Late last year, Yelp's app quietly started routing restaurant customers' take out and delivery phone calls through Grubhub for tracking and marketing purposes
The phone numbers add tracking before connecting to a restaurant so that Grubhub can bill for a marketing fee.
Restaurants whose takeout and delivery calls flow through Grubhub's tracking numbers are billed a marketing fee for calls they never agreed to route, and Grubhub gains visibility into their customer phone traffic.
Second-order effects
The practice invites the same scrutiny that already forced Grubhub to commit to [[a:949532|revising its ordering system so restaurants aren't charged for calls that don't lead to a delivery]], and erodes restaurant trust in both platforms' billing.
Third-order effects
If intermediaries keep inserting themselves into the customer-merchant relationship — calls, listings, domains — restaurants face mounting pressure to treat every inbound channel as a paid toll, pushing fee transparency toward a regulatory and contractual battleground.
The trend: Delivery and review platforms are converting restaurants' direct customer relationships into metered, fee-bearing channels, with Grubhub's billing practices repeatedly outrunning restaurant consent.
NEW: Grubhub is creating its own phone numbers for restaurants. Yelp inserts the phone numbers into restaurants' listings. Restaurants have no idea this is happening. Grubhub takes a cut from delivery orders placed this way. https://www.vice.com/...
amazing how Google forced Yelp to make this bad choice. Clearly, Google is again to blame for Yelp's struggles, as Yelp's policy team likes us all to remember.
If you find a restaurant you like on Grubhub, go there and get a menu from them with their phone number on it and call them directly instead of ordering through the app. It will put more money into a locally owned business in your neighborhood instead of a parasitic VC firm. http…
INSIDIOUS: Yelp is replacing restaurants' numbers with its own phone numbers, so Grubhub can still can a % of orders even if not through the app https://www.vice.com/...
An aside: if you can, find a restaurant's own web site and order through it. I've had a lot of luck with my regular places and been able to cut out Grubhub etc entirely https://twitter.com/...
Call the restaurant directly to place an order!! If you hear a message that your call is being recorded, hang up—you've actually reached GrubHub, which takes a cut, sometimes even if you're just calling to ask a question. Rly good story from @adrjeffries https://www.vice.com/...