…Regardless of your opinions on capitalism, you might be surprised to learn that services like Seamless aren’t just ripping you off—they’re ripping off the entire food industry.
Believe it or not, Seamless has been doing this for nearly two decades. Founded in 1999 as an enterprise business for catering, the company survived the dot-com crash and started connecting restaurants directly to customers in the mid-Aughts. The company merged with GrubHub in 2013, creating a near-monopoly over internet-based food delivery until recent years when a flurry of newer, more specialized services like Caviar, Uber Eats, and Mulberry & Vine entered the market. Food writer Elizabeth Dunn highlighted the trend and its consequences in a recent New Yorker article. Dunn reports: