Uber Eats Mysteriously Mislabels Palestinian Restaurants As Israeli
Toronto-based owners of Middle Eastern restaurants have taken to social media to find out why their businesses are coming up as “Israeli” in the Uber Eats search results. According to Hamsa Diab Farhat, a local activist, the unprompted miscategorization occurred over the weekend and was noticed by Levant Pizza, a Palestinian-Lebanese pizzeria.
The establishment has been operating since 2021 and intentionally chose to be listed as Palestinian. It merges Palestinian and Lebanese with Italian cuisine to offer a unique spin on traditional pizza.
Farhat had the opportunity to interview the owner Nadir Koasmi, who shared his surprise, “This morning we got a screenshot from one of our customers that we were being listed under the Israeli food category of Uber Eats. This obviously was shocking to us. We are not Israeli.”
Levant Pizza decided to take to social media to share its disappointment with Uber Eats, stating, “As advocates for preserving Palestinian culinary heritage, we cannot tolerate this, even if it affects our visibility on Uber Eats. Uber Eats must immediately reverse these discriminatory actions immediately.” In addition to Levant Pizza, Uber Eats reduced the representation of over 300 Middle Eastern restaurants which also include Iraqi and Afghani.
Uber Eats ultimately responded to the post, which now has over 23k likes, saying, “Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We apologize for this experience, and we have escalated this to a specialized team to investigate.” According to Koasmi, it took some time but the number of miscategorized restaurants eventually dropped.
As of now, Uber Eats has yet to offer a clear explanation behind why it mislabeled Middle Eastern restaurants as Israeli.
