Grubhub Grows Active Diners By 24 Pct

Amid a rise in orders and an increase in customers fueled by the coronavirus pandemic, Grubhub reported a 24 percent year-over-year increase in active diners and an 8 percent year-over-year increase in gross food sales in the first quarter of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.

The digital restaurant ordering platform had 23.9 million active diners and gross food sales of $1.6 billion for Q1.

Grubhub President and Chief Financial Officer Adam DeWitt said in a Wednesday (May 6) earnings announcement, "COVID-19 has driven a significant uptick in new diners and orders from existing users as most restaurant dining rooms have been temporarily closed nationwide.”

A letter to shareholders signed by DeWitt, as well as Founder and CEO Matt Maloney, reported that Grubhub is seeing “record new partnered independent restaurant additions” as states have limited dine-in capacity throughout the nation. The company reported that it added approximately the same number of net new partnered eateries in March and April as it did during all of the second half of last year.

Grubhub said it also witnessed a sizable number of eateries put their operations on hold in lieu of running with empty dining rooms.

“Unfortunately, some of these restaurants won’t reopen, but we believe a vast majority of them will,” DeWitt and Maloney noted in the letter. They also said that they “have already seen many reopen with takeout and delivery only — the total number of restaurants open on our platform has been climbing steadily since reaching a low in early April.”

DeWitt and Maloney noted that Grubhub’s fulfillment network has “performed well.”

“We have not experienced any driver supply shortages, material changes in fulfillment cost per order, or degradation in service levels,” they said in the letter. “Equally as impressive, in recent weeks where we’ve seen a sharp increase in order volume in many of our markets, our driver network has successfully adapted and scaled with demand.”

All in, Grubhub reported revenues of $363 million and a loss of 36 cents per diluted share compared to analyst estimates of $357.2 million and loss of 4 cents for Q1. Shares of Grubhub were down roughly 4.5 percent in after-hours trading.