The third-party delivery hierarchy is pretty well set at this point. DoorDash and Uber Eats are on top, and Grubhub is a very distant third.
But Grubhub has been getting frisky lately. It’s now owned by Wonder, the food hall/delivery/meal kit company that is on a mission to become a “super app for mealtime.” It says it is profitable and growing after years of declines. And it is trying to shake things up.
It’s starting with Seamless, the once-popular New York City-based delivery service that merged with Grubhub in 2013. When Grubhub was itself bought by Just Eat Takeaway.com in 2021, Seamless essentially became Grubhub under a different name.
But earlier this month, Grubhub announced plans to revive Seamless as its flagship brand in New York City after finding that New Yorkers still have an affinity for it. The Big Apple is Grubhub’s biggest market, and obviously a huge restaurant market.
In hopes of re-establishing itself there, Seamless is debuting a new look and feel aimed at locals. Its new slogan is “How New York eats.” And it has a few other tricks up its sleeve that should put DoorDash and Uber Eats on notice.
It’s waiving delivery fees at a wide selection of restaurants, no subscription required. And it’s doing unique, hyper-local promotions, like $1 cheese pizza slices at more than 40 pizzerias for the next few weeks (pickup only).
It’s a good deal at a time when many consumers are trying to save money. But it should also resonate with customers on a deeper level. The $1 slice was a New York City staple that has largely disappeared due to rising costs. Bringing it back appeals to customers’ local pride and aims to establish Seamless as part of the city's food culture. And it offers something that DoorDash and Uber Eats don’t.
It harkens back to a time when there were differences between delivery apps, before consolidation narrowed the field to just a few national behemoths that had to appeal to a wider range of customers.
Postmates, the San Francisco-based delivery company that was acquired by Uber in 2020, used to have a number of distinct features, such as a highly personalized main feed and a service called Postmates Party that allowed customers to have their orders delivered as part of a group, carpool-style, for free.
Bastian Lehmann, who co-founded Postmates in 2011 but is no longer with the company, recently lamented the state of food delivery on X (formerly Twitter).
“Food delivery is a joke now — pure scam,” he wrote. “Prices are absurd, markups are insulting, and the experience has gotten worse across the board. … This space is begging to be burned down and rebuilt.”
Seamless may not be burning anything down. But it’s challenging the status quo with lower fees, a new voice and a more local approach.
Its ownership by Wonder also makes it worth watching, given Wonder’s ambitions and willingness to take risks. Wonder founder and CEO Marc Lore has faced off against larger rivals before: His Jet.com was an Amazon competitor and later sold to Walmart for $3.3 billion.
That said, free delivery and $1 slices won’t be profitable for Seamless long-term. But they could help woo customers from the other apps. And they could force those other apps to rethink how they can stand out, not just scale up.