To showcase the product innovation work happening across Wonder and Grubhub, we are taking a closer look at the technology and product initiatives improving how customers, merchants, and partners connect through our platform.
Earlier this year, Grubhub introduced a new diner benefit: no delivery or service fees on restaurant orders over $50. This was more than a pricing change. These fees had long been embedded across the Grubhub experience, from discovery to checkout to post-purchase and loyalty, so removing them required rethinking how value is communicated across the full customer journey.
The core challenge was clarity. In a category where fees are expected and highly variable, "no fees" had to be reinforced throughout the experience, not just announced once. To solve this, the team focused on three key principles within the app:
- Consistent communication across the funnel: The benefit needed to appear naturally across key touchpoints, including the home screen, menu pages, cart, checkout, and post-purchase experience, without feeling repetitive or overly promotional.
- Helpful behavioral nudges: Diners can see how close they are to unlocking the benefit, with a clear and transparent view of their progress toward the $50 threshold.
- Tailored experiences by customer type: First-time diners and Grubhub+ members come to the experience with different expectations and existing benefits. The experience needed to clearly communicate what the new offering meant for each audience.
What’s new?
The experience spans the full ordering funnel, with key capabilities designed and shipped across six areas:
- Splash and Home Screen Spotlight: When diners open the Grubhub app, they first see a full-screen “Eat the Fees” splash, ensuring immediate visibility. On the home screen, a spotlight keeps the offer front and center – introducing it to non-members and showing Grubhub+ members how close they are to unlocking it. The experience adapts to engagement, staying relevant without feeling repetitive.
- Menu Page Fee Transparency and Progress Bar: On restaurant menus, diners see delivery and service fees — along with the $50 threshold — before adding items to their cart, setting expectations earlier in the journey. As they build their order, a real-time progress bar shows how close they are to unlocking the benefit.
- Savings Reinforcement Across Cart and Checkout: Once eligible, the cart and checkout highlight total savings. For Grubhub+ members, a clear breakdown distinguishes membership perks from the “no fee” benefit. At checkout, waived fees are shown with strikethrough pricing, making the value easy to understand by showing what diners would have paid—not just $0.
- Post-Purchase Savings Confirmation: After checkout, the confirmation screen reinforces total savings with a clear breakdown when multiple benefits apply. This simple moment validates the decision and strengthens return intent.
- Multi-Merchant and Group Order Support: The $50 threshold extends across multi-merchant and group orders, with combined carts counting toward eligibility. This makes it easier to reach the threshold in real-world scenarios like family meals, office lunches, and group gatherings.
- Membership Logic: Behind the scenes, the experience adapts across two groups:
- Non-members receive the full benefit with prompts highlighting Grubhub+ value
- Grubhub+ members see incremental value layered on top of $0 delivery fees, with clear separation between membership and the new benefit.
How we made it happen
This initiative brought together 100+ team members across Product, User Research, Engineering, Design, Finance, Marketing, Growth, Merchant Partnerships, and Operations—one of Grubhub’s largest recent cross-functional efforts. Close coordination ensured every combination of membership types, order sizes, and stacked offers was accurately calculated and clearly reflected in the user interface.
The team ran multiple rounds of user testing and two internal beta phases. The first focused on the end-to-end experience—ensuring the value proposition was clear, savings were understood across tiers, and the journey felt cohesive from discovery through checkout and post-purchase. The second validated functionality across platforms, testing all scenarios and edge cases. Following validation, the product launched one week ahead of the launch to align with marketing for the Big Game and build momentum.
How is it performing?
Within the first six weeks of launch, the product and business impact were significant across multiple dimensions:
- Large basket orders (over $50+) continued to see strong growth, representing an increasingly meaningful share of overall delivery activity on Grubhub.
- Diners responded positively to messaging designed to help them unlock more value from their orders, leading to larger and more intentional purchases.
- More new diners are choosing to begin their Grubhub experience with higher-value orders, signaling strong engagement with the platform’s expanded value offerings.
- Average order value and items per order both trended positively, reflecting continued momentum toward larger, higher-value orders on the platform.
- Group ordering and multi-merchant experiences continued to see strong growth following launch, reinforcing diner interest in more flexible and collaborative ordering options.
What’s next?
The product team continues to iterate on the experience based on diner behavior and feedback. In the near term, we’re focused on making it clearer how Grubhub+ Credits add up in checkout and account views, fine-tuning when we show the home spotlight based on engagement, and bringing our value messaging into more parts of the diner journey.
The “Eat the Fees” value proposition represents a change to how Grubhub approaches consumer pricing, rather than a short-term promotional window. The product experience was designed to support this direction, with flexibility to evolve alongside the platform over time rather than being tied to a fixed campaign cycle. To learn more about the ‘Eat the Fees’ benefit, visit bit.ly/GHEatTheFees.
Want to be part of the magic behind our product launches? Explore our open Product roles here!