GrubHub’s “$15 Off Lunch” Promo Causes Chaos Because The Company Didn’t Notify The Restaurants
Sounds like a nightmare scenario? That's only because it is.
GrubHub’s $15 lunch promo sounded like an easy win, until it started flooding restaurants with orders they never saw coming.m. to 2 p.m. in New York City and pushed thousands of customers to place orders in the same short window. The catch was that restaurants and delivery workers were not told ahead of time, which left small businesses scrambling to keep up.
What followed was a mess of delayed food, overwhelmed staff, and wasted labor. Read on.
@WellsLucasSanto shared on Twitter:
@WellsLucasSantoWells adds that “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.”
Big companies don't really care about small businesses.
@WellsLucasSantoWells then shared a photo of a restaurant, demonstrating how hectic the promo was for companies.
@WellsLucasSanto
Do you believe the complimentary meal comes from GrubHub? Wells says no.
“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 doesn’t get picked up, resulting in tons of food and labor waste.”
Who gets blamed:
@WellsLucasSanto
The thread kept pointing back to the same problem, too many orders, not enough warning.
This also echoes the Reddit debate over splitting evenly when one friend orders extra.
The tweet thread continues by discussing how we're starting to see news about tech failures but not the genuine, human cost of these deals.
@WellsLucasSanto
If you've never worked in a restaurant, you'll appreciate how difficult this promotion made the day for the employees.
@WellsLucasSanto
And, more importantly…
@WellsLucasSanto
Most of the orders came at the same time:
@WellsLucasSanto
Wells points out that this affects more than simply online orders.
@WellsLucasSanto
It's all disheartening at the end of the day.
@WellsLucasSanto
So this wasn't a technical glitch. This was a terrible mistake.
@WellsLucasSanto
One restaurant received 200 orders in five minutes.
@WellsLucasSanto
The comments made it clear that people in the industry were not impressed.
However, as one restaurant owner pointed out in the comments:
ceovibes
Terrible judgment indeed:
Sheldon Chang
A delivery person added:
@MrJoneV
It is obvious that tech companies don’t really care about “physical” businesses. Somehow it seems that IT professionals have the idea that 200 meals can be prepared instantly by hitting a key on a keyboard.
And it doesn’t work that way. Marketing and IT “experts” from tech companies should really spend time getting to know the businesses they are serving.
Nobody in the kitchen asked for this kind of chaos.That chaotic “everyone pays the same” moment feels similar to someone trying to split a disastrously timed surprise bill evenly.
