GrubHub Ran A ‘$15 Off Lunch’ Promo Without Telling Restaurants And Chaos Ensued

Are you shocked? Are you really shocked by this news? You shouldn’t be.

Over the course of the pandemic, we’ve been subject to learning about just how god-awful all of our convenience apps (think Uber, Lyft, Postmates…) are. From their lax security within the apps themselves to the dangers drivers and passengers face to just how awful these companies treat their employees (NOT independent contractors, which is how they illegally classify their drivers), it should surprise absolutely no one to hear one more horror story in a sea of horror stories.

But here we are! A whole new one! @WellsLucasSanto shared on Twitter today that “GrubHub offered $15 off orders from 11 am to 2 pm in NYC, which got thousands of customers to order free meals within that time window.” But the problem with this? “They didn’t tell restaurants & delivery workers they were doing this.”

Wells goes on to add, “Giving folks $15 off is great! But it’s a serious problem when you time-limit it, because that means you’re forcing users to all order at the same time. Take a moment to consider why this might not be a good thing… especially if understaffed restaurants aren’t made aware.”

Wells then included a picture from a restaurant that showed off just how chaotic the promotion was for businesses.

And do you think that free food is coming from GrubHub? No, says Wells.

“On top of that, all these orders need to be delivered. There’s just no way for this quantity of orders to all be delivered, so what happens? Restaurants make a ton of food that don’t get picked up, resulting in tons of food and labor waste,” Wells notes, citing a tweet that has since been made private.

The tweet thread goes on to discuss how we’re starting to see articles about the tech failures but not the actual, human cost of these offers.

If you’ve never worked in a restaurant, this piece of the thread really illustrates how difficult this promotion made the day for workers.

More importantly…

Btw, all restaurants can do is pause ordering, which… just about every restaurant today had to do. But this is usually reactionary — apparently tons of orders came in right at 11am & without a heads-up, people didn't realize what was happening.https://t.co/kD2O9bk23B

— wells santo @ homo luddites (@WellsLucasSanto) May 17, 2022

Wells points out that this doesn’t hurt just online orders either.

And at the end of it all, it’s demoralizing.

So, no, this wasn’t a tech failure. This was a horrible promotion.

Just read a BuzzFeed article on this & here are some numbers: 6000 orders a MINUTE. 3600+ people on their customer support line at once.

One restaurant received 200 orders in the first 5 minutes! And they didn't know what was happening! 💀https://t.co/K39hMPtFGp

— wells (@WellsLucasSanto) May 17, 2022

A restaurant owner in the comments noted, however:

As a restaurant owner. I can tell you

1. they did notify us.
2. restaurants are still getting paid for orders that were never picked up/delivered late.
3. You can pause orders via the tablet for a duration of time to catch up

— ceovibes (@3OclockRoc) May 18, 2022

And a delivery worker said:

Whatever happened… it was a flat-up disaster.