Online food delivery service Grubhub has defended the practice of adding restaurants to its platform without asking them.
The US takeaway app adopted this practice a couple of months ago in cities across the US. But some restaurants who don’t offer takeaways are angry that they’re not being consulted beforehand.
A Grubhub spokeswoman told the BBC that restaurants get more orders when they are on Grubhub.
“We’ll add restaurants to our marketplace when we see local diner demand for delivery so the restaurant can receive more orders and revenue from deliveries completed by our drivers,” she said.
“We work to provide accurate menus and hours for these restaurants on our marketplace based on available information online.”
The firm added that other food delivery companies do the same thing in the US. UberEats told the BBC it did not carry out the practice “in the UK” and neither does UK-based firm Deliveroo,
Any restaurant which doesn’t wish to be on Grubhub’s platform must contact the company and opt out.
Grubhub informed its shareholders about the move in a letter last October. Some restaurant owners feared they were being impersonated by fraudsters – but that doesn’t seem to be the case.