Grubhub's 'Free Lunch' promotion leaves some customers hungry, many workers overwhelmed

WASHINGTON (TND) — Grubhub was on a mission:to feed everyone in New York City, and parts of Long Island, Pennsylvania and New Jersey for free, during lunch hours on Tuesday.

The popular food app cited it had conducted a survey — with 69% of working New Yorkers saying they had skipped lunch for the promotion.

The app was offering $15 off meals with participating restaurants starting at 11 a.m. However, the app crashed within minutes of the deal launching.

Grubhub was met with criticism as many customers were left hungry, and delivery drivers and restaurants were overwhelmed.

Chloe Brailsford, a comic artist in Brooklyn, was quarantined at home with COVID-19 when she decided to use Grubhub for the first time.

At first, she tried Taco Bell, but a notification popped up while she was ordering — the restaurant was no longer available. She continued to try with IHOP for a Belgian waffle combo, but the time kept increasing from roughly 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Brailsford tried calling Grubhub’s customer support but sat on hold for more than a half-hour before giving up.

Christopher Krautler, a spokesperson for Grubhub, said the platform was averaging up to 6,000 orders a minute. He said this “absolutely blew away all expectations."

Krautler also noted that demand “initially caused a temporary delay in our system and some users experienced an error message with their code, but that was quickly rectified."

Tyler Merfeld, co-owner of Toad Style BK with his wife Jillian Camera, said Grubhub didn't directly inform them about the deal.

"I would totally welcome this kind of promotion," Merfeld said. "It's awesome to get so much business, but we would have liked to have had foresight. We could have had more people working. It was busier than the Super Bowl."

Chef at Hana House, Max Zumwalt, said "even though it was our busiest day ever, we made less money." Zumwalt said the restaurant’s average order size dropped by about $10, with most people placing orders of $15 or less to make use of the promotion.

Grubhub told the Washington Post they had about a 5% loss. The app fulfilled about 450,000 orders during the three-hour window, meaning that about 22,500 orders were canceled.

Dave Tovar, senior vice president of communications and government relations for Grubhub, said “I don’t want to sound like that’s acceptable because it’s not,” Tovar said. “We don’t want any customer to have a bad experience. Nevertheless, the vast, vast majority of customers were able to use the app and were able to take advantage of the promotion and got their meals delivered.”