Grubhub: The Use, The Effectiveness, and the Future
Why is Grubhub so easy to use, effective, and what is the future of the platform?
Grubhub, an app founded in 2004, gained widespread popularity in the late 2010’s, and grew once again when the pandemic started, like many other food delivery services. As it has grown & amassed users, Grubhub has started to integrate itself into multiple college campuses, and UMW is no exception. As a self-diagnosed introvert, I deeply appreciate cutting out the middleman and using Grubhub to get my food without any interaction with humans.
Platform Use
Platform use is relatively easy once you login to the app using your email and password to sign up. You can use Facebook, Google, Amazon (which I’ve never seen before), or an Apple email address (pre-existing for all) to sign up nowadays. A common feature seen in every platform nowadays, but nonetheless a fast and effective one. Once you sign in, you put in your street address and Grubhub uses this information or data to find restaurants located close to you. You can even preorder for a week ahead if you so choose. And even though its main purpose is a delivery app, you can even go to the restaurant to pick up your order, cutting out the fees needed to deliver and may even be quicker to boot, even though it’s kind of funny to use a food DELIVERY app to get your own food.
These features mentioned help the user grow accustomed to the app. As you use it, it becomes more accustomed to you and learns what food is your favorite, where you order from the most, and the recommended restaurants according to your top picks. It also helps you find what kind of food you may want, which could include Italian, Chinese, and American-type food.
Platform Effectiveness
There are some affordances to Grubhub that make it rather different from other food delivery apps. Grubhub+ is a huge feature, as it includes unlimited $0 delivery fees, lower services fees, 5% back on pickup, and exclusive offers. The $0 delivery fee can save you so much money in the long run, and if you have a college account, like every on-campus student at UMW gets, you get free Grubhub+. Campus dining is also included in the Grubhub feature list, as you can order from restaurants on-campus, which include Vocelli’s or Katora. These affordances make the app so effective to use and a major reason why so many students at UMW have Grubhub.
Effectiveness comes into play with these affordances, as the effectiveness of the app comes from use by young adults, adults, and teens because they have helped the platform grow. College students are also big time users of Grubhub as well, as I’ve seen multiple times at UMW. Grubhub changes how we eat food, how we spend money, and how we live. Effectiveness is a huge feature of these apps, and the future depends on the effectiveness of this app.
The Future of the Platform
The future of Grubhub is fairly interesting. It could go a multitude of ways. We could see the future of Grubhub include drones or subsequent flying technology, which has become a site of speculation for many food service apps, like DoorDash and Postmates, as well as other delivery apps, like Amazon or eBay. We could also see the app start delivering groceries or animal food. This could help many more people want to use the app, as DoorDash, another popular food service app, has begun to do the same. You can now purchase things from PetSmart via DoorDash and a few years ago, that seemed practically impossible. Isolation will continue to grow as the app grows and it changes the idea of going out and getting food with friends, which used to be a special occasion.
The future may look brighter for food delivery apps, but the future of humanity is a little more dicey, due to these kinds of apps.
Conclusion
Grubhub has changed how we interact with each other because as food delivery apps grow and grow, we want to isolate more and be by ourselves on a more consistent basis. As Karl Marx quoted, “The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being.” (Marx, Manifesto) It may be changing how we spend time together, and it may change how we structure our day around meals. Grubhub is a platform that has an “illusion of convenience,” that we believe makes our lives easier. This illusion could change how we live.
So is Grubhub an app that changes how we live our lives? Absolutely. As humans, apps that make it easier for us to purchase or buy certain goods are valuable, and even if we don’t like them, these apps are still a valuable tool to giving people jobs & money. Even though the divide between humanity may grow, the future of food delivery is quite bright.
Some videos relating to food delivery: