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Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

about.grubhub.com

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Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#111

Post by fsckboy »

popcalc wrote: post #10
jaymzcampbell wrote: post #4

Mentions the $650mln they'll pay Just Eat for it, neglects the fact Just Eat paid $7.3bln. Quite the write down. And in just 4 years.

Where did all the money go?

>Where did all the money go?

all of it, including its future, was valued at $7 billion, but there was never $7 billion in cash. Maybe it was $700 million in cash paid for 10% of it, which would value the whole thing at $7 billion. If that totally-made-up 10% number happens to be the right number, then it hasn't lost much at all overall, but the investor who paid that has to share the sale price with a bunch of other shareholders who paid less. So, this owner lost money, but the firm did not necessarily.

(I'm not saying this is what happened, and maybe a quick google would get us closer to the actual numbers, I'm just saying you have to pay attention to the wording of what is being claimed; media likes to exaggerate.)

what has disappeared is "belief in the future prospects of this company to bring in profits worth $7B" which was why the last investors invested, and why the early investors set up the kitchens and other frameworks to support those hopes. And it's not that the opportunity wasn't a good one, perhaps a competitor "won", or perhaps there are too many competitors trying to share the $7B pie.

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#113

Post by JasserInicide »

deprecative wrote: post #25
snarf21 wrote: post #6

At first blush, this might seem like another silly roll-up. However, I believe in Marc Lore completely and it will be interesting to see what this becomes. This is bad news for DoorDash (imo).

To be fair, DoorDash is bad news for DoorDash because a $8 meal costs $30.

I mean, they're all like that, adding on 40% to the actual meal total.

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#114

Post by JumpCrisscross »

zemo wrote: post #107
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how do you know the per-share price Same way you do for a public company. From trades and valuations. Private shares exchange hands in private transactions as well as almost every time the company raises money. If a company issues incentive stock options, they're required to calculate a 409A price, which while a bullshit number, is indeed a per-share price. Corporations, by law, have shares.

> Same way you do for a public company. From trades and valuations. how do you know what trades took place, and how many shares were traded, and at what price?

> how do you know what trades took place, and how many shares were traded, and at what price?

Company generally has these records. Various other sources, e.g. PitchBook, compile them. In some jurisdictions (e.g. UK and India) they have to be publicly announced, though that's becoming less common.

TL; DR It is incredibly wrong to suggest private companies don't have a market cap. As in finance 101 wrong.

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#115

Post by jfengel »

nonameiguess wrote: post #90
geor9e wrote: post #46

This part feels like The Onion. 30 private taxis coordinating for your meal. "customers can order from upwards of 30 restaurants in a single order, with each item being made-to-order in a sequenced fashion so that they finish simultaneously and can be delivered to the customer together."

Upon seeing this, I first thought "a bread company is buying Grubhub?" Then I clicked the article and realized no, this is a different company I've never heard of, apparently because they're only located in five US states all in the northeast nowhere near where I live. As others have said, they appear to have physical locations and you can even go eat in person there, and they don't pick up food from 30 different res…

Because an enterprising businessperson has no idea how to run a kitchen.

Recipes are in many ways the least important part of what a chef provides. They're not secrets. If there's a "secret ingredient" it's that they're using more butter and salt than you'd use at home.

What a chef provides is a process. They get the ingredients ordered, at the quality level they want for a price they're willing to pay. They ensure that the ingredients show up, in the amounts needed, without waste and without falling short -- and have backup plans. They staff the kitchen, and ensure that they have all prepared their stations before service begins. They train the expediter to ensure that all of the food comes out together, without things waiting under the warmer.

The chef also provides a menu, which is more important than the recipes. It has something for every guest, and every item can be finished before the guest gets impatient.

It's not impossible for a business guy to hire a top-notch executive chef to do that work, but the business guy cannot do it. It requires years in the kitchen to know what factors are important. It requires a deep understanding of the culture of kitchen workers, and how to get the best out of them. It would require an enormous staff to do that properly, and training them extremely well.

You can see this at work at a place like The Cheesecake Factory. It's hardly great food, but it's reliably good. The menu is enormous, on par with a dozen restaurants at once. It can be done. You're just not going to do it Silicon Valley style, learning as you go.

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#116

Post by skizm »

bsimpson wrote: post #3

Those weird ghost kitchen things have more than half a billion dollars to spend on acquisitions?! I wonder how this came to be - did they already have that big of a war chest, or did they hear they could buy a name brand and go back to their investors to finance it?

Apparently they have totaled ~$1.7B in funding according to Bloomberg:

> Lore’s startup also raised $250 million in equity investment, bringing the total amount of capital it’s secured to $1.7 billion

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#117

Post by organsnyder »

jfengel wrote: post #115
nonameiguess wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upon seeing this, I first thought "a bread company is buying Grubhub?" Then I clicked the article and realized no, this is a different company I've never heard of, apparently because they're only located in five US states all in the northeast nowhere near where I live. As others have said, they appear to have physical locations and you can even go eat in person there, and they don't pick up food from 30 different res…

Because an enterprising businessperson has no idea how to run a kitchen. Recipes are in many ways the least important part of what a chef provides. They're not secrets. If there's a "secret ingredient" it's that they're using more butter and salt than you'd use at home. What a chef provides is a process. They get the ingredients ordered, at the quality level they want for a price they're willing to pay. They ensure t…

I have enough trouble getting food on the table at the right time when I'm making a relatively simple meal for my family. Reading this description (which seems spot-on to me, though I don't have experience working in foodservice) is making me anxious just imagining it.

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#118

Post by akudha »

xyst wrote: post #79
bsimpson wrote: post #3

Those weird ghost kitchen things have more than half a billion dollars to spend on acquisitions?! I wonder how this came to be - did they already have that big of a war chest, or did they hear they could buy a name brand and go back to their investors to finance it?

They don’t have jack shit. It’s all based on hype, keep the train rolling so the early investors can get their cut while the other suckers hold the bag

I suppose these career options have relatively much higher chances of making good money:

1. Become a corporate lawyer, charge by the hour - win or lose, lawyers get paid

2. Run a soulless media company - rake in the ad dollars from both parties (during elections) and other soulless companies spending VC money on advertising (all the time)

3. Be early investor, pump and dump

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#119

Post by calmoo »

015a wrote: post #110
geor9e wrote: post #46

This part feels like The Onion. 30 private taxis coordinating for your meal. "customers can order from upwards of 30 restaurants in a single order, with each item being made-to-order in a sequenced fashion so that they finish simultaneously and can be delivered to the customer together."

Its a ghost kitchen. It isn't 30 restaurants, its one restaurant with 30 brands. This idea was tried years ago (they'd claim to be the first) by a company based out of Indianapolis named Clustertruck ( https://www.clustertruck.com/); though their branding was more "one restaurant, 30 food truck brands". The aim was: you can order a bunch of stuff, the software in the kitchens times it to all come out at the same time…

Uber Eats in the USA, yes, it's more hands off in terms of gig workers. In the UK and Germany and many other countries though, there have been many court rulings to essentially ban gig-working and enforce employee protections.

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#120

Post by [deleted] »

Gormo wrote: post #108
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll look up the addresses of restaurants on Uber Eats, using street view, before ordering. Most of them are at bodegas or otherwise non-restaurant spaces.

I recently saw a new burger joint pop up on Uber Eats with an address not far from my home. It turned out to be the address of the last remaining Ruby Tuesday restaurant in my area, but the burger place did not advertise any connection to Ruby Tuesday. Seemed very sketchy to me.

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