The $25 million settlement that regulators announced with the food delivery service Grubhub on Tuesday should serve as a cautionary tale for other gig economy businesses tempted to engage in deception in their zeal to become a market leader, a Federal Trade Commission staff attorney says.

"So, you've developed a technology-driven delivery platform connecting businesses to customers, powered by gig workers doing the driving. Now you need to convince businesses to offer products on your platform, customers to use the platform, and workers to make the deliveries," staff attorney Julie Solomon Ensor wrote on the FTC blog Tuesday.