More than two weeks after Grubhub’s free lunch fiasco, restaurants are still holding the proverbial bag.
The food delivery company has not refunded some restaurants who were overwhelmed by the onslaught of orders and ultimately had to throw away meals that never got delivered or picked up – or paid for.
Many restaurants ate the food tab in those instances, despite the fact that Grubhub said it would foot the bill for its May 17 promotion offering a free $15 lunch between the hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
“We lost about $4,000 on the promotion,” George Tenedios, chief executive of the Fresh & Co. chain of 13 restaurants in Manhattan. “We were able to pump out our orders in 45 to 70 minutes, but I think the customers were never notified by the app that the order was ready.”
Grubhub is apparently swamped with such complaints, according to Fresh & Co.’s Grubhub rep, who ignored five emails from the restaurant pleading for information about its refund before finally responding.
“All orders from the Free Lunch Promo will be refunded,” the Grubhub sales rep finally wrote in an email, which was shared with The Post, conceding that “it has taken some time for the team to [get to] all accounts affected.”
A spokesperson for Grubhub told The Post in a statement, “While the vast majority of restaurants saw an uptick of successful orders – a major win for them – we are working to refund restaurants that either had orders cancelled or unfulfilled.”
Starting Monday, the company said it will reach out to restaurants who have been clamoring for a refund.
Some restaurants said they were not prepared for the rush of orders – or that they were never warned in advance about the promotion.
Delivery workers, cooks and other restaurant staff couldn’t keep up with the volume, which reached 6,000 orders on the app per minute, according to Grubhub.
Jeremy Wladis estimates that he’s out $1,500 worth of undelivered food at his four restaurants in the Big Apple, including Upper West Side mainstays Good Enough to Eat and Nina’s Great Burrito’s Bar. Grubhub has not yet refunded his restaurants.
“Our service and kitchen were screwed up,” Wladis said. “It hurt our brand.”
But the restaurant company DIG – which also has not been refunded for the undelivered meals – managed to turn the snafu into a “happy mistake,” spokesperson Grace Kibira told The Post.
DIG, which has 22 quick service eateries in the Big Apple, emailed customers to tout their own delivery service and placed social media ads poking fun at the Grubhub misfire.
“Your friends waited 6 hours for a sloppy burrito; not cool,” the email blast read.
DIG offered customers a $5 credit for downloading its app, which allows them to order directly from the restaurant instead of with a third-party delivery service, and gave them an extra $5 for referring a friend.
“We were able to convert Grubhub users over to our app,” Kibira told The Post. “We took advantage of the situation to promote our restaurant.”