Grubhub, Uber, Postmates Lose Bid to Dismiss Antitrust Lawsuit by Diners

Grubhub, Postmates and Uber will still face a lawsuit over allegations of their food delivery fees resulting in higher restaurant prices even for people not using the apps, a Bloomberg report said, as a federal judge refused to dismiss the case.

The proposed class-action suit by diners was filed in April 2020 just as restaurants had to close their doors and offer delivery service options.

According to the suit, the companies’ high fees and no-competition clauses made it so restaurants couldn’t offer  discounts to customers who ordered from them directly.

The delivery companies disputed this, saying the plaintiffs hadn’t proved that ordering directly from a restaurant had been a substitute for ordering the same meal on their apps.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan from Manhattan said the suit had plausibly shown that the restaurants couldn’t “avoid doing business” and that they had been foreclosed from lowering prices in the direct markets to get sales, so they had no choice but to raise prices.

The report notes that Grubhub was disappointed and would “continue to defend” itself, and the “services we offer to restaurants and diners.”

Read more: DoorDash Steps Up Its White-Label Efforts in the ResTech Race to ‘Digital Entirety’

PYMNTS wrote that DoorDash has been making moves to expand its reach, announcing a partnership with Wix, the website building platform, to integrate the delivery firm’s white-label fulfillment platform.

This will let restaurants offer delivery, fulfilling orders via the aggregator’s driver network, and DoorDash it will expand the reach to new customers.

“We are excited to partner with Wix to provide a solution for restaurants of all sizes to offer seamless delivery through their own channels through our Drive platform,” Casey North, vice president at DoorDash Drive, said in a statement. “We hope Wix Restaurants users can expand their reach to even more customers, and we are proud to support these small businesses by enabling delivery through their own channels.”