiquitous in the US in the first place.
But, again I totally understand this perspective when described in this way and totally understand why an app or a online order system is preferable.
I also don't have to worry about my order getting entered right.
That is built into the price of the food you ordering. You aren't bothering someone. You're giving them a job.
It’s the reason people don’t ask workers at retail stores for help; they (most of the time) don’t want to bother someone even though it’s their job.
Maybe it is because I am relatively young. I grew up apps first, so all the little annoyances of phones (accents, noise in the background, dropped calls, a lack of written records, etc) frustrate me more than others who didn't grow up with apps that just worked.
Restaurants are loud, add in shitty phone signals and heavy accents - the result is communication barriers are common and you have to do a lot of back-and-forth.
Another issue is the person taking the order usually has more job duties than just taking phone orders, so they can be distracted if it's busy and forget to write something down and/or sometimes you have to call back several times until someone has a free hand to answer the phone.
The receipt had the wrong items listed on them, because the person taking the order checked the wrong things while taking the order.
I guess it could have been verified better after they took the order, but I can't help but to feel that the order would have been more likely to be correct if I had checked boxes in an online form and verified there before sending it off.
I personally prefer using websites/app for this reason, I can just in my own time make the order, get confirmation from others with me that I'm ordering with and when everyone is happy, just submit. If I ever have the choice between calling vs ordering online, I will never call.
I agree, onboarding on these apps is miserable. But the benefits of a digital order, when done correctly, can really be better for some consumer cases than the voice call.
https://www.federalrelay.us/ip-relay.html
>IP Relay uses an Internet connection, a computer or mobile device with a web browser and a Communication Assistant (CA) . An IP user types what they want to say, the CA relays the conversation to their caller and then types their caller's response back to the IP user. To start using IP Relay, users are required to register for a 10-digit number through the Federal IP Relay website. To make your call today, go to www.federalip.us.
https://www.federalrelay.us/vri.html
>Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) is a feature of Federal Relay's Video Relay Service (VRS). This option provides deaf and hard of hearing Federal employees with on-demand remote sign language interpreting in order to facilitate communication between individuals who are in the same location (i.e. office, cubical, front desk, etc.).
Absolutely uncalled for. I did click through and read the whole article. I was actually unaware of TTY until reading it and did some research into it before coming to the conclusion that it was not something I needed to invest time into.
More importantly, added another person and an internet or phone connection into the loop would add a level time commitment for the person on the other end of the phone that I would find unnecessary, which takes out most if not all of these options.
> There's also accommodations for different disabilities, like the Deaf and hard of hearing via sign language.
This is why I put "somewhat". It's never been an issue beyond leaning in slightly when a cashier is a little soft-spoken and maybe asking someone to repeat something, and certainly never bad enough to learn sign language (out of necessity, I'd still love to learn for myself at some point).
"Hard of hearing" is a veeery wide range, with the vast majority leaning on the weaker end of the spectrum. My personal experience hasn't really needed much in the way of intervention. It just makes phone calls more of a hassle than the average person.
Just not worth an investment.
I could talk about what IP relay actually is (it's definitely more than "just chat"), my experience on the other side of it as a public-facing city-government worker, how video relay services won't work for me because I don't know sign language (something I mentioned in my previous comment), but I'm going to sidestep this entire conversation.
Insults to my mental stability and accusations of lying are far below the usual level of discourse I enjoy on HN, and I'm going to freely admit that, after some personal things and what's happening with the world at large, I got more upset than I'd like seeing that. So, I'm just going to walk away. I wish I could discuss my experiences more but I don't feel like a civil discussion can be had.
The interesting thing is that I view all those (except the fees) as benefits.
App makes it always easy to access and I can casually browse for food when hungry.
Account means I can re-order a past thing with a tap and that all my payment information is saved.
Marketing emails mean coupons.
Ordering ahead usually comes down to dialing them up, giving my name and phone number and telling them I'd like the same as last time. They read it off to me to confirm, quote me a waiting time, and that's that. Start to finish, the call is probably less than thirty seconds.
Also, calling on the phone is not always easy; I often place orders on my phone while simultaneously on a work call, or putting my kid down for a nap, or doing something else where speaking is not easy.
I am confused as to how they are getting the money from you.
I, um, take it you don't do this often :-)
They all do delivery, and I pay online.
When I say "they don't do delivery", I mean the restaurant doesn't do delivery. DD or GH provide the service to you. But if you call the restaurant directly, they'll tell you they don't do it on their own.
Which was the context of this conversation ("Why don't people directly call the restaurants instead of using GH?").
I've been doing a lot of takeout as most days its my only trip out of the house
It must not be a problem because nobody asks me for payment info over the phone, whether its my first or 50th order to them
They could use a website or an app and accept secure payments there - that was the whole point of this thread from the start.
What we really need is for someone to build an open source / one time cost / subscription platform that gives restaurants the ease of using a premade system without the expense of having a per transaction fee.
The killer feature is that it is a single market place. I go on the app, I can search through dozens of local restaurants, all with a consistent interface. I can place an order in a couple of clicks at a brand new restaurant I have never tried, and I dont have to enter any new information.
I can scroll through all my previous orders at all the previous restaurants, and re-order in one click.
This service can ONLY be provided by a unified platform. It doesn't matter how good a restaurants website is, I want ALL the restaurants in one place.
Now, could it be cheaper for restaurants? Does GH take too much of a cut? Maybe, but I don't know.... GH and DD both lose a ton of money, and have spent a ridiculous amount of money to get to where they are. Could anyone provide the service for a lot cheaper? If they could, they sure haven't yet.
Sustainable delivery would probably more bifurcated. I could imagine a range of food types that are delivery-centric (think pizza & Chinese) in areas with cheaper rents & smaller (or non-non-existant) dining rooms, and more delivery-optimized (high margin, easy to transport) food, with their own delivery drivers - and that a lot of other venues wouldn't do delivery, or would partner w/ a service like Lyft or Postmates when necessary, and it'd be expensive.
I think this would be a healthier place to be.
But if I know which restaurant I want, then the unified ordering apps are charging restaurants for a service (discovery) that the restaurant doesn't need any more. Seems crummy.
There's the significant chance that most of the restaurants you have to call are running at such thin profit margins that they don't have the money to spare to hire web devs or pay hosting providers, and even if they did, do you want to hand over your credit card details to some budget build order page?
It's also likely that the profit margins are low enough that the fees for something like Grubhub cut deep.
On the flip side, having to call somewhere really isn't that hard, and to describe it as "a terrible experience" is a bit mystifying.
> needing to give my credit card over the phone
Pay in cash?
> not knowing how long the order will take
You don't need a computer to tell you this, just say "How long will the order take?" to the person on the phone and they will tell you.
> needing to be concerned about the person hearing the order right
Ask for a read-back.
That's a pretty broad brush you're using. All the restaurants in my area that I frequent don't need any help. I've ordered from them all over the phone or online through their website and haven't run into a problem that some SV 3rd party would have or could have solved. Any "improvements in experience" by yelp/grubhub is pure grift.
I do notice in my area (Paris, France) that many small restaurants hardly have an online presence. I understand some people don't like calling up restaurants to order (I sometimes am one of those people).
Indeed, in such cases, having some sort of external service aggregating information and maybe even exposing some sort of common ordering platform would be great.
However, I think that people have an issue with GrubHub (and/or others) impersonating the restaurants. They don't come out and say "Hello, this is GH, we'll connect you to XYZ". They make you think you're doing business directly with the restaurant when, in fact, they're covertly routing the order through their platform and extracting fees.
For me the actual issue is their not being open about it. I don't often go to restaurants and I don't know people working there either, but I would think that offering such a service in an open manner would be welcomed by both businesses and clients.
and some restaurants are quite happy with their current customer base, and don't see the need to market themselves.
Restaurants are typically swamped in the massive overhead of running an actual restaurant, and are not fully up to date with every latest bit of marketing toolkit.
Because they are not fully up to date on the latest digital marketing, you think it is justified that they be subject to what is effectively hoards of VC-backed extortionists - nice restaruant you got there... be a shame if some bad reviews got highlighted ... or here, we'll just hijack your phone listings and take care of delivery for you...
At least the mafiosi would occasionally eat at the restaurants on whom they were running protection rackets...
The Due diligence is required because of these new hordes of extortionists, not the restaurants (and no, it isn't all about your trivial convenience, OMG, they want you to call and don't have the latest web technology up for every function... nevermind the quality of the food, ambiance, or service, it's all about whether you can order it through an app, isn't it?)
sheesh
And even though your points are right, I am not sure those providers should charge as much. It's killing the golden goose in the long term, especially now.
Yelp is another matter full of fake reviews and spam - I can also see why restaurants don't want to have a "social media manager" doing that for them.
I mean, you're using smart vocabulary "due dilligence", "Yelp" - but how much of that is literally spammy articles that have nothing to do with the real quality of the food in the restaurant?
Curious reversion to what I want for everything. I don't want to do it online, I want to call for anything. Less online presence = good, in my books. Less to build profiles with.
(posted in public on HN by accident of course)
If this was true Grubhub would gladly put there name on everything, say it in the automated phone call, so people would actively seek them out for a better experience.
I wonder if ordering by video call would make it feel more like in person ordering?
Is keeping this stuff up to date actually difficult. I don't run a business, so I have no idea.
They usually have a zillion things to do, and this has a very low ROI. The impact to their bottom line is negligible whether they update or not. Not many people will refuse to use their business because they can't bother to update Google/Yelp/etc.
They usually do it if there's a permanent change in hours, though.
You still use Yelp after all we know about them?
A simple search on just about any maps app gives a direct contact info, have you tried that?
Give the card over the phone is arguably more or as secure as online.
They read the order back to you don't they?
They are trying to compete, call them directly and cut out all these middle men.
The entire time -- they are trying to book you full price. The hotel loses, because they cannot give you discounts -- they either get the sale or lose it alltogether.
How is that not considered fraud? You're falsifying your identity as an employee for services you cannot provide in order to collect a fee as a middle man.
But now that you mention it, during this absurd time I actually called the number of a Thai restaurant I frequented before by searching it on yelp only to get a dead dial tone. I always suspected they were just busy as they were still doing rather well all things considered, but the woman at the counter (a local baker in my town helping out her friends in the evenings) said she never got a single call when I showed up and ordered in person and talked shop of her new kitchen that got put on hold.
Me: "Hi I'm trying to reach Marriott at Fisherman's Wharf, do I have the right number"
Them: "I can help you with that" (note the evasive answer)
Me: "Great, I have an Accenture corporate discount and this is for work, can you use corporate code XYZ123"
Them: "I dont see that on my system" (not a lie I suppose, but definitely not the truth)
Me: "OK well i have a client engagement Tues-Thurs and I need to book ASAP, what is your best rate? Do you have a AAA rate?"
Them: "You're lucky I can lock you in at {absurdly high price} - can i have your credit card"
I mean you’re already buying a hundred dollars of sushi... doesn’t seem to crazy to guess you can afford a big fee.
Maybe it was a $5,000 order for the whole office!
Or maybe it was a $50 at-home binge.
So you found a new restaurant, the restaurant found a new customer, and grub-hub is cut out of the (future) picture. Didn't grubhub earn that commission in this case?
I have no love (or hate) for grub-hub... but it seems like a business hired a salesperson on commission, knowing full well the parameters of the deal, and then gets upset when they actually bring in sales.
In most other industries the restaurant would be considered the 'bad guy' for trying to take the business direct and cheating the rep out of a commission.
In some places in Eastern Europe, for a while, you could see these people stand in front of empty, free parking spots in the street. As soon as they would see a car approaching they would wave their hands and signal you to park there. To be clear, these people were not afiliated with city hall or other public institutions in any way.
If you drove away, no biggie. If you parked, they would do a big show of moving around the car and telling you when you were too close to the curb, when you should start turning the wheel etc.
Once you were done, they would walk up to you and heavily imply they should be paid for the service they provided ("discovering" the parking space for you and helping you park). You could safely ignore them and they might cuss at you but that was about it.
My girlfriend used to lovingly call them Parking Consultants.
These GH stories have a very similar energy, with middlemen forcefully putting themselves in front of you when you follow a discovery path _that would naturally lead you to the restaurant you were looking for_ (e.g. by showing up higher than the restaurant you're tying to order from in the Google search).
Not a huge fan.
The value that GH added here was that they were higher up than any of the restaurant's competitors, too.
So, absent of GH, that pizza sale, instead of going to GH, might have gone to a competitive pizza place.
So the restaurant has to evaluate-- it is better that I get the order through GH, or that I don't possibly get the order at all, and it goes to a competitor?
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/19154220/grubhub-seamless...
"...By reusing our image for marketing purposes without prior written consent, you agree to a $3 royalty fee per page view."
IANAL, so no idea if that could be held up in court, but would be fun to see someone try.
The only reason they get away with it is they target small restaurants which are unable to defend themselves. They would try to create a fake <yourlocalcityname>mcdonald.com, it would be taken down immediately.
For example, suppose a fairy told OP about the restaurant and OP then Googled it to get the number. If the grubhub MITM phone number bumped the real number/website further down then grubhub is a nuisance and a thief.
But OP also mentioned they thought they had ordered from the restaurant's web site. If that confusion is due to dark patterns employed by grubhub then grubhub is full of evil wizards who must be overcome in an epic battle.
Only if OP discovered by searching and grubhub bubbling to the top of a search where the restaurant otherwise wouldn't have appeared is grubhub the knight here.
So we need to know-- OP, how did you discover this new restaurant in the first place?
The article suggests diners are calling numbers from the GrubHub app. If that’s the case, the commission is earned per the agreement. Practically, the app provided discoverability.
When it appears on Google or Yelp results, assuming Google or Yelp aren’t being compensated and disclosing this relationship, that is a problem.
Edit: Removed an interpretation of the situation that was inaccurate
https://www.saddlebackbbq.com/how-google-doordash-grubhub-co...
Or if Doordash puts their phone numbers on the restaurants Google listings, replacing the direct one: https://support.google.com/business/thread/5820393?hl=en
Would you label a sales guy you hired to find you new customers a bad guy if he camped in front of your door, talked to people coming to visit you and claimed commission?
Yelp adds value by putting my competitors above me when people search my exact name. They then offer me the deal Google gets.
GrubHub is spending VC money to win the google auction and then they offer the restaurant the great deal of handing over the profit margin to them. They’ll continue elbowing out paying restaurants after that to keep the money flowing, so the restaurant is paying for the privilege of paying GrubHub.
What a great time for small business.
Confusing a deputy that you are indeed someone in order to intermediate a relationship between them and that person has a skeevy air to it. It's the deception, I think.