“A $250 payment per restaurant (from Grubhub) doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s going to be a huge difference,” says Grubhub CEO Matt Maloney. “We’re looking at it as a stimulus almost because the way we’re rolling it out is a consumer gets $10 if they spend $30. So our $30 million dollars is going to transform into over $100 million dollars of food sales to restaurants across the country.”

Matt Maloney, CEO of Grubhub, announces a $30 million stimulus to restaurants in a discussion on CNBC:

Grubhub Rolls Out $30 Million Stimulus To Restaurants 

A $250 payment per restaurant (from Grubhub) doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s going to be a huge difference. We’re looking at it as a stimulus almost because the way we’re rolling it out is a consumer gets $10 if they spend $30. So our $30 million dollars is going to transform into over $100 million dollars of food sales to restaurants across the country. That’s a big slug when everyone’s working really hard to try to put money in the hands of small businesses.

It depends on the market (in terms of how many restaurants are still open). In early COVID West Coast markets, we saw a dramatic dip in restaurants that went off the platform. Now they’re starting to come back on. You have New York and Detroit that are in the throes of the crisis right now and so you’re they’re peaking with about 30 percent of the restaurants off. But remember, we’re having thousands and thousands of restaurants coming on the platform for the first time so we’re seeing about the same number in terms of net. It’s just a transition.

Grubhub Triples Highest Restaurant Onboarding Month Ever

Our teams are working around the clock. We tripled our most onboarding month ever of restaurants. We had 15,000 restaurants go live in March. We’re probably going to do more in April. It’s just an incredible intensity of need right now for restaurants. We’re doing everything we can to help them. With drivers, we launched contact-free pickup or drop-off. We also just launched, just last week, curbside pickup for the drivers to make sure there are two layers of protection.

There’s plenty of work on Grub and I know there’s lots of work on other delivery platforms as well. We have our own stimulus for our drivers too. If they get impacted directly by COVID we’re paying them. I know other platforms are also. And, of course, the CARES Act just came through with a lot of relief for gig workers also. Everyone right now is all hands on deck trying to help the restaurants, the drivers, and everyone impacted through this economic and health care crisis. 

Fundamental Economics Are Still Intact

I am hoping for the best. I think that the fundamental economics of our society is still intact. There is a lot of demand right now for restaurants. If we can help restaurants get through the next few weeks or months, depending on how bad this is, they will come back, they will be there for our communities. If they can’t, then that’s going to be a real problem.

What we’re seeing right now is as the crisis bottoms out in the market growth does start to come back in that local area. We’re seeing the crises (at different levels) around the country in different markets at different times so we’re trying to dynamically manage that situation on the ground.