As restaurant aggregators compete for consumers’ delivery spending, Grubhub is looking to capture the corporate market.
On Tuesday (May 3), the aggregator announced the launch of a program for employers to offer employees a line of credit for meal purchases. Employers can set the parameters for the Grubhub Pay Card, placing limits on when or where it is used. The program is an extension of the aggregator’s existing Corporate Accounts business.
“Grubhub is on a mission to connect diners with great, local restaurants — and our new pay card is another tool to do just that,” Jeff Mirmelstein, vice president and general manager of corporate accounts at Grubhub, said in a statement. “This card meets employees wherever they are, whether ordering from their go-to lunch spot on Grubhub, in-person at a local favorite restaurant, or grabbing groceries on the way home from the office. We are excited to help employees connect with one another and with great restaurants.”
Indeed, with many employees now working from home or in a hybrid in-office/remote situation, the card offers a way for businesses to provide food perks as they may have done when all employees were in the office. The card can also be used for in-person restaurant purchases, for which eateries are not charged a commission.
The move could be an effective way for Grubhub to drive up its usage and reduce the gap between the aggregator and its competitors. Of the top three restaurant aggregators in the U.S., Grubhub lags a ways behind the gold and silver medalists, according to research from the March/April edition of PYMNTS’ Digital Divide series, “The Digital Divide: Regional Variations in U.S. Food Ordering Trends and Digital Adoption,” created in collaboration with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) customer experience management (CXM) solutions provider Paytronix.
Read more: New Research Shows That Regional Dining Quirks Matter in Tailoring Restaurant Offers
The study, which drew from a February survey of more than 2,500 U.S. adults, found that about one in eight consumers in the country make purchases from the aggregator each month. Specifically, 32% of respondents had used an aggregator in the previous 30 days, and of those, 41% had purchased from Grubhub, well behind the 48% that had purchased from Uber Eats and the 71% that had purchased from DoorDash.
Additionally, PYMNTS’ Provider Ranking of Aggregators, which takes into account factors such as channel coverage, up-to-date downloads, monthly average users, sessions per user and average session length, ranks Grubhub well below other top aggregators around the world. In fact, the delivery service is down in seventh place.
See also: April’s Provider Ranking of Aggregators Shows Top Players Holding Their Ground
Last month, Grubhub parent company Just Eat Takeaway.com announced that it is “actively exploring” the possibility of a partial or full sale of the Chicago-based aggregator or bringing in a strategic partner as part of a push to “enhance profitability and strengthen our business.”
Related news: Just Eat Takeaway Explores Sale of Grubhub as US Competitors Pull Ahead
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