Not the poster, but having done a significant amount of food ordering for offices in the Bay, I'm not surprised. I once put in a large ($400ish) lunch order at this mom/pop restaurant. Even though I ordered probably a week in advance, they clearly just didn't have any extra staff to call in. The restaurant was a few blocks away, so a few co-workers and I were just going to pick it up ourselves. It was around noon, and there were only three people manning the entire restaurant, all frantically working on our order. We wait around (took at least 20+ mins to get the order finished). Meanwhile, no less than six tables of customers who had been seated got up and left. No one was waiting on them, taking orders, or even dreaming of cooking their food. That's really bad for a restaurant. Those people could have/probably did give awful Yelp reviews and I doubt they'll ever return. Our one lunch order may have destroyed a single restaurant. I felt terrible.

But they did it to themselves, I guess? The problem with these websites is that you can get flooded with last minute orders outside of your control. The startup industry can be a real nightmare for restaurants. They don't have enough staff or food supplies on hand for a surge of last minute orders. And they can't aways gauge how busy the restaurant itself will be when they agree to orders in advance. We're trying to turn restaurants into catering companies. When take out was supposed to just be for random single people and working parents in the evenings. Not supplying 40+ person offices with lunch outside the restaurant.

And that just scratches the surface. I've heard plenty of shady stories about these delivery companies. Blaming restaurants for their ordering mistakes. They jack up the restaurants prices (on top of a delivery fee) which annoys customers even though it's out of restaurant control. And many of them won't remove restaurants even after the restaurant asks to be taken off the site. It's crazy.