Customers trying to avoid online delivery platforms like Grubhub by calling restaurants directly might be dialing phone numbers generated and advertised by those very platforms — for which restaurants are charged fees that can sometimes exceed the income the order generates. […] Here’s how phone fees work: Grubhub (which also owns Seamless, MenuPages, Tapingo, and LevelUp) generates a unique phone number for each restaurant on its platform; it appears on the restaurant’s Grubhub or Seamless page and redirects to the restaurant's own phone line (a restaurant cannot list its own phone number on its Grubhub or Seamless page). The redirect number can also appear higher in Google search results (including the Google panel for that business) than the restaurant’s own line. This leads some customers to call it even if they don’t intend to use Grubhub.

These platforms are all losing money. Just think of all the meetings and lines of code and phone calls to make all of these nefarious things happen which just continue to bleed money. Why go through all this trouble? Grubhub just lost $33 million on $360 million of revenue in Q1. Doordash reportedly lost an insane $450 million off $900 million in revenue in 2019 (which does make me wonder if my dream of a decentralized network of pizza arbitrageurs does exist). Uber Eats is Uber's "most profitable division” 😂😂. Uber Eats lost $461 million in Q4 2019 off of revenue of $734 million. Sometimes I need to write this out to remind myself. Uber Eats spent $1.2 billion to make $734 million. In one quarter. Amazon just bailed on restaurant delivery in the U.S. What is it about the food delivery platform business? Restaurants are hurt. The primary labor is treated poorly. And the businesses themselves are terrible. […] A few months ago, in the pre-pandemic times, I was at an East Village pizza place and watched as the owner was arguing with a Doordash driver. The owner insisted the driver take the pizza in a heated bag so the customer didn’t get cold pizza, but leave an ID so the driver would be compelled to return the bag. The driver argued the amount of time it would take to come back to return the bag would mean he couldn’t make enough deliveries to “pay my rent”. #Innovation.