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Grubhub is rolling out a new meal perk for office workers as more Americans return to the workplace.
The delivery company’s corporate clients can soon offer their employees a Grubhub Pay Card, which they can use to pay for meals from a variety of restaurants at home or at work.
It’s part of Grubhub’s corporate ordering business that allows employers to extend credit to employees to use on Grubhub’s marketplace.
The card connects to that same line of credit, but it is not limited to restaurants on Grubhub’s platform: Employees can use it at any restaurant that accepts credit or debit cards. They can also use it while working at home in addition to in the office, with specific parameters set by their employer.
Grubhub said the flexibility aligns with a move toward more hybrid work schedules amid the pandemic. And it said it would help drive orders to restaurant, including ones it doesn’t explicitly partner with.
Restaurants that are listed on Grubhub will not have to pay commissions on in-person orders using the card. It’s expected to be available later this year, the company said.
Thousands of U.S. companies use Grubbhub’s corporate accounts services, and the company has seen a massive uptick in corporate orders this year: They’re up 500% both nationwide and in New York compared to April 2020, a representative said.
The Grubhub Pay Card can be used at any restaurant that accepts plastic. / Image courtesy of Grubhub
Duke’s Mayonnaise is launching a virtual brand. Starting Tuesday, Duke’s Sauce Shack will offer chicken sandwiches, tenders and nuggets out of four ghost kitchens in the North Carolina area. The chicken is intended mainly as a vehicle for a selection of 14 Duke’s sauces. Besides the company’s classic and flavored mayos, the lineup will include dressings, mustards, barbecue sauces and a “Signature Sauce.” Duke’s Sauce Shack will run through July and will be available on DoorDash and Uber Eats.
Virginia-based Duke’s is the latest CPG company to try delivery-only restaurants as a marketing channel. Pepsi last year launched Pep’s Place in partnership with Famous Dave’s, while Impossible Foods has The Impossible Shop and Unilever has the Ice Cream Shop.
A new product from virtual brand company Nextbite is designed to help restaurants tackle off-premise accounting. The Nextbite Reconciliation solution gathers all of an operator’s delivery orders, rebates and cancellations from across multiple providers and consolidates them into a single financial statement. The idea is to eliminate the time-consuming process of doing that by hand while also giving restaurants better visibility into their off-premise business. It is part of Nextbite’s Ordermark system, which offers things like digital order integration and simplified menu management to streamline operations for restaurants that use multiple delivery providers and ordering platforms. The reconciliation tool will be available in the third quarter, the company said.
Toast unveiled a tech system built for hotel restaurants. Toast for Hotel Restaurants is designed to work within the larger hotel tech ecosystem thanks to integrations with major property management systems like Stayntouch and Barefoot PMS. Because hotel foodservice transactions typically live in separate software, Toast’s integrations make it easier for hotels to reconcile F&B orders with a guest’s other charges. And it has other tools unique to hotels, like simplified check splitting for large parties. It’s available now for $75 a month.
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