MONROE — A settlement with food delivery giant Grubhub and the State of Illinois may pave the way for similar action in Wisconsin, as local restaurants cope with the same deceptive tactics used by other delivery apps, including putting out restaurants menus without permission.

According to local restaurant owners and managers, UberEats is one of several delivery apps putting restaurant menus on their apps — the same activity that led to the investigation and settlement in Illinois.

“UberEats has illegally stole our information and used an old menu and put us on their app after we have continued to tell them no we are not interested in using their platform,” said an online post from Monroe’s popular Horseshoe Saloon, which garnered a lot of attention in a community known for its good local dining options. “Now we have customers calling us saying they have placed an order and it keeps getting delayed.”

When someone orders through one of the big national apps and the restaurant is not affiliated, the order goes nowhere and the customer’s money disappears, said Gavin Jordan, the co-founder of a local-only delivery service, Delivery Drive, which is available on Apple App Store and through the Google Play Store for Android users.

“They will charge customers and then they will have to go through the app to try to get their money back and it never happens,” he said.

Delivery Drive was founded by Jordan and Kendall Paulson after Jordan had spent time in the Madison market and wondered why none of the home delivery giant applications were offered in Monroe. Jordan also worked for Eat Street, a similar service for the Madison-area restaurant scene.

Meanwhile, the Illinois settlement — achieved in tandem with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — requires the company to immediately remove unaffiliated restaurants from its listings. According to the Illinois Attorney General’s office, since at least 2019, Grubhub has added as many as 325,000 unaffiliated restaurants to its platform — without their permission. 

“Our investigation found that Grubhub tricked its customers, deceived its drivers, and unfairly damaged the reputation and revenues of restaurants that did not partner with Grubhub — all in order to drive scale and accelerate growth,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. 

Here is how the scheme worked in Illinois, according to the Illinois AG, and presumably, other states such as Wisconsin, which have yet to deal with the problem legislatively or in the courts:

●  First, according to the complaint, when Illinois customers looked up these restaurants online, Grubhub was frequently the first result, deterring customers from placing direct orders and paying the restaurant directly for delivery.

●  Second, these restaurants were inundated with orders from Grubhub drivers, including for meals they did not sell, because they had no connectivity with Grubhub’s ordering system. Additionally, drivers were only able to pay with Grubhub credit cards, which were occasionally rejected due to inadequate money. As a result, eateries that had already prepared food were not reimbursed.

●  Third, the complaint alleges that angry consumers held unaffiliated eateries accountable for Grubhub’s failures when Grubhub’s drivers delivered food from those establishments late or in bad condition.

Grubhub also tried to sell restaurants paid partnerships in response to their requests to be taken off the platform, and frequently only removed restaurants after they threatened legal action, officials said.

 Many Illinois restaurants complained to the company about these practices. But the complaint claims that rather than fixing their practices, Grubhub made them even more difficult for customers and eateries to identify.

“The competitive harms, according to the complaint, also extend to the restaurants themselves, with Grubhub’s service deceptively luring diners away from the restaurants’ own delivery services,” said the Illinois AG statement.

Over at Pancho and Lefty’s in Monroe, customers have noticed Pancho’s menu showing up on delivery apps but the restaurant does not receive any of those orders, owners say. In fact, they do not deliver at all, although 25% to 30% of their daily sales is through carry-out ordering — a trend that started and has grown since the COVID-19 epidemic. Still, according to the owners, the full experience of dining is best enjoyed in person, with other members of the community.

“We have a nice, busy little restaurant, and we want the food presented in the best way,” said Russ Brown, who co-owns the spot with his wife, Nadine Brown. “Our restaurant is about serving people.”

Back at the Horseshoe, the Uber Eats menu issue has left a bad taste in the mouths of customers.

“I’m not sure what they are gaining from this (except) for angry customers,” said the Horseshoe post. “The only place you can get our food delivered is though our local delivery service Delivery Drive app with Kendall and Gavin.”

Baumgartner’s downtown also found itself listed on Uber Eats after a patron called wondering about the status of ordering, according to owner Chris Soukup.

“They have like an old menu of ours on there and it’s a little confusing,” he said. “I don’t understand what good they expect to come out of doing that when we have nothing to do with them.”