11/08/2009

GrubHub.com – a Quick SM Assessment

Had a great Friday presentation at Booth School of Business where Matt Maloney spoke about the company he cofounded, Grubhub.com. I love the concept of GrubHub – using inexpensive web technology to aggregate information and make our lives easier. And with the business model where restaurants pay GrubHub a % of online orders, it is win-win for them and free for us.

I thought it would be fun to review how well they use social media tools. Below is the information I collected – I included information on foodler, a competitor, as a point of reference.

Looking at a restaurant, there is a review section – great place to get customer credentials on the food. I used La Gondola as a reference. Here are things that I liked:

  • The default review sorting places links to published reviews up top
  • And when available links you to Yelp reviews
  • Each reviewer has number of reviews and orders by their name for credentialing
  • One can rate reviews as helpful or not
  • One can sort reviews by 'most helpful' and 'Reviewer's Experience'

Here are my weekend 2 cents:

  • The reviews are simple. I might want to know what with the reviewer ate. Foodler goes to the next level, aggregating reviews to the menu items associated with the reviewed order. Foodler also let one know the frequency that menu items were ordered. Note that Foodler provides no visibility into the individual reviewers or quality ratings of reviews. It also does not provide an open field for review like GrubHub.
  • Links to external published and Yelp reviews take me to a new tab. It may be better to keep the customer engage on their site – could they communicate that information internally through a mashup before letting the customer leave?
  • There is so much more information on these restaurants online. Is it possible to pull this in through mashup/aggregation as well? I know sometime you can have too much information - but GrubHub could pull this in at a low cost and let customers use it to their needs. External content could include:
    • Google has 26 reviews; La Gondola is ZAGAT rated 17 years in a row; additional reviews exist on CenterStage Chicago, tripadvisor, 10best.com, and urban spoon

Some other obvious spaces for them to be in:

They have a facebook page with 1,298 fans. Foodler has 2,445 fans. Their use of this space is consistent with other similar merchants, including:

  • Fan buzz and promotion
  • Fan feedback, i.e. new restaurants to include
  • Promotional Monday trivia post – answer a question get $10 gift card
  • Blog publication announcements

They have a twitter page with 1,828 followers and consistent traffic of responses, links to daily specials, and general announcements. Foodler has 83 followers and last tweeted June 28th. . .

There is an iPhone app, made available August of 2008. Foodler does not have one. Now, I'm ashamed to say I do not have an iPhone yet, so if someone out there has used this app, I'd love to hear about it – do share.

So there you go - an internet based business that does well in engaging their customers via social media tools. I believe they have additional opportunities to mashing up more external review information. It is an easy way to leverage valuable external information, and customer traffic, to add experience value at a minimal cost and effort. I'll see if Matt has time to discuss that with me ;-)

Cheers all, and Go Broncos!

Nov 8, 2009 7:42:56 PM | Customer Engagement, The Other Side

1 Comment

Amir Em

I use eat24hours.com and they have a great SM also check them out

Posted by: Amir Em | 10/19/2010 at 06:33 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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