A counter point is that an individual is free to hire someone to go and pick up food from a restaurant on their behalf and it does not make any difference to the restaurant.
I suspect that what restaurants fear, though, is that Grubhub is trying to grab as much marketshare as possible then once they are in a position of strength they'll go and demand a commission from the restaurants, or else...
A counterpoint is that if you hire someone to order and pick up food for you, and they place the wrong order, you won't blame the restaurant for your assistant's mistake.
GH is pretending to be the restaurant, so you get mad at the restaurant, not GH, when your order arrives late/cold/wrong. The restaurant didn't agree to this representation and you, the customer, weren't informed of it either.
I think that this is a red herring unless they are doing so in a way that may make people think that they are the restaurant instead of an independent delivery agent, although the restaurant do allege that Grubhub is misrepresenting themselves.
But yes, in principle they can get into trouble for using trademarks and logos without authorization (menus are fair game), although I suppose it is fair use to mention the names of the restaurants they can pick up food from. Going after them for that shows that they are not doing anything unlawful by running their intermediary service if this is the only thing the restaurants hope might stick.
That's not much of a counterpoint. In isolation, I would question whether this reply is aimed at the wrong comment as it doesn't seem to counterpoint much of anything in the parent comment as far as I can tell. It's not about someone coming to pick up food at a restaurant.
> Grubhub decides to add unaffiliated restaurants to its website and mobile apps without the restaurants’ permission
My counterpoint is that I don't believe that there is anything wrong with that or that permission is needed. Of course as long as there is no misrepresentation, which may indeed be an issue here.
If you think otherwise I'm happy to hear your argument...
I suspect that what restaurants fear, though, is that Grubhub is trying to grab as much marketshare as possible then once they are in a position of strength they'll go and demand a commission from the restaurants, or else...