Grubhub Gets Robbed at Gunpoint… For $6.65 Billion

Just when the stock market and Bitcoin start staging their big comeback, practically begging us to relive the glory days of 2020-2021 (when cash was pouring in so fast that people were dropping millions on Bored Apes like they were priceless Renaissance art), a giant dose of reality swoops in to give us a “Will Smith” wake-up slap. And who better to tell us about the pitfalls of pandemic-era euphoria than Just Eat Takeaway.com?

Once upon a time, in the fever dream of 2021, Just Eat thought it would be a brilliant idea to go all in on the American food delivery market by buying Grubhub for $7.3 billion (which was probably more like $4 billion adjusted for inflation, kinda kidding). Fast forward to today, and they’re practically paying New York’s Wonder Group to take it off their hands, for only $650 million. That’s a breathtaking 91% markdown, the kind you see when a store is trying to offload last season’s questionable fashion choices (or when scammers on Twitter offload their crypto ponzi scheme to newbies).

So, how did Just Eat go from conquering the U.S. to holding a big bag of disappointment? Well, back in the lockdown heyday, food delivery was hotter than Miami in August. But as soon as we were allowed back outside, Grubhub’s appeal tanked fast. And Just Eat’s stock followed, sinking nearly 90% since its 2020 peak. They found themselves with a massive U.S. venture that had all the appeal of yesterday’s cold fries. So, what’s a multinational food delivery giant to do? Offload it to the next optimist in line: Marc Lore.

If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Lore is that guy (the one who sold Diapers.com to Amazon, then Jet.com to Walmart). And now, with Wonder Group, he’s back in the game, ready to spin Grubhub into his own "meal-time super app." He even managed to wrangle $500 million of Grubhub’s debt into the deal, so Wonder’s actually only coughing up $142 million in cash. Talk about an armed robbery.

What’s next for Grubhub? Well, Wonder’s Marc Lore has this grand vision of turning it into a “super app” for food delivery (a bold idea in an industry that’s seen more casualties than a meme stock forum post-2021). Remember all those pandemic superstars that hit the stratosphere only to come crashing down like a led balloon? Peloton was supposed to be the future of fitness—now it’s collecting cat hair in the corner next to your old Shake Weight. Zoom? The tool we all thought would take over office life forever, now nothing more than a necessary evil when Slack won’t cut it.

Lore thinks he can turn things around and make Grubhub great again. But even if it doesn’t happen, it’ll have some familiar company up there in the sky—right next to Peloton, Zoom, and, let’s be honest, Harambe, watching over every bad investment we made during lockdown.

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