Grubhub's Free Lunch 'Fiasco' Overwhelms NYC Restaurants

NEW YORK CITY — As soon as a Grubhub "free lunch" promotion for New York City started Tuesday, a printer in Lucky's Famous Burgers' kitchen started spitting out pages of orders.

And it kept whirring away for three full hours.

Giovanni Rosario, the general manager at the restaurant's 23rd Street location, laughingly used only one word to describe the promotion: "fiasco."

“We just got insanely bombarded," he told Patch. "It was bad. Orders were coming five or six at a time."

Rosario's restaurant wasn't alone.

Thousands of New York City eateries found themselves bombarded with orders at a rate of 6,000 orders a minute, BuzzFeed News first reported. Delivery drivers couldn't keep up with the flood of food. And hungry customers turned angry when the Grubhub promotion — which offered $15 off orders between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Tuesday — turned out to be too good to be true.

As one restaurant worker put it on Twitter: "Who thought free lunch in Manhattan was a good idea?"

Grubhub representatives, for their part, responded to concerns by tweeting that they provided advance notice and increased driver incentives before the promotion.

"We are thankful for the incredible work they put forth today and are working to address any concerns they may have and optimize for future offers," @Grubhub tweeted.

Many Twitter users, however, argued that Grubhub seemed to be blaming restaurants for a poorly-thought-out promotion.

"It's entirely YOUR fault for running a bogus deal that completely overwhelmed these poor restaurants and left them probably scrambling to get orders out," tweeted @magnanigram. "Seriously.... don't do this again."

The promotion laid bare that while New Yorkers crave the convenience of food delivery apps such a Grubhub, the services themselves can be a mixed blessing for the blended ecosystem of restaurants and delivery workers.

Even when kitchen staff at some restaurants managed to keep up with the deluge of orders, they found there simply weren't enough drivers to cart them away.

That's what happened at the My Belly's Playlist on West 35th Street, said Wanda Ramirez, the assistant manager. She said that even with drivers picking up three or four orders at a time, food sat for hours waiting to be delivered.

“At some point we had 15 orders, or maybe more, waiting for drivers,” she said.

"We had to cancel orders, because we were waiting hours for delivery drivers."

Rosario said Lucky's locations were able to staff up before the promotion, as well as pause orders, which kept a bad day from becoming worse.

But he said the confluence of problems — a flood of orders, delivery delays, apps failing — left a trail of angry, hungry customers who directed their anger at Lucky's instead of Grubhub.

“Most of the customers were yelling at us on the phone, when it wasn’t our fault,” he said. “But people need to direct their anger some, and I doubt Grubhub was answering.”

Some New Yorkers regretted taking part in the promotion.

"If I'd known how poorly executed this promotion was I wouldn't have ordered," tweeted @BertoBerryFin. "I cannot believe @Grubhub put restaurant workers through this nightmare. This is a prime example of when executives are too far removed from actual labour to have any insight into good decision making."

For Rosario, the Grubhub deal's downfall wasn't in that it offered hard-working New Yorkers a free meal.

The major flaw, as he saw it, is the app offered a one-time use deal citywide in a very short period.

Here's his advice for the next time Grubhub wants to pursue a similar deal: "Stagger it during the whole week."