To learn more about her restaurant doppelgänger, Techamuanvivit tried to order from it via Grubhub, Seamless, and DoorDash. “We were both really confused,” says Techamuanvivit. Shortly after placing his order, he got a text from Seamless reporting it had been “delayed.” Eventually, he called the restaurant directly.
It seemed too good to be true, he admits now: For one thing, the prices were pretty low, and he didn’t think that Kin Khao did dishes like fried noodles, but he shrugged off those concerns. The customer, who had recently enjoyed dinner at Kin Khao’s sister restaurant Nari, told Eater he specifically checked for Kin Khao on Seamless and found the listing. Instead of Kin Khao’s popular dishes, like mushroom hor mok terrine with crispy rice cakes, this menu showed dishes like pad thai, fried noodles, and Vietnamese pho. “I looked at the menu, and my name, and the address, and thought, what the hell is this?” she says. The Kin Khao showing up on all the delivery apps wasn’t Techamuanvivit’s Kin Khao at all. The process essentially inserts third-party apps as middlemen into a service many restaurants say they want control over, or wish to opt out of entirely. The delivery apps pull up restaurant menus listed online, from which customers make their selections, and couriers working for the apps place orders on their behalf. An “order delivery” button even appeared on the restaurant’s real Yelp page, linking to Grubhub.Īs a series of public complaints and lawsuits in recent months has shown, that practice isn’t entirely new: Several delivery services, including Postmates, Seamless, Grubhub, and DoorDash, offer food from restaurants without their explicit permission. Techamuanvivit googled her restaurant and saw it was true: Without her knowledge or consent, Kin Khao was listed on Seamless, as well as Grubhub, which owns Seamless, and its competitor DoorDash. He’d placed an order through Seamless from a business under Kin Khao’s name and address, as an email receipt showed. “We don’t even do takeout.”īut this customer was adamant. Just one problem: “We don’t do any delivery,” says Techamuanvivit. Chef Pim Techamuanvivit was managing the floor at her Michelin-starred San Francisco Thai restaurant Kin Khao last Saturday night when she answered a strange phone call from a customer asking about the status of his online delivery order.
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