Vol 75. Grubhub: Highly anticipated deliveries 🍱

For some brands, loyalty runs exceptionally deep. Their customers don’t engage with competitors, even sometimes scoffing at them. We see this with brand rivals like Coke and Pepsi, Spotify and Apple Music, Starbucks and Dunkin’. 

To build such loyal audiences, these brands created emotional connections with customers—a challenge Grubhub recently rose to in order to stand out among the food delivery app competition. 

This week, Case Studied explores how Grubhub boosted brand loyalty and lifetime value with a campaign for moms.

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The Brief:

Compared to DoorDash (founded in 2012) and Uber Eats (founded in 2014), Grubhub is ancient in the food delivery space. After being founded in 2004, it merged with its former rival Seamless in 2013 and was then acquired by Just Eat Takeaway for $7.3 billion in 2020 during a pandemic-fueled boom. 

But the company struggled in the post-pandemic environment and in 2024, it was acquired by Wonder Food Hall for an enterprise value of $650 million, a fraction of its previous price tag. While demand cooled compared to its pandemic highs, the estimated market size for online food delivery was about $287.5 billion in 2023, with the average American making almost 55 food delivery orders annually. 

Competition in this highly commoditized market is intense. At the end of 2024, DoorDash took up 60.7% of the market share, Uber Eats accounted for 26.1%, and Grubhub held 6.3%. Many Americans, however, believe they have the same options available on all three apps and many have all three of these apps on their phones. They’ll often create baskets on multiple apps and purchase from whichever one offers the best price. 

Clearly, this consumer behavior posed loyalty challenges. Grubhub recognized the need to move away from transactional relationships with customers and focus on building emotional connections. 

To do that, they did a ton of research. Grubhub spent months gathering data from customers about sentiment and loyalty, and they found that many customer experiences were purely transactional, except one: a mom’s first postpartum meal. 

Grubhub’s research revealed that nearly 75% of expecting mothers consider their first post-labor meal to be part of their birth plan. Beyond that, nearly half of moms-to-be know what they want to eat after labor within the first two trimesters (sometimes they’ve decided on this meal before they’ve decided on a name for their baby). 

The research also revealed that expecting moms are 61% more likely to prefer delivery from their favorite restaurant over a home-cooked meal or hospital food after labor. With all these insights in mind, Grubhub built a campaign specifically for these moms.

The Execution:

Grubhub partnered with Golin to create the Special Delivery campaign during August aka the peak baby birth month in the US. The idea was to sponsor the first postpartum meal for over 5,000 moms. 

The campaign started with a teaser video on social featuring storks flying around New York City with Grubhub bags in tow and the caption, “It’s not everyday you see storks storm the skies… A special delivery is on its way.” To create further intrigue, they used AI to create images that superimposed strokes in front of office buildings around the city. 

grubhub

160K followers

View more on Instagram

From there, Grubhub pulled user-generated content of moms in hospital beds having their first post-labor meal. They compiled it into a video announcing the delivery deal. Additionally, to drive the brand loyalty home even further, they offered participating moms a free year of Grubhub+. 

grubhub

160K followers

View more on Instagram

The brand partnered with influencers to amplify the campaign, share personal stories, and encourage other expecting moms to download the app. These influencers shared their birth plans, their Grubhub gift boxes, and the meals they ordered. Then, just before the campaign wrapped up, the brand hosted a sweepstakes where Instagram users could win a $500 Grubhub gift card.

The Results:

Grubhub’s offer sold out in seconds. Thousands waited for code drops, which occurred weekly, and the campaign website saw over 265,000 visits. 

Special Delivery resulted in a 54% increase in loyalty among moms exposed to the campaign and it delivered $228m in lifetime value. According to the brand, “The campaign drove incremental customers with 92.45% of diners creating a new account as part of the campaign. It also led to new Grubhub+ loyalty program sign ups (97.61%). 

The campaign earned 98% standalone media coverage from outlets including People, Today.com, and US Weekly. In total, Grubhub had over 700 placements that had a national reach of 678 million impressions.

Special Delivery social posts resulted in almost 20% more engagement than the brand’s typical rate and TikTok posts outperformed average engagement by 740%. Paid influencers generated an average engagement rate of 3.5%. Plus, 98% of moms responded favorably to the campaign and 30% of comments expressed appreciation for the brand and intent to use Grubhub.

Key Takeaways:

1) Research can reveal resonance

Grubhub had to do extensive research to find an angle that tied its product to its customers emotionally. But they did find one and ran with it in an intentional way.   

Consider the data you already have on your audience and identify any gaps or opportunities to dig deeper. Something as simple as sending out a carefully crafted survey to your existing customers could reveal an insight that informs future campaigns.

2)  Lean into niches

Grubhub had plenty of reasons to not target expecting moms for this campaign. For starters, it excludes folks who are non-childbearing. Plus, birth rates have declined in the U.S., shrinking the target demo even further. But they leaned into a data-backed niche and it paid off. 

Even if a niche isn’t the biggest, most affluent, or fastest growing, don’t write them off immediately. If your insights show an opportunity with a certain group, be open to following through. The results may be better than you expect. 

3) Discounts and freebies have their place

Grubhub didn’t give meals away completely for free with the Special Delivery campaign. Participants received $20 off their post-labor order, which had to be over $20, and a free year of Grubhub+. It’s not clear whether every participating mom accepted the free subscription but it was offered. 

Think about the ways you surprise and delight customers with promos and offers. If there’s room for you to take it up a notch, explore how you can do that. The ROI you get from brand loyalty and lifetime value could end up exceeding the cost of what you give away. 

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