Grubhub: Contracts authorize websites

It looked like yet another example of Big Tech’s overreach, pitting a massive internet platform against powerless individuals. Grubhub, the food delivery firm, was buying up web domains named after mom-andpop restaurants and using them to drive its business.

A week ago, the nonprofit newsroom New Food Economy reported that Grubhub had registered more than 23,000 domains in restaurants’ names without their consent in what the New Food Economy cast as an attempt to generate greater commission revenue and prevent restaurants from building online presences.

After enduring four days of outrage from restaurant owners and critics, Grubhub went on the offensive. In an email obtained by The Times, Chief Executive Matt Maloney said Tuesday that the allegations were “outright false,” insisting that restaurants using its food delivery platform had explicitly agreed to web domain purchases and the creation of websites advertising their businesses.

“We do not set up websites without the permission of a restaurant,” Maloney wrote in the email to employees. “We had a very clear provision in every one of our restaurant contracts saying we would provide this service to bring them more orders.”

Maloney also said that Grubhub, which discontinued the practice of automatically creating websites for restaurants in 2018, charged restaurants substantially less for orders received via those websites than for those placed directly within its app, and it turned ownership of the websites over to the restaurants upon their request.