Grubhub Inc. (stylized in all caps) is an American online and mobile prepared food ordering and delivery platform based in Chicago, Illinois.

Grubhub Seamless went public in April 2014 and was traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol GRUB.

[5][6][7] The original Chicago-based Grubhub was founded in 2004 by Mike Evans and Matt Maloney to create an alternative to paper menus.

[9] In November 2007, Grubhub secured $1.1 million in Series A funding, led by Amicus Capital and Origin Ventures for the purpose of expanding into San Francisco and New York markets.

[14] In September 2011, Grubhub secured $50 million in Series E funding and acquired New York–based competitor Dotmenu, the parent company of Allmenus and Campusfood.

[17] DiningIn, an online ordering and food delivery company based in Brighton, Massachusetts, was acquired by Grubhub in February 2015.

[18] Restaurants on the Run, a corporate food delivery company based in Aliso Viejo, California, was acquired by Grubhub in February 2015.

[19] In December 2015, Grubhub acquired Delivered Dish, a restaurant delivery service in seven markets across the Pacific Northwest and Southwest, including Denver, Las Vegas, San Diego, Portland, El Paso, and Albuquerque.

[33][34] In 1999, New York lawyer Jason Finger founded SeamlessWeb to provide companies with a web-based system for ordering food from restaurants and caterers.

[51] The acquisition would create the largest online food delivery service outside of China, and provide Just Eat Takeaway with a base in the U.S.

[54] In April 2022, Just Eat said that it would consider a full sale of Grubhub after Cat Rock Capital, an activist investor, pressed the company to focus on European markets.

The commercial shows several people dancing after ordering food from Grubhub, set to "Soy Yo" by the Colombian pop band Bomba Estereo.

[61] In a 2017 lawsuit, attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan said that the company re-labels words, using euphemisms like "blocks" instead of "shifts", to justify deliberate misclassification of drivers as contractors.

[62] The Wallace v. Grubhub Holdings contractor lawsuit alleges that Carmen Wallace and Broderick Bryant and other drivers were misclassified as independent contractors and Grubhub defied wage-and-hour requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Illinois Minimum Wage Law, and the California Labor Code.

"The drivers as a general matter cannot engage in personal non-work activities during their GrubHub shifts," the complaint states, meaning that they essentially function as employees.

On November 10, 2016, after the victory of President Donald Trump in the general election, Grubhub President and CEO Matt Maloney sent a company-wide memo to employees saying that he rejected the "nationalist, anti-immigrant and hateful politics of Donald Trump" and "If you do not agree with this statement then please reply to this email with your resignation because you have no place here."

The Washington Times reported that Maloney "unleashed a political screed after the Nov. 8 election and said that those who disagree with its anti-Trump views should resign.

"[67][68] After a Twitter boycott campaign was initiated, Maloney later claimed his words were "misconstrued", adding "I want to clarify that I did not ask for anyone to resign if they voted for Trump.

[72][73] In April 2020, a group of New Yorkers sued DoorDash, GrubHub, Postmates, and Uber Eats, accusing them of using their market power monopolistically by only listing restaurants on their apps if the restaurant owners signed contracts that include clauses that require prices to be the same for dine-in customers as for customers receiving delivery.

[79] In October 2020, a group of restaurants launched a class-action suit against Grubhub for having included them in its listings without having asked permission (or, in some cases, despite permission having been denied), because this caused "damage to (the restaurants') reputations, loss of control over their customers’ dining experiences, loss of control over their online presence, and reduced consumer demand for their services"; plaintiffs specifically cited that Grubhub would list obsolete menus with invalid prices and/or unavailable options (leading to customer complaints) and that Grubhub refused to delist restaurants upon request.

[83][84] Multiple outlets regarded the promotion as a "disaster," with restaurants unable to keep up with the demand and insufficient delivery workers available to pick up orders, resulting in wasted food and customers without their meals.

The investigation by the attorney general's office also found that Grubhub would route web traffic from users to microsites that host a restaurant’s menu as well as third-party websites, such as Yelp or Menupages.com.

[90][91] In October 2023, local media stations KTLA and KABC-TV reported that a restaurant owner in Long Beach, California, had caught a Grubhub delivery driver eating from and then repackaging an order.