‘This can’t be real’: Grubhub promotion turns New York City restaurants into a ‘war zone’

theguardian.com:

What were they thinking?

That’s what customers, restaurants, and delivery workers want to know after a surprise promotion by food delivery platform Grubhub went badly awry – and proved there’s really no such thing as a free lunch.

Grubhub’s plan was ambitious: to feed everyone in New York City and the surrounding Tri-State area for free, during lunch hours on Tuesday. The platform cited a survey it had conducted that found that 69% of working New Yorkers said they had skipped lunch.

But that’s exactly what the stunt ended up doing, after Grubhub’s platform crashed as New Yorkers rushed to place orders. The fiasco left restaurants overwhelmed, delivery workers frustrated, and many customers with empty stomachs.

Christopher Krautler, a spokesperson for Grubhub, said the platform was averaging up to 6,000 orders a minute, which “absolutely blew away all expectations”. Krautler acknowledged that the demand “initially caused a temporary delay in our system and some users experienced an error message with their code, but that was quickly rectified”, adding the platform fulfilled more than 450,000 lunch orders connected to the promotion.

But many users never saw their food after spending money, with some kept hungry and waiting for hours by the app’s promises that the food would soon arrive.

The app was offering $15 off of any order made in the New York City area between 11am and 2pm. Restaurants across the city were inundated. Fee Bakhtiar, a general manager at Jajaja Mexicana in West Village, called it a “shitshow”. When she opened the restaurant at 11.30am, she was stunned to find 40 orders from Grubhub already waiting in the queue.

“I was like, wait, this can’t be real. And then all of a sudden, it was just kind of like, ‘Oh well,