[skyisblue]

In Australia there’s an online ordering platform called MenuLog who also charge a commission. I’m not sure if Grubhub or Seamless do this, but MenuLog will also purchase a domain and set up a cookie cutter site for all restaurants that sign up. They will also push this site high up in Google search results with SEO, which sounds great, but all loyal customers who are searching for the restaurant end up on this site, which links to their online ordering platform. So restaurants end up paying a commission for orders from loyal customers who would have gone straight to the restaurant. We’ve also seen phone numbers purposely omitted in these cookie cutter sites as they can’t earn a commission from phone orders.

[ryanworl]

GrubHub/Seamless also does this. Additionally they DO charge a commission for phone orders via a system that charges restaurants on a per-call basis. You see it frequently in tiny Manhattan restaurants where the website the owner set up couldn’t possibly have worse on-page SEO (the menu is an image or a PDF link, not responsive, etc) and the GrubHub site is a heavily optimized lead gen funnel.

[siquick]

Thanks for making that horrendous scheme public. I've just deleted Menulog.