Friday 20 May 2022 08:49 PM NYC restaurant owners say they missed GrubHub's warning about its disastrous ... trends now
NYC restaurateurs say they missed GrubHub's warning about a free $15 lunch promotion that saw them overwhelmed with orders before being forced to dump tons of food.
The meal delivery app told the Today Show that it did offer restaurants 'advance notice,' but that the demand blew away expectations as thousands of hungry New Yorkers ordered away. At its peak, up to 6,000 customers a minute were making orders, with a video that emerged Friday showing a restaurant's printer belching out scores of orders as stunned staff looked on.
However, restaurant owners are saying they didn't get any notice and their kitchens and staff were overwhelmed with so many orders they couldn't fulfill them, and even if they could, there was no one to deliver it.
GrubHub's free lunch promo - which ran from 11am to 2pm - forced restaurants to throw out thousands of meals because delivery drivers could not meet the high demand of orders on Tuesday.
The promotion was so popular that at one point GrubHub was averaging 6,000 orders per minute, GrubHub told DailyMail.com in a statement.
New York City restaurant owners were overwhelmed with orders on Tuesday during Grubhub's $15 free lunch promotion, which many kitchens being flooded with food tickets (pictured). Owners claim they weren't warned about the promotion and their businesses suffered from short staffing, no delivery drivers, and wasted food
Grubhub claimed in a statement to the Today Show that it did warn restaurants prior to the promotion, but did not expect New Yorkers to make 6,000 orders a minute
The huge amount of orders even 'temporarily overwhelmed' the app, but the glitch was quickly resolved, GrubHub spokesman Christopher Krautler told MarketWatch.com
Adding that the promotion 'ultimately [helped] to drive increased business for the thousands of restaurants still struggling from the pandemic.'
'We saw an unprecedented amount [of orders], more than we've seen before with any promotion,' he said.
Multiple restaurants across the city were scrambling on Tuesday, including Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken in Manhattan.
A manager from the restaurant told DailyMail.com that the promo code led to things getting chaotic yesterday, saying: ‘It was a disaster [on Tuesday].'
'We didn't know. We didn't have a heads-up about this promotion,' a manager at Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant in the East Village, told DailyMail.com Tuesday.
'We could have tried to plan accordingly. We could have talked to our delivery people so [they would have been prepared.]'
A TikTok by user euffyxoxo appears to show dozens of abandoned salads at a Just Salad restaurant that were never picked up
GrubHub's promotion was so popular that the delivery service was averaging 6,000 orders per minute on Tuesday, overwhelming delivery drivers and restaurants
'The drivers could not get here. We had the orders ready to go but there were not enough delivery drivers. [Customers] called very frustrated,
