I think you kinda have a point when it's one physical location presenting itself as multiple different options whose food would never belong on the same menu together at a dine in restaurant in the first place.
Where I think it's shady is one kitchen pretending to be 10 different restaurants all serving the same type of food under different restaurant names, just to basically game the system into presenting them to more consumers.
The main difference between this and the hotel case is that when a business lists another "restaurant" on Uber Eats/Grubhub/whatever they're effectively taking away some advertising space from all the other restaurants on the platform. Whereas when a hotel adds another "restaurant" frontend to their kitchen, nothing really changes for all the other places in town. And it would be painfully obvious if one hotel opened up 10 nearly identical e.g. indian restaurants on the same premises.
TLDR: It's not possible for the practice to get to a predatory level in the physical world so it's less of a concern, even though it's fundamentally very similar.
> multiple different options whose food would never belong on the same menu together at a dine in restaurant.
Any halfway decent hotel in a major Asian city will happily serve up (approximations of) Chinese stir-fries, Japanese sushi, Indian curries, Italian pizza and American burgers from its restaurant.
My thinking is, if the food is good, I couldn't care less if they are selling sushi, lawn furniture, plumbing supplies, and car insurance out of the same building.
If the food is not good, see above.
And if Uber Eats is dumb enough to fall for 10 Indian restaurants with the same physical street address and controlling interest, well... party on.
But that's just it. If the food is no good, then you may avoid "Wing Bucket" in the future. But then you try out "Thrilled Cheese" and it sucks, too! Okay, mark that one down as crappy. A month later you check out "Super Mega Dilla" and damn if it isn't shitty microwaved food as well.
A real restaurant in the real world can't play this game. Sure, there are combo KFC/Taco Bells out there, but it's not some sort of subterfuge. Obviously those locations are combining the two brands into one kitchen. Do with that info what you will.
When browsing options on an app, there is no similar affordance. You have to play detective to discover that IHOP, Super Mega Dilla, Wing Bucket, and Thrilled Cheese are all the same place. And only one of those is a real brand that carries any kind of reputation. The others can be burned at will if they don't work.
What frustrates me is that this scheme seems to be working? It's been like this for a while now, and I don't understand why people keep using these delivery apps. Cold food, delivered late, for twice the price, from a phony restaurant, by a gig worker that is more often than not getting shafted on their own expenses. What's not to love?
Where I think it's shady is one kitchen pretending to be 10 different restaurants all serving the same type of food under different restaurant names, just to basically game the system into presenting them to more consumers.
The main difference between this and the hotel case is that when a business lists another "restaurant" on Uber Eats/Grubhub/whatever they're effectively taking away some advertising space from all the other restaurants on the platform. Whereas when a hotel adds another "restaurant" frontend to their kitchen, nothing really changes for all the other places in town. And it would be painfully obvious if one hotel opened up 10 nearly identical e.g. indian restaurants on the same premises.
TLDR: It's not possible for the practice to get to a predatory level in the physical world so it's less of a concern, even though it's fundamentally very similar.