GrubHub Debuts OrderHub; A Food Delivery And Order Management Android Tablet App For Restaurants

Chicago-based startup GrubHub, a service that lets you order food for delivery or take out from local restaurants online or by mobile phone, is debuting a new tablet technology for restaurants called OrderHub.

As you may know, GrubHub gives its users access to food delivery service from more than 13,000 restaurants in U.S. cities including: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Boston, Los Angeles, and more. GrubHub is free for diners who order and pay for their meals while restaurants pay commissions on each order processed. Restaurants that do not currently partner with GrubHub can still list their telephone numbers and menus for free. And of the 13,000 restaurant menus currently available on GrubHub, 5,000 establishments are paying GrubHub to manage and market a white-label online order and food delivery service.

OrderHub is an Android tablet app that allows restaurants to manage online orders they get through GrubHub. Previously, GrubHub enabled orders to be faxed to restaurants, and restaurants confirmed they have received orders through an automated phone service. OrderHub allows GrubHub to instantaneously pushes orders to restaurants through the app, and restaurants confirm the order with a few taps.

Approximately 400 OrderHubs are currently deployed in the Chicago market, and GrubHub plans on rolling out thousands of OrderHub tablets to their network of more than 13,000 restaurants in 300+ cities by the end of the year.

Adding a tablet technology to its ordering system makes a lot of sense for GrubHub, in order to streamline the management process for restaurants. The main challenge will be educating smaller restaurants in its network across the country.

GrubHub, which has raised $84 million in funding, recently acquired New York-based food delivery network Dotmenu, the parent company of Campusfood and Allmenus. And founder Matt Maloney has a goal of taking GrubHub public, also following in the footsteps of OpenTable, which filed for an IPO back in 2009. “Going public is a very realistic opportunity for us within the next two years,” Maloney told us last year. In 2011, GrubHub saw sales of $30 million, up from $8.5 million in 2010 revenue.