Grubhub was a rational player in an irrational market

There’s work involved in making the shift to delivery and takeaway — time and money that a restaurant likely does not have to spend. In the best-case scenario, the model effectively turns restaurants into so-called “ghost kitchens,” eliminating the need for nearly all front-of-house staff. David Chang has called the pivot to delivery “fools gold.”

I remember 2015 or so, Jeff Bezos came on stage and said that this sort of way of doing grocery shopping doesn't seem like it's the right solution. And the whole team was like, shit, Jeff Bezos saying this. But actually, in our model, the marketplace model was superior to our first-party fully integrated model for various reasons. And our first pri... See more

First, that the opportunity Postmates saw was Grubhub’s to lose, but Postmates ran at that opportunity too aggressively while Grubhub ran at it too slowly. And second, as DoorDash battles two public company competitors in GrubHub and Uber Eats, staying private is a weapon I suspect they won’t be eager to give up.

The most important shift in restaurants in the past decade has been the rise of online ordering and delivery. UberEats, Postmates, Doordash, and a handful of other apps have been knife-fighting (in extremely uneconomical ways) for the privilege of becoming food delivery aggregators. Own enough customer demand, the thinking goes, and not only will r... See more