A menu mix-up at a Massachusetts pizza shop was causing problems for customers and workers so they turned to NBC10 Boston Responds for help.
Paulo Caetano's Pizza Mia Restaurant in Billerica has been doing well during the pandemic.
"Luckily our take-out and delivery not only stayed but picked up a little bit," Caetano said. "The community has been great."
Customers can place online orders on the Pizza Mia website and the staff handles all deliveries. Caetano said that's the way they have done it for 20 years.
But this summer, something strange happened. Caetano said customers were trying to place orders for deals and menu items they didn't offer.
"They were asking for bowls of spaghetti or some kind of pasta I've never heard of. We don't have that," Caetano said. "They were asking for fried pickles, which I know places have it, but we never did."
He finally figured out that although he had no affiliation with Grubhub, the food ordering and delivery service company had listed his business on its platform.
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The menu, prices and hours posted on Grubhub were all wrong and that led to mix-ups with orders customers placed through the site.
"I got a lady, she was really upset," Caetano recalled. "She's complaining to me, I said, 'I'm really sorry.' She said, 'Well I put it on your order online.' I didn't know how to explain to her it wasn't our online order system, it was Grubhubs."
Concerned that the confusion was costing him business and upsetting his customers, Caetano says he repeatedly reached out to Grubhub to try to fix the situation.
"We sent them a message on Facebook first, they said, 'please call us,' and we called and they said, 'I'm sorry, we're going to take it down.' Nothing happened," Caetano said.
He says he spent weeks calling, emailing, tweeting and sending Facebook messages to Grubhub, but couldn't resolve the problem. That's when he contacted NBC10 Boston Responds for help and we got in touch with the company.
A Grubhub spokesperson said while the majority of their orders are placed with the restaurants they partner with, "starting in late 2019 in select cities across the country, we'll add restaurants to our marketplace when we see local diner demand for delivery."
The company spokesperson also said, "This is a model that other food delivery companies have been doing for years as a way to widen their restaurant supply and we're trying it as well to close the restaurant supply gap created by our competitors."
Grubhub says if a restaurant prefers not to be on their marketplace, or needs to change any information like menu items or hours, they should reach out to them at restaurants@grubhub.com.
Grubhub removed Pizza Mia from its site and Caetano is glad things at the restaurant are back to normal.
"Within minutes, minutes, I got an email back from you that you contacted them and I check and it was gone," Caetano said. "You go to the link that they have for Pizza Mia Billerica and its blank. I cannot tell you how happy I am. I really appreciate it!"
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