News Category: Restaurants

When it comes to running a business, we know how important it is for restaurateurs to easily understand all facets of their operations. That’s why we originally created the Grubhub for Restaurants (GFR) portal — a place where restaurateurs receive orders through Grubhub, see their order and sales volume, run promotions, rate drivers, adjust their menu and hours and more. As restaurateurs demand more from their partners, we continuously make improvements to GFR to account for their feedback and make sure we’re providing a valuable tool for our partners.

Today, we’re excited to announce the latest updates to GFR. These were developed based on feedback from our partners, including the request from restaurateurs to segment out order and sales volume by audience, automatically request refund adjustments and easily request a photoshoot as their menu changes. 

“We want the Grubhub for Restaurants portal to be an all-in-one platform for our partners, and we’re excited to roll out new tools and insights to help them reach their business goals,” said Liz Bosone, vice president of restaurant success at Grubhub. “Satisfaction with Grubhub from our partners is incredibly important to us, and we believe that improvements like these drive incremental day-to-day and long-term value to our partners. We’re committed to continuing to address feedback from our partners and add more features to GFR that provide even better service to our restaurants.”

Customer Insights

Restaurants value providing exceptional service to their customers since they know it keeps them coming back, and in order to best serve them, they need to know how they behave. Our partners have asked us for more insights into their customers, and we’ve listened. Now, restaurateurs will see a tab within GFR labeled Insights. Within that tab, they can navigate to Customer Insights and filter their sales and order metrics by new or returning diners and Grubhub+ or non-Grubhub+ customers. 

With this addition, they can select up to a full year of aggregated data at a time and compare sales and order metrics. As a result, they are able to better understand their customers’ ordering behaviors and can strategically adjust their marketing efforts on Grubhub accordingly. This is just the first iteration of insights that we’ll be adding to GFR. As we continue to receive feedback from our partners, we’ll continue to build on this feature. 

 

 

Self-Serve Refund Requests

We always aim for things to go right during deliveries, but when things don’t go as planned — whether that’s because a drink got spilled, an item was missing or something else — it’s not clear to our partners who is on the hook for the refund — us or them. Now, restaurateurs can automatically request an adjustment directly in GFR to dispute a refund. This was previously a manual process requiring them to chat or call into Grubhub Care. This new automatic process now cuts the time spent disputing refunds from 10 minutes to 1 minute. 

Restaurateurs can dispute a charge up to 30 days after the original order date, and all they have to do is click into the specific order ID, hit the “Dispute adjustment” button and select a reason for the dispute. Once they submit a dispute, an agent will look into the refund and respond within 24 hours. With this update, we’re doing right by our partners and giving them back valuable time that they can spend running their businesses and serving customers.

 

 

Self-Serve Photoshoot Access

Having images on a menu can lead to 70% more orders and 65% higher sales for our partners, and to help drive higher photo coverage and quality on menus, we’re increasing how often we present our partners with the opportunity to book a photoshoot in the GFR portal. 

We know that menus change often, especially seasonally, and with that comes the need for different photos. Today, we’re updating the opt-out experience so that restaurateurs can snooze the banner for 30 days after they first select the “I’m not interested” button. The banner will return every 30 days after an opt-out and every 90 days after a booking. Our goal with this update is to better understand our partners’ needs and provide them with flexible options that support their business objectives.

 

To stay up to date on the latest updates in GFR, visit here.

Since our founding in 2004, we’ve focused on helping restaurants drive orders online and build up their digital presence — an effort that has taken on many forms as technology and our industry have evolved. In our early days, we served as a digital marketplace to send orders to restaurants that they fulfilled. We added our own delivery drivers into the mix over the years to give restaurants an option for delivery support if they didn’t have their own drivers. 

Now fast forward to 2021 when we rolled out Direct, a commission-free branded web ordering channel that gives independent restaurants more options for driving online orders from their own branded channels. Direct recommitted to helping merchants strengthen their digital presence, but our work isn’t finished. We continue to find new ways to help our merchants succeed online, and today, we’re excited to share our latest features coming to Direct soon. 

“A robust digital footprint is key for merchants as they look to reach more diners across ordering channels,” said Kate Green, vice president of restaurant services and innovation at Grubhub. “Our restaurant innovation team is hyper-focused on gathering and analyzing feedback from merchants and data from our platforms. We put these insights into action to further support restaurants’ goals by building products and tools that help drive their business forward. We’re excited to strengthen our offerings for merchants and to serve as an even better, more valuable partner.”

Integration with Google Business Profiles

Merchants will be able to add their Direct site across their Business Profile on Google Search and Maps and select it as their preferred ordering channel via our integration. We know running day-to-day operations is a full time job and resourcing continues to be a challenge across the industry, so we’re making it as easy as possible for merchants to promote their Direct site with just a few clicks within their Direct dashboard. With this integration, we’re putting the control in merchants’ hands to get greater visibility with hungry diners searching for restaurant options, driving more orders without commissions. According to Grubhub data during testing, we found that on average, Direct merchants who list their Direct site on their Google Business Profile receive nearly 20x the orders compared to those who don’t list their Direct site on their Google Business Profile.

$0 delivery fees for restaurants on Direct orders

Direct has always been marketing commission-free, but in the coming weeks, we’ll begin waiving the delivery fee (previously $1.99 per order) paid by Direct merchants that use Grubhub couriers to deliver Direct orders. Cultivating deeper relationships with our restaurant partners is invaluable, and we’ve built our business by helping restaurants grow theirs. It’s these efforts and technology that allow us to serve restaurants by providing tools to reach new diners and grow their business. 

Guest checkout for Direct

Direct is all about enabling merchants to drive more commission-free orders and reach even more diners. With Guest Checkout, diners will be able to order from a merchant’s Direct site without creating a Grubhub account. This removes a barrier to placing an order at checkout, making it easier for new diners to order while helping restaurants generate more sales.

Commission-free ordering and integrations that allow merchants to market to diners are just two components of our Direct product suite. We also know just how powerful a loyal diner base is for our partners. To generate this loyalty, merchants first and foremost need to be where their diners are. Today Direct is a branded website, but as we look to the future, we’re testing additional branded channels that will enable merchants to add more touchpoints with their diners. Stay tuned and up to date with the latest Direct advancements here.