I think the author's frustration here is warranted, but it's directed at the wrong part of DoorDash/GrubHub's product strategy. Advertising on competitor listi

I think the author's frustration here is warranted, but it's directed at the wrong part of DoorDash/GrubHub's product strategy. Advertising on competitor listings is a bread and butter marketing strategy that happens everywhere. If you're a BBQ restaurant owner, you want to advertise on your competitors' branded keywords because it's an obvious place to acquire new customers. The underhanded move on the part of food delivery platforms like GrubHub, DoorDash, Caviar, UberEats, etc., is that they increasingly are nudging their users to completely remove the restaurant brand from the loop. Open up one of the apps and notice a few things about the user experience they're pushing: - foregrounding "dishes" and "cuisines" rather than specific restaurants - hiding/burying the ability to just browse a list of restaurants, instead opting for themed or algorithmically generated collections of restaurants and dishes. I get the distinct sense that DoorDash, GrubHub, and the other delivery platforms want their users to think of the platform as the source of the food, rather than the restaurant. "Let's get some ribs delivered from GrubHub" rather than "Let's get some ribs delivered from Saddleback BBQ via GrubHub". This makes perfect sense for a company operating a two-sided marketplace - you ideally want to become indispensable to both sides. Restaurants need to realize that the marketing opportunities the platforms are offering will only provide them value as long as they're not entirely captured by the platform. And since restaurants have much lower brand recognition and far lower marketing budgets, it's going to be tough to fight back.