[burpee]

Interestingly, the damages can be calculated and definitely add up.

Restaurants spend a lot of time and effort to build up loyal, lifetime customers that are created by giving them three exceptional experiences in a row. There is a lot of research on getting to three exceptional experiences in return for a lifetime customer. Those exceptional experiences require investments in staff and training and take a long time to pay off.

Having GrubHub break that effort through misrepresentation they are destroying the lifetime value of those customers. If you apply that math to slightly more premium venues, GrubHub is easily costing restaurants hundreds of thousands in revenue through lost lifetime value.

Restaurants are complex, fragile businesses, and this practice damages them at the core of their business.

Will be interesting to see how this plays out in court.