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Q-and-A: GrubHub’s new Android app

4 min read

Food

GrubHub is an online ordering system for restaurant takeout and delivery that is announcing the launch of a revamped version of its Android app. I interviewed Matt Maloney, the company’s co-founder and CEO, about the new app.

Why did you decide to revamp the Android app? Is the iPhone app going to be revamped also?

We think the new app will make it easier for our diners to order food from our restaurants on the go. That’s the heart and soul of why we make updates on any platform. Android is particularly important to get right because of how rapidly its market share is growing. We made updated changes to our iPhone app last October. Both our mobile apps now have the same functionality.

What improvements are there in the new app?

Both our iPhone and Android apps are free to download. The new functionality in our revamped Android app include:

  • Using your phone’s GPS to find out who delivers to you
  • Viewing menus, reviews and ratings before placing your order
  • Searching for restaurants that deliver in 13 major cities: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Denver and Boulder
  • Searching for specific cuisines, restaurants, delivery hours, ratings and more
  • Saving your details to save you time — multiple addresses, credit card info and more
  • Viewing past orders and reordering with one tap

How will the new app affect restaurants’ ability to get value out of being listed on GrubHub? Are there any specific steps restaurants can take to maximize the value added by the new features?

Our mission at GrubHub is to help hungry diners find and order exactly what they are craving from the 15,000+ network of restaurants on our site. Mobile apps are another channel that helps drive more orders to restaurants on our site.

Restaurant owners are great at running their business and making great food. But when it comes to building online technology and mobile app development, that’s where we come in. We have developed an app that makes it super easy for restaurant owners to maximize their exposure and get more orders without any extra work.

How does customer use of the iPhone and Android apps to place orders compare with use of the website to order? Has there been an uptick in overall use of GrubHub since introducing the apps?

For people like me who prefer to order on the go, our mobile apps make getting fed super easy. Through our iPhone and Android apps, diners can use their phone’s GPS capabilities to search their current location for all the restaurants delivering to exactly where they are. I can be traveling home on the bus, sitting at a friend’s house or out at my favorite watering hole, and once I’ve decided what I’m hungry for and placed an order, our mobile apps will save the address, payment info and order details to make ordering again even easier than the first time.

GrubHub’s mobile platform simplifies the connection between hungry diners on the go and restaurants. Our mobile platform is as feature rich as our consumer website and also takes full advantage of mobile-specific functionality. We first launched our iPhone app in February 2009, and since then, we’ve seen the number of orders placed through the app increase dramatically over the last few years. Over the past six months we’ve seen a 300% increase in its install base and usage.

Mobile orders comprised 10% of our sales in 2010. We project mobile orders to make over 25% of our sales by the end of this year.

Image courtesy of TilsonPR.