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Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

about.grubhub.com

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Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#81

Post by zemo »

standardUser wrote: post #73
crmd wrote: post #15

Support your local restaurants. Don’t let these vampire platform companies enshitify your city’s food scene.

Or just order from local restaurants using GrubHub. Most mark up their menu prices to absorb the hit they take from working with GrubHub and similar services. Some will encourage you to order directly or through a different 3rd party by including a flier with the delivery order. But many others only offer delivery through 3rd parties like GrubHub.

I just call them, it's not like the phone company takes a cut when you order on the phone.

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#82

Post by standardUser »

zemo wrote: post #81
standardUser wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just order from local restaurants using GrubHub. Most mark up their menu prices to absorb the hit they take from working with GrubHub and similar services. Some will encourage you to order directly or through a different 3rd party by including a flier with the delivery order. But many others only offer delivery through 3rd parties like GrubHub.

I just call them, it's not like the phone company takes a cut when you order on the phone.

That's good for you. I prefer putting together my order with the menu on my phone, adding notes and having a moment to think about those notes, adding delivery instructions, tipping with the same credit card I pay with, tracking my order, having an order history I can view, and not bothering people who are busy running a restaurant and don't need to be talking to me on the phone since this has all been automated for a couple decades. And to be frank, many restaurant workers don't have the best English skills and may be in a loud environment, making phone calls more difficult.

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#83

Post by andrewla »

What the heck is going on here? This feels very ZIRP-ey; private equity chasing disruption in the hopes of the next acquisition.

Is this just a race to the bottom as all these delivery companies burn cash to subsidize their failing model and hope that they can be the last one standing?

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#84

Post by pfdietz »

khy wrote: post #54
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."

A Wonder just opened near my house, and the "different restaurants" seem to really be just different sections of a large menu with distinct branding. I.e., there is a single physical kitchen that makes food from the different "restaurants".

There are a bunch of "restaurants" in our town that are just different menus serviced at the same ghost/cloud/dark kitchen. The quality is generally not good. I wonder about the quality at Wonder -- the broader the menu, the harder it is for the preparers to get good at it.

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#85

Post by duxup »

hinkley wrote: post #80
afavour wrote: post #60

Silly money, behaving stupidly. I feel for the restaurant owners: not only were they forced into accepting the likes of Grubhub as a middle man, that same middleman now also owns restaurants that compete directly with them. If the restaurants have any power at all they should stop using Grubhub right now. I don’t know anyone still using it (which is crazy, Seamless used to dominate NYC). I sincerely hope the entire t…

Delivery should be done as a coop between local businesses. Always should have been that way.

Restaurant business is so risky anyhow, managing a co-op too sounds like a big extra load to take on.

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#86

Post by timnetworks »

afavour wrote: post #60

Silly money, behaving stupidly. I feel for the restaurant owners: not only were they forced into accepting the likes of Grubhub as a middle man, that same middleman now also owns restaurants that compete directly with them. If the restaurants have any power at all they should stop using Grubhub right now. I don’t know anyone still using it (which is crazy, Seamless used to dominate NYC). I sincerely hope the entire t…

I refuse to use GrubHub and not only because it makes a $12 sandwich into a $22 sandwich, but also because small business needs cash. If you're tipping $2.37 on your credit card, kick bricks.

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#87

Post by pfdietz »

jancsika wrote: post #72
thfuran wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many normal restaurants do a lot of heating up pre-prepared food as well.

1990s app buzz: discover and distribute music 100,000% more efficiently than brick and mortar! 2020s app buzz: eat food at least as expensive as brick-and-mortar that is no worse in quality!

> no worse in quality!

Evidence needed.

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#88

Post by yawnxyz »

whoa, they own Chai Pani and Fred's Meat and Bread, both of which are _excellent_ fast casual spots in Atlanta. It's just... it's like $28 for a Philly cheesesteak, so I've only been to each twice. edit: ok it's $16 each apparently, but still

But also, they own physical chains, real estate ("food halls" aka bougie food courts) and now... meal delivery? It sounds like the most expensive-to-operate things all squashed into one.

edit: and they own Blue Apron?! I feel like they're going to buy Candy Crush next

It's really hard to see how this is going to work out long-term.

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#89

Post by bunderbunder »

hinkley wrote: post #80
afavour wrote: post #60

Silly money, behaving stupidly. I feel for the restaurant owners: not only were they forced into accepting the likes of Grubhub as a middle man, that same middleman now also owns restaurants that compete directly with them. If the restaurants have any power at all they should stop using Grubhub right now. I don’t know anyone still using it (which is crazy, Seamless used to dominate NYC). I sincerely hope the entire t…

Delivery should be done as a coop between local businesses. Always should have been that way.

Sometimes I miss when delivery meant either Chinese or pizza, and the businesses were specialized in that kind of work. Which meant it didn't cost an arm and a leg, and the whole system was vertically integrated in a way that gave your food a fighting chance of still being hot by the time it arrived.

Also the restaurants got a chance to teach their delivery staff how to properly handle the food. Which meant that the Chinese restaurants, for example, could get away with using oyster pails instead of having to resort to the "maximum packaging waste" option.

Re: Wonder is acquiring Grubhub

#90

Post by nonameiguess »

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 restaurants to deliver to you. They seem to just get licenses to use the names and recipes of celebrity chefs or other restaurants. That raises the question of what the point of a restaurant even is. Seemingly, there has to be some quality gain from using a particular kitchen and particular staff, a particular source of ingredients, whatever it is. There has to be a reason some enterprising businessperson can't just hire random cooks, buy recipes from celebrity chefs, and recreate the experience and quality of a meal at 30 different top rated restaurants in a single kitchen.

That seems just as impossible as delivering from 30 different places at the same time.

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