Food delivery company GrubHub has added Apple Pay as a payment option in the latest update to its GrubHub and Seamless apps (via TechCrunch).
The company follows in the footsteps of rivals Caviar, Door Dash, and Postmates in supporting Apple's mobile payment platform, and means that users of its two apps can now pay for their food using cards registered in the native iOS Wallet app.
Originally founded in 2004, GrubHub began as a website where users could order from local restaurants offering home delivery services. It later merged with rival company Seamless and expanded to offer its own service for restaurants that don't otherwise usually deliver. Last year GrubHub processed $2.4 billion in sales, 60 percent of which was generated through its mobile apps.
The move signals another domestic win for Apple's mobile payment platform, and appears to confirm that the company's recently stated aim to aggressively expand the service both at home and abroad is making progress.
Speaking to Fortune yesterday, Apple said its mobile payment platform is gaining a million new users each week, but the company stopped short of revealing the overall number of Apple Pay users. It also said that transaction volume through the service is five times what it was a year ago, and that payment volume within apps more than doubled in the second half of 2015.
In related news, The Verge reported today that Walmart has announced its intention to partner with ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft in order to trial a new grocery delivery service, in a move that will put it in direct competition with Amazon's recently expanded AmazonFresh service.
Customers will soon be able to place their food orders online, for Walmart staff to prepare their groceries and then call local Uber and Lyft drivers to deliver the items, at a delivery charge of between $7 to $10, which is paid to Walmart. According to the company, the pilot program will begin within the next two weeks and initially operate in Denver and Phoenix.
Top Rated Comments
[doublepost=1464967049][/doublepost]Good old Uncle Ben
[doublepost=1464967166][/doublepost]Cost of operating. Frankly, a small move like this may be the difference of a person placing an order or not. My friends in Sac and Sand Fran virtually don't order out unless it's on grubhub. Some places actually charge a carry out fee that they can easily bake into something like this and often times people don't mind paying it for the conveneince. Let the customer carry that burden. If you have a good product they will be happy to.
[doublepost=1464968147][/doublepost]I think what a lot of people are missing is the convenience factor. That and the consideration that some folks, particularly in large cities, may not drive or they may be far enough away from the grocery store that the $7 is either a wash or savings, especially when factoring in the time they spend.
We live right down the street from a Stop & Shop (it's exactly 3.5 miles away) and yet I see the peapod truck (their delivery service) stopping by at least half a dozen places, likely more, every week. Their delivery fees are similar to these. Unsure about this particular setup but peapod allows subscriptions to stuff you buy every week (ie milk, eggs, cereal, etc) so you don't even have to think about restocking the pantry on items that you know you consume on a weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc. basis.
TL;DR: a lot of people fall into the mindset that if a service is not worth it to them it is therefore not worth it to anyone. We come from all walks of life with different priorities and widely different sized pocket books. True, a service like this likely wouldn't make it in rural Nebraska, but that is likely not the target audience.
[doublepost=1464990378][/doublepost]Go to google. Type in "grub". Click on "images".
Thats what it means. They are commonly edible. We ate them as kids while camping on expedition. This is what grubbing as in, "grubbing around in the dirt", also refers to.
...which, when I think about it, means that I spent the last year with the nearly hourly inconvenience of stumbling over a passcode screen to access my device, in order to protect my credit card information, which it holds for my convenience, for the possibility that it may save me 10 seconds in line at a store someday.
Hm.