The city of Chicago announced a first-of-its-kind legal challenge against food delivery platforms DoorDash and Grubhub on Friday, accusing the companies of engaging in a host of unfair business practices that it says violate municipal consumer protection laws.

In two separate lawsuits, the city argued the companies use misleading fees and hidden markups to obscure the true cost of ordering food on their platforms, and routinely add unaffiliated restaurants to their systems without permission. In its complaint against Grubhub, the city also alleged that the company flouted pandemic caps on platform fees, and engaged in deceptive marketing tactics, such as requiring restaurants to shoulder the cost of its pandemic promotional campaigns and buying up domain names to set up unauthorized shadow sites. In its complaint against DoorDash, the city said that the company pocketed at least some portion of customer tips instead of paying them out in full to drivers.

“It is deeply concerning and unfortunate that these companies broke the law during these incredibly difficult times, using unfair and deceptive tactics to take advantage of restaurants and consumers who were struggling to stay afloat,” said mayor Lori Lightfoot in a press release announcing the lawsuits.

This isn’t the first time that either company has faced litigation over business practices. Last month, the state of Massachusetts filed a lawsuit against Grubhub for allegedly violating the state’s fee caps, while D.C. sued DoorDash over its tipping policies last November. However, what makes Chicago’s legal challenge unique is its very broad scope, said Betsy Miller, a partner at D.C.-based law firm Cohen Milstein and outside counsel for the city, in an interview.

Read the full article about DoorDash and Grubhub by Jessica Fu at The Counter.