Voices of Grubhub: Reimagining Campus Dining

For this edition, we caught up with Rob DelaCruz, Vice President and General Manager, Campus and Hospitality.

Rob's team is responsible for Grubhub's Campus business, which integrates with university dining plans to allow students to use their meal credits on Grubhub. Grubhub Campus also offers its partners innovative solutions like robot delivery and reusable containers to enhance the dining experience.

Rob, you joined Grubhub a little over a year ago. Tell us about your background and how you landed here.
I was drawn to Grubhub because I love food - cooking, dining out, ordering in. All of it! Before joining Grubhub, I was at Google, and spent the majority of my career building media and entertainment businesses. At first glance you may think the media and campus businesses are very different, but the common thread is finding ways to drive successful consumer relationships through intermediaries. So I jumped at the opportunity to join the campus team because it was a new learning opportunity that allowed me to leverage the insights I've developed over my career to help drive the next stage of growth.

What was the state of the campus business when you joined, and how has it evolved over the past year?
When I joined, the campus business was growing rapidly but was somewhat isolated from the rest of Grubhub. I call it Grubhub's best kept secret. Over the past year, we've made a concerted effort to highlight its value within the broader organization because we have this platform that's so unique and differentiates us from the competition. It's unique when we say we have an integrated relationship with massive schools like Ohio State, Arizona State, and Notre Dame because it highlights the power of our platform to establish relationships with younger diners.

When we talk about the Grubhub merchant ecosystem, everyone's looking for the next generation of their customer. In our case, the next generation of diners are on college campuses across the country, and we're excited to begin forming a relationship with them at this stage to build loyalty early on.

Reflecting on your own college dining experience, how does it compare with today's students?
I went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and the dining experience was quite basic then. I could eat as much as I wanted to, but all of the options were horrible. I remember being so sick of having bad pizza, especially coming from Jersey. I would often find myself just opting for cereal. And as far as tech innovations, the most advanced thing was having my meal balance on my ID card. Fast forward to today, and my son, who is about to attend Wake Forest, has access to a wide variety of on-campus dining options like burrito bowls, brick oven pizza, and even Chick-fil-A. But the evolution of the ordering, pickup and delivery experiences are what really differentiates today's student dining because it's convenient and saves students so much time. I'm just looking forward to using my son as a research participant!

In addition to integrating with meal plans, we provide our campus partners a variety of innovative solutions. Can you walk me through our offerings?
Our offerings include mobile ordering, self-service kiosks, off-campus flex (allowing the use of meal plan funds at off-campus restaurants), robot delivery, and automated convenience stores with Amazon's Just Walk Out technology. We also provide reusable containers and secure locker pickups. The beauty of our platform is that all these technologies are integrated into one unified app, making it easy for students and campuses to manage. And as an added bonus, we also offer Grubhub+ to students, which they retain access to while they attend school.

While mobile ordering is core to how we integrate with university partners, it's the innovative solutions we offer that allows Grubhub to grow its reach and adoption on campuses. Many campuses are focused on being tech-forward, and they expect these types of innovative solutions so they can stay up to date with the latest offerings.

The 2023-2024 school year was the best year yet for Grubhub Campus. What do you attribute the teams' success to?
I'd say it comes down to three main things. First, our team is incredibly passionate about what we do. Second, our platform is top-notch. It's the best in the industry, offering a variety of turnkey solutions and integrating with many third-party providers, which makes it super easy for campuses to use. Lastly, being part of Grubhub gives us unique revenue opportunities. We can price our platform more competitively and generate revenue not just from platform fees, but also from marketplace orders. This combination has helped us win more campus deals and achieve significant growth over the years.

As students head back to campus this fall, what excites you and the team most?
This is our busiest time, similar to e-commerce after Black Friday. We are adding more than 60 new campuses to our portfolio, now supporting more than 360 schools across the country in total. That's a 21% increase from last year. Our platform success is not just limited to new schools, we're also deepening our presence on many campuses and expanding our kiosk footprint with over 55 new deployments, and adding over a dozen campuses for robot delivery, reflecting double-digit growth across the board. This is undoubtedly our busiest back to school season, but it's so exciting to see the market momentum.

How does the campus team align with Grubhub's overall strategy?
Our goals align with the broader company's focus on growth. In 2023, our total mobile orders grew 16%, and we expect double digit growth again this year. In addition, Grubhub now reaches half a million new students and serves a total of more than four and a half million students. Our goal is to maintain this double-digit growth trajectory and establish a strong foundation with Grubhub's next generation of diners.

What are the key areas of focus for the team right now?
Executing back-to-school is crucial as it sets the tone for the rest of the academic year. We're also rolling out a new homepage on the app that highlights both on-campus and off-campus dining options, and introducing ads for on-campus orders. Additionally, later this year, we're piloting a meal plan exchange program that allows students to use their meal swipes at off-campus merchants, allowing us to deepen our relationship with student diners and our campus partners by providing them with more dining and convenience options.

It sounds like the campus team has great momentum right now. Tell us about the team dynamic and the culture you're fostering.
As I said, our team is passionate about the campus business, which makes it easy to foster a culture of collaboration and trust. This year, we've also improved collaboration with other Grubhub teams, accelerating our growth. For example, we recently partnered with the Merchant Network team. We've identified key campuses with the largest growth opportunities, highlighted top restaurants requested by students and even developed a unique campus pitch. This effort boosted merchant win rates around campuses by over 2x and accelerated our campus order growth. Prioritizing impact is a mantra I promote, ensuring we focus on tasks that will have the most significant results for Grubhub.

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