[HN Gopher] Wonder is acquiring Grubhub
___________________________________________________________________
Wonder is acquiring Grubhub
Author : endtwist
Score : 109 points
Date : 2024-11-13 19:12 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (about.grubhub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (about.grubhub.com)
| chirau wrote:
| How do these deals work?
|
| I am assuming, and I could be very wrong, that Wonder is smaller
| by market cap than Grubhub.
| mkl wrote:
| Wonder was valued at 3.5 billion USD in 2022:
| https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/17/marc-lores-food-delivery-s...
| avrionov wrote:
| Both companies are not public. The investors need to agree on
| the price and the deal is done.
| kelnos wrote:
| Both companies are private, so neither has a "market cap". They
| just need to agree on a price.
|
| In this case, GrubHub had taken on a bunch of debt; Wonder
| agreed to assume it, and GrubHub's owners/investors get $150M
| in cash.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Both companies are private, so neither has a "market cap"_
|
| Private companies have shares. Given a per-share price, you
| can get a market cap. For a company with debt, like GrubHub,
| enterprise value is a better metric.
| zemo wrote:
| > Given a per-share price
|
| how do you know the per-share price
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _how do you know the per-share price_
|
| Same way you do for a public company. From trades and
| valuations. Private shares exchange hands in private
| transactions as well as almost every time the company
| raises money. If a company issues incentive stock
| options, they're required to calculate a 409A price,
| which while a bullshit number, is indeed a per-share
| price.
|
| Corporations, by law, have shares.
| zemo wrote:
| > Same way you do for a public company. From trades and
| valuations.
|
| how do you know what trades took place, and how many
| shares were traded, and at what price?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _how do you know what trades took place, and how many
| shares were traded, and at what price?_
|
| Company generally has these records. Various other
| sources, _e.g._ PitchBook, compile them. In some
| jurisdictions ( _e.g._ UK and India) they have to be
| publicly announced, though that 's becoming less common.
|
| TL; DR It is incredibly wrong to suggest private
| companies don't have a market cap. As in finance 101
| wrong.
| zemo wrote:
| > Same way you do for a public company. From trades and
| valuations.
|
| no, it's not the same, because the information is not
| publicly available. They are the same in that in both
| cases you multiply two numbers together; they are not the
| same inasmuch as your ability to know those numbers is
| vastly different. To say they're the same is misleading.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Those weird ghost kitchen things have more than half a billion
| dollars to spend on acquisitions?!
|
| I wonder how this came to be - did they already have that big of
| a war chest, or did they hear they could buy a name brand and go
| back to their investors to finance it?
| philip1209 wrote:
| Grubhub has revenue, which means they _might_ be able to
| finance the acquisition with debt.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I see this is as simply buying scale more quickly than they
| could grow organically.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I'll look up the addresses of restaurants on Uber Eats, using
| street view, before ordering. Most of them are at bodegas or
| otherwise non-restaurant spaces.
| Gormo wrote:
| I recently saw a new burger joint pop up on Uber Eats with an
| address not far from my home. It turned out to be the address
| of the last remaining Ruby Tuesday restaurant in my area, but
| the burger place did not advertise any connection to Ruby
| Tuesday. Seemed very sketchy to me.
| skywhopper wrote:
| Looks like they only spent $150M in cash and took on $500M of
| debt to do the ancquisition. They raised $250M from outside
| investors to pay for it. So sounds like they have $100M to try
| to make a go of it.
|
| I expect the value to go way down as they squeeze all sides of
| the equation: drivers, restaurants, and customers.
| refulgentis wrote:
| IMHO it's sort of the inverse*: its not that weird ghost
| kitchen things have $500 mil for acquisitions, its that Marc
| Lore has enough salesmanship to get private capital to lend
| $100M to get a turnkey delivery business for his food
| entrepreneurship, and the banker loans can pretty it up to
| sound like $600M, and the decision makers at GrubHub get a
| mildly-embarrassing outcome instead of an extreme outcome.
| (shutdown)
|
| * I know a decent amount about finance, but don't practice it
| daily enough to find it second nature. I'd appreciate a
| similarly colloquial perspective from someone who reads me as
| naive.
| mgiampapa wrote:
| I think that future loosening of the credit markets due to
| political factors is also playing a roll. By the time the
| runway is spent they may expect to be in a very different
| market so buying scale now is the move.
| xyst wrote:
| They don't have jack shit. It's all based on hype, keep the
| train rolling so the early investors can get their cut while
| the other suckers hold the bag
| akudha wrote:
| I suppose these career options have _relatively_ much higher
| chances of making good money:
|
| 1. Become a corporate lawyer, charge by the hour - win or
| lose, lawyers get paid
|
| 2. Run a soulless media company - rake in the ad dollars from
| both parties (during elections) and other soulless companies
| spending VC money on advertising (all the time)
|
| 3. Be early investor, pump and dump
| tootie wrote:
| I have a bad feeling about Wonder. One opened near my office
| and had a load of free meal promotions and it was packed. A few
| weeks later it went very quiet. I had a few meals and they were
| decidedly meh. The promise of ordering options across a dozen
| different cuisines is appealing but not when all of them are
| underwhelming.
| skizm wrote:
| Apparently they have totaled ~$1.7B in funding according to
| Bloomberg:
|
| > Lore's startup also raised $250 million in equity investment,
| bringing the total amount of capital it's secured to $1.7
| billion
| jaymzcampbell wrote:
| Mentions the $650mln they'll pay Just Eat for it, neglects the
| fact Just Eat paid $7.3bln. Quite the write down. And in just 4
| years.
| popcalc wrote:
| Where did all the money go?
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| Lowered expectations.
| Retric wrote:
| Earlier investors. Ever hear of _pump and dump_? After you
| sell you're insulated from future performance as long as you
| don't commit actual fraud etc.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Earlier investors. Ever hear of pump and dump?_
|
| When did GrubHub buy early investors' shares with company
| cash?
| Retric wrote:
| Early investors had already "sold" the company well
| before this transaction:
| https://about.grubhub.com/news/grubhub-stockholders-
| approve-...
|
| It was an all stock transaction, so they maintained an
| indirect stake but it was significantly diluted:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Eat_Takeaway.com
| Meanwhile Just Eat Takeaway investors got taken for a
| ride.
| rpcope1 wrote:
| Well, when you're in the business of selling a dollar for
| eighty cents, all the money probably got flushed down the
| toilet.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| You get $10/month dining credits if you're an Amex card
| holder. Imagine the cost of all promotions.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| I always wondered if the promotions were handled with
| restaurants more like "we (the platform) recoup our promo
| losses via the regular platform fee you (the restaurant)
| pay regardless" or more like "if a customer uses a
| promotion, we (platform and restaurant) split the loss,
| unrelated to the regular platform fee". Like when I use a
| platform promo for reasons well beyond trying a new place
| for the first time, am I screwing the restaurant, the
| platform, or some combination?
| eszed wrote:
| Mostly the restaurant, at least in the case of these
| companies' "free delivery" membership deals. Restaurants
| pay a higher commission on those orders. (Whether that's
| enough to outweigh the operating deficit built into their
| current pricing I have no idea, but some fraction is
| being passed along to their merchant "partners".)
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| How were they selling a dollar for 80 cents? The actual
| food is more expensive on grubhub than ordering through the
| restaurant, and then there are multiple fees on top of
| that.
| bena wrote:
| But there is the cost of hosting, developers, drivers,
| etc.
|
| And that's all cost that is not borne by the restaurant.
|
| And there _is_ a limit to how much people would pay to
| get something delivered. So they 're probably pricing the
| delivery, etc less than they've actually paid.
| ghaff wrote:
| We've seen this before and we'll see it again. There are
| lots of people who will pay for things below cost.
| Sometimes that cost comes down but a lot of the time it
| does not especially in relatively affluent countries. I
| don't have a personal driver or chef like I might have in
| some places. I do have some other house/yard services but
| very occasionally and I consider them luxuries.
| makestuff wrote:
| Tons of marketing/advertising. The free GrubHub+
| subscription through prime probably burned through a lot
| of cash. I doubt Amazon was paying them very much (if
| anything) to Grubhub. Then you have all of the corporate
| staff (around 3k based on google search) who are highly
| paid.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And the competition from UberEats and Doordash, who also
| are constantly promoting discounts, free orders, etc. so
| there's almost no way they can recoup actual costs let
| alone turn a profit.
| deprecative wrote:
| Where it always goes, to the top.
| fakedang wrote:
| FAANG salaries and freebies.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| FAANG wasn't involved at any point
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Where did all the money go?_
|
| all of it, including its future, was valued at $7 billion,
| but there was never $7 billion in cash. Maybe it was $700
| million in cash paid for 10% of it, which would value the
| whole thing at $7 billion. If that totally-made-up 10% number
| happens to be the right number, then it hasn't lost much at
| all overall, but the investor who paid that has to share the
| sale price with a bunch of other shareholders who paid less.
| So, this owner lost money, but the firm did not necessarily.
|
| (I'm not saying this is what happened, and maybe a quick
| google would get us closer to the actual numbers, I'm just
| saying you have to pay attention to the wording of what is
| being claimed; media likes to exaggerate.)
|
| what has disappeared is "belief in the future prospects of
| this company to bring in profits worth $7B" which was why the
| last investors invested, and why the early investors set up
| the kitchens and other frameworks to support those hopes. And
| it's not that the opportunity wasn't a good one, perhaps a
| competitor "won", or perhaps there are too many competitors
| trying to share the $7B pie.
| mikequinlan wrote:
| They are actually paying $150 mln in cash and taking on $500
| mln in debt.
| xeromal wrote:
| multi level narketing
| snarf21 wrote:
| At first blush, this might seem like another silly roll-up.
| However, I believe in Marc Lore completely and it will be
| interesting to see what this becomes. This is bad news for
| DoorDash (imo).
| Centigonal wrote:
| I could see a world where Doordash, Toast, etc specialize in
| delivery from existing restaurants, while Wonder/GrubHub lean
| into an exclusive selection of food from ghost kitchens.
| deprecative wrote:
| To be fair, DoorDash is bad news for DoorDash because a $8 meal
| costs $30.
| dools wrote:
| Ahhh a slice line
| JasserInicide wrote:
| I mean, they're all like that, adding on 40% to the actual
| meal total.
| gnabgib wrote:
| Discussion (26 points, 3 hours ago, 63 comments)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42127304
| crmd wrote:
| Support your local restaurants. Don't let these vampire platform
| companies enshitify your city's food scene.
| deprecative wrote:
| We say shopping at Whole Foods, Walmart, and Kroger.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| Local grocery stores have basically been extinct for decades-
| and realistically that isn't that surprising given they
| mostly sell commodity products. We don't need to let
| restaurants suffer the same fate.
| kelnos wrote:
| Agreed. I'm super lucky in that we have a local independent
| grocery in our neighborhood. Prices are definitely a little
| higher than the big grocery chains, but the convenience of
| walking 2.5 blocks is hard to beat when I need something
| immediately (which turns out is fairly often).
| deprecative wrote:
| Restaurants are by definition food commodification.
| pie420 wrote:
| no, we don't. if we're not mindless little drones we stopped
| shopping there a long time ago, don't lump us in with
| yourself
| deprecative wrote:
| Someone's defensive about a statement of the American
| populace.
| pkilgore wrote:
| What point are you trying to make? Seems like a failure of
| government to enforce monopolization laws than individual
| consumers.
| deprecative wrote:
| Consumers are voters.
| fragmede wrote:
| Which is an empty platitude if restaurants won't meet customers
| where they are - on their smartphones. I'll use my local
| restaurants' app/webpage when there is one and get pick-up, but
| if there isn't one, I'll be real - I just use Doordash. When
| I've got people over and need to order food, it'll take 45 mins
| between everything else going on to figure out a restaurant,
| and then another hour to pick some food. And then someone
| changes their mind while on the phone with the restaurant.
| Orrrr (after we pick a restaurant) we just pass the phone
| around.
| talldayo wrote:
| Ah, but there's the catch. Resturants _aren 't_ meeting you
| there, Grubhub workers are. Resturaunts largely just optimize
| for takeout, and whether or not your food arrives warm is
| less of their problem and more of the Grubhub worker's issue.
| And as delivery drivers quit over low pay and their
| businesses go bankrupt, I really see no way for restaurants
| to support this behavior.
|
| Additionally, you have to look at it from a pragmatic
| perspective. When I visit the East and West coast of the US,
| meal delivery is popular enough that you might think it's a
| booming business. Everywhere else it's pretty much dead
| though. In places where the cost of living isn't enough to
| compensate for a restaurant and their middleman (read: most
| of the US), you can't even find a driver most hours of the
| day. It's one of those nonsense businesses like Uber that
| _seems_ like a great idea on paper but one that falls apart
| outside the Bay Area economy. Most places in America are not
| gentrified enough to pay peons gas money in exchange for
| hand-delivered McDonalds.
| fragmede wrote:
| edited to be clear this is for pickup. a number of local
| restaurants meet me there.
| pie420 wrote:
| get off the digital heroin and start living real life again.
| fragmede wrote:
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| nilamo wrote:
| The whole comment was about how hard it is to wrangle 10+
| people. How is that digital, or not real life? It's
| literally a group of people spending time together face to
| face.
| bena wrote:
| This really seems like exaggeration. Two hours? How many
| people are we talking about here?
|
| Also, nothing you've mentioned really solves your issues.
| Even with DoorDash, you'll need to pick a restaurant. And
| DoorDash doesn't solve the problem of someone changing their
| mind as they are ordering.
|
| And then you still have to wait for the food to be prepared
| and delivered. And there's no guarantee on when it will
| arrive. So it winds up being a wash.
|
| Also, there's a reason places that don't do delivery don't do
| it. The cost doesn't justify it. Then there's the whole "meet
| me where I am" attitude. They're the ones with the service
| you want. You have some obligation to meet them yourself.
|
| And if you don't want to, that's fine. We used to manage all
| of this well enough before
| standardUser wrote:
| 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.
| zemo wrote:
| I just call them, it's not like the phone company takes a cut
| when you order on the phone.
| standardUser wrote:
| 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.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] Some more discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42127304
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| [dupe "dupe" comment]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42129024
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Does that say dupe? Just flagging it properly
| recursive wrote:
| Apparently Wonder is unrelated to Wonder Bread.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Also unrelated to Stevie Wonder.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Apparently Wonder is unrelated to Wonder Bread_
|
| The deal was paid for with Wonder's bread.
| sib wrote:
| I wonder (no pun intended) how much of this is driven by Marc's
| residual dislike of Amazon?
|
| Amazon currently has a partnership with Grubhub to provide
| Grubhub delivery as a Prime benefit.
|
| Amazon competed strongly (some might say unfairly) many years ago
| with Marc's first big startup, Diapers.com, and effectively
| forced him to sell to Amazon.
|
| He later started Jet.com and sold it to Walmart - in many ways as
| a second chance to compete with Amazon.
| ahstilde wrote:
| marc lore is underrated
| longtimelistnr wrote:
| Ghost kitchens are the biggest scam in the food delivery world.
| why would anyone pay for an unsanitary kitchen to fry them up
| some frozen food?
| kelnos wrote:
| Who says they're unsanitary? Are they not subject to the same
| kinds of health inspections that regular restaurants have to go
| through?
| Jenk wrote:
| In the UK and EU they certainly are.
| longtimelistnr wrote:
| In they U.S. they are often converted shipping containers or
| poorly regulated rental kitchens
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| a lot of fast food is frozen at some point. That's just how
| that industry works.
| thfuran wrote:
| Many normal restaurants do a lot of heating up pre-prepared
| food as well.
| longtimelistnr wrote:
| The point still stands, at least you get table service and
| hot food if you go into the restaurant
| jancsika wrote:
| 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!
| pfdietz wrote:
| > no worse in quality!
|
| Evidence needed.
| grubbs wrote:
| My buddy ordered from a spot called "Mega Quesadilla" and was
| raving about it. Turns out the ghost kitchen was just an IHOP
| making quesadillas.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| Most of the legacy chain restaurants do this. Outback
| Steakhouse has a chicken tender ghost kitchen, Denny's has a
| grilled cheese / melt brand, etc
| knowitnone wrote:
| Americans are happy to pay for any food that goes directly in
| to mouths. They'd pay more if pre-chewed.
| geor9e wrote:
| 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."
| widgeyboy wrote:
| Agree, I don't think that's going to work in practice.
| khy wrote:
| 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".
| gkoberger wrote:
| Yeah, it's a cloud kitchen with a eating area.
|
| I don't think anyone thinks this is "innovation"... it's just
| a slightly different take on Uber Eats / Spoonrocket / food
| courts / cloud kitchens / etc.
|
| And if there is an "innovation", it's the vertical
| integration... it's a business "innovation," not a tech one.
| pfdietz wrote:
| 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.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| I'm thinking here of an Indian place near my office that
| graduated from ghost kitchen to food hall restaurant. I had
| their food both before and after, and the difference was
| night and day. I actually didn't want to try the food hall
| version, based on my experience with their ghost kitchen
| incarnation. But a friend convinced me to give them another
| chance, and now they're one of my favorite places for when
| I want to splurge on lunch.
|
| I don't really know what the difference is, but I'm
| guessing it's that they didn't get to have a kitchen setup
| that was well adapted to their menu at the ghost kitchen.
| mapt wrote:
| You can change the name, the brand, of a ghost kitchen
| startup 'restaurant' overnight if you think it's stale
| due to bad consumer experiences. So you need to care less
| about those.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| 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.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Microsoft cafeterias manage it by just contracting out most
| of the stations to local restaurants. They provide the
| trained staff and get a consistent revenue stream in return.
| They've even got a local celebrity chef branded restaurant in
| the executive building (34) with a 3 course fixed price menu.
| It's not a single kitchen per se, but the equivalent is
| commercial kitchens that are all over the place with multiple
| clients sharing the space simultaneously. This just adds
| online ordering and centralized management.
| jfengel wrote:
| Because an enterprising businessperson has no idea how to run
| a kitchen.
|
| Recipes are in many ways the least important part of what a
| chef provides. They're not secrets. If there's a "secret
| ingredient" it's that they're using more butter and salt than
| you'd use at home.
|
| What a chef provides is a process. They get the ingredients
| ordered, at the quality level they want for a price they're
| willing to pay. They ensure that the ingredients show up, in
| the amounts needed, without waste and without falling short
| -- and have backup plans. They staff the kitchen, and ensure
| that they have all prepared their stations before service
| begins. They train the expediter to ensure that all of the
| food comes out together, without things waiting under the
| warmer.
|
| The chef also provides a menu, which is more important than
| the recipes. It has something for every guest, and every item
| can be finished before the guest gets impatient.
|
| It's not impossible for a business guy to hire a top-notch
| executive chef to do that work, but the business guy cannot
| do it. It requires years in the kitchen to know what factors
| are important. It requires a deep understanding of the
| culture of kitchen workers, and how to get the best out of
| them. It would require an enormous staff to do that properly,
| and training them extremely well.
|
| You can see this at work at a place like The Cheesecake
| Factory. It's hardly great food, but it's reliably good. The
| menu is enormous, on par with a dozen restaurants at once. It
| can be done. You're just not going to do it Silicon Valley
| style, learning as you go.
| organsnyder wrote:
| I have enough trouble getting food on the table at the
| right time when I'm making a relatively simple meal for my
| family. Reading this description (which seems spot-on to
| me, though I don't have experience working in foodservice)
| is making me anxious just imagining it.
| jfengel wrote:
| It is definitely nerve-wracking. But when things are
| going well, there's a kind of zen to it. They have the
| advantage of doing the same thing every day. They know
| the plan, and they stick to it.
|
| Until something goes wrong with the plan -- somebody
| calls out sick, the refrigerator fails, an order gets
| messed up and has to be re-cooked -- and the rhythm gets
| disrupted. The dining room is full so new orders are
| getting backlogged, and more mistakes get made because
| you're off your game...
|
| It's not for the faint of heart. It doesn't have to be as
| unpleasant as some TV shows make it out to be. But it's a
| whole different kettle of fish from cooking at home.
| 015a wrote:
| Its a ghost kitchen. It isn't 30 restaurants, its one
| restaurant with 30 brands.
|
| This idea was tried years ago (they'd claim to be the first) by
| a company based out of Indianapolis named Clustertruck
| (https://www.clustertruck.com/); though their branding was more
| "one restaurant, 30 food truck brands". The aim was: you can
| order a bunch of stuff, the software in the kitchens times it
| to all come out at the same time, and ETAs the driver to pick
| it up for delivery.
|
| The company is still around but isn't all that successful. They
| split the software portion into a second company, closed down a
| bunch of kitchens, raised prices, etc. I think the reality that
| hit them was: It really doesn't matter all that much that you
| can order tacos and pasta all in one order, except for large
| parties but that's an uncommon situation. The genre of food
| matters less than the specific food being ordered (e.g. I don't
| just want a burger, i want a five guys burger). Additionally,
| the food might have usually been delivered at a higher quality
| than a typical Uber Eats/etc delivery, but that's still a
| distance away from restaurant quality; but the prices were
| obviously higher than eating at a restaurant.
|
| Uber Eats/etc are _barely_ successful, and the only reason they
| can find that success is because they don 't have to manage all
| the typically lossy parts of food delivery (restaurants & the
| drivers). Gig apps are good businesses because they avoid this
| vertical integration: No depreciating assets, little real
| estate, low competition, no worry about managing minimum wage
| workers, no health inspections, no stoves breaking down, just
| some software engineers and marketing (I'm simplifying but you
| get my gist). Why anyone would think vertically integrating
| something involving a restaurant is a good idea is, well,
| crazy. Even ghost kitchens on the typical range of delivery
| apps are stupid; oh sure your startup is one of the most
| classically unprofitable kinds of businesses on the planet, I
| bet that'll survive when interest rates rise.
| calmoo wrote:
| Uber Eats in the USA, yes, it's more hands off in terms of
| gig workers. In the UK and Germany and many other countries
| though, there have been many court rulings to essentially ban
| gig-working and enforce employee protections.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Grubhub has fallen so far it's amazing. They (and Seamless who is
| the same thing in different regions) had such a big start but had
| their model disrupted. And while they were being disrupted they
| were trying to turn a profit as a public company and DoorDash
| just ate their market as they were in growth mode. Interesting
| sequence of events that led to them being acquired by Wonder.
| afavour wrote:
| 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 thing burns to the ground. The last
| thing I need in my life is for all the restaurants in my
| neighbourhood to be soulless, VC operated chains.
| hinkley wrote:
| Delivery should be done as a coop between local businesses.
| Always should have been that way.
| duxup wrote:
| Restaurant business is so risky anyhow, managing a co-op too
| sounds like a big extra load to take on.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| 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.
| timnetworks wrote:
| 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.
| ihuman wrote:
| I thought the tips go to the delivery person, not the
| restaurant?
| madamelic wrote:
| I stopped using Seamless when the corner sandwich shop went
| from $15 on an $8 sandwich to $25.
|
| It made my blood boil when the receipt had 3 different fees
| before we even got to the tip.
| objektif wrote:
| Wonder guy is a trader and I think this is a good trade. The
| question is who is he going to dump this whole thing to next?
| xyst wrote:
| Yet another company propped up by private equity. Wonder Group
| raised $700M during a funding round in March 2024, with a total
| of $1.5B raised overall [1]
|
| How long until it succumbs to the same fate as other PE funded
| companies (Foxtrot)? Then the people left holding the bag are the
| vendors that won't get paid. Employees don't get paid. Doors
| locked up one day with no reason.
|
| Love how it has all of these celebrity endorsements as well to
| keep the facade going.
|
| At the end of the day, it's a glorified ghost kitchen.
|
| [1] https://www.inc.com/rebecca-deczynski/wonder-marc-lores-
| fast...
| andrewla wrote:
| 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?
| yawnxyz wrote:
| 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.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Acquisition of Farming Simulator incoming...
| pbamotra wrote:
| Wonder owns Blue Apron too.
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