Eater looks at how big food delivery services operate against local restaurants’ wishes. Apparently, services like Doordash and Postmates have operated without some restaurant’s permission for years. Now it seems to have gotten worse.

To me, the most egregious practice is Grubhub’s registration of over 23,000 web domains that are similar to local restaurant names. This is an attempt to insert themselves between the restaurant and their customers without the of awareness of either party. Restaurants that don’t want to offer delivery, or control it themselves should be allowed to do so. They shouldn’t have their online presence or phone number hijacked by another company.

While I’m upset to hear of such shitty business practices, I can’t say I’m shocked. Cities don’t need, nor can they sustain 5 or more delivery services. While each one is angling for market share, apparently ethics take a back seat.

In response, I’ve deleted my Seamless app; deleting my account is another story. There is no way to delete accounts on Seamless’ web site, which is another shit business practice. I’ve emailed their customer care people, we’ll see what they come back with. Update 2020-02-09: Seamless customer care deleted my account within a couple days of my request.

I don’t expect my one household boycott to make a dent, but I don’t want to support this sort of behavior. Plus, I look forward to speaking with the woman at the pizzeria next time we get a pie.

via Slashdot

pecan and pumpkin pie
Pecan and pumpkin pies 2019

What do we have after Thanksgiving and the ensuing Black Friday hype? Leftovers (and pictures).

Pictured here are 2019’s pies. The crusts—often the most frustrating part for me—were quite good this year. Although, I should have blind baked the pumpkin pie’s crust. I used this Pate Brisee recipe, it’s simple and the result was nice and flaky. For the fillings, I followed the sage advice in this NYT Opinion piece and followed the recipes on the respective bottle/can of the ingredients.

Keep reading to see some more poor-quality pictures of questionable-quality pies through the years.

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