Mike Rondinaro
Co-founder
Parkday vs. Grubhub for the office: is a legacy marketplace enough for modern teams?
TL;DR: Parkday vs. Grubhub at a glance
Question | Grubhub (incl. corporate & campus programs) | Parkday for offices |
|---|---|---|
Built for… | Marketplace ordering with corporate accounts layered on top | Office-native, recurring lunch programs with curation and planning |
Delivery experience | Individual or team orders via ad-hoc couriers; building quirks rediscovered each time | Consolidated office drops, building rules encoded once, predictable pickup flow |
Restaurant selection | Broad marketplace list, with promos and sponsored results | Curated set of local restaurants that can execute at office scale and meet sourcing + nutrition standards |
Health & nutrition | Menu-by-menu, employee-by-employee; no overarching program logic | Meal choices designed around employee health goals and company wellness ambitions |
Fees & pricing | Mix of corporate billing plus consumer-style markups, fees, and tips | Transparent program pricing; minimal per-order friction and no tip stress for employees |
Restaurant operations | Lumpy demand, short lead times, big orders mixed in with everything else | Predictive demand and planned menus so kitchens can staff and prep efficiently |
Culture impact | “We get Grubhub” – convenient but fragmented | A recognizable, shared food ritual that reinforces culture and in-office days |
Grubhub (and Seamless in markets like NYC) has a long history with office food. For years, “we have Grubhub” was shorthand for “we take care of you.” The question is whether that legacy marketplace model is enough for how modern teams work — and eat — now.
Here’s how Grubhub behaves inside an office, and how Parkday approaches the same problem from first principles.
Legacy corporate marketplace vs. office-first platform
Grubhub’s model inside companies
Grubhub’s roots are in:
Campus and corporate accounts that give people budget to order from a broad marketplace.
Individual and group orders running through the same consumer rails as everyone else.
A focus on billing, allowances, and reporting layered on top of a general-purpose delivery network.
In real life, that means:
Every courier still has to decipher your building’s idiosyncrasies on the fly.
Large days create many separate orders, each with their own timing and friction.
Program owners spend time tuning budgets and rules, but there’s no system taking ownership of the food experience itself.
It’s “corporate tooling on top of a marketplace,” not “a platform built around the rhythms of office life.”
Parkday’s office-native foundation
Parkday starts from a different set of assumptions:
Offices have anchor days and patterns, not random on-demand needs.
Great restaurants will lean in if they’re given predictable, well-communicated demand.
Employees want food that supports their health and performance, not just convenience.
So we built:
A delivery model that optimizes for cohort drops instead of scattershot orders.
A curation and planning layer that sits between restaurants, employees, and offices.
A data model that treats food as a longitudinal journey, not one-off tickets.
“Everything everywhere” menus vs. curation with a point of view
Grubhub’s marketplace lens
On Grubhub, choice is the product:
Employees see a long list of restaurants filtered by distance, availability, and rating.
Promos and sponsored listings move options up the page.
There’s no shared understanding of what “good” looks like for your specific office — sourcing, sustainability, nutrition, or otherwise.
As a result:
Different employees have radically different food experiences, even on the same “lunch program.”
You can’t easily shape a coherent food story — it’s whatever the marketplace happens to surface.
Parkday’s curated approach
Parkday’s job is to set the table differently:
We select a smaller, higher-quality set of restaurants for each office, based on sourcing, culinary excellence, and operational reliability.
We build menus in partnership with those restaurants that are designed for office volume and variety.
We ensure that, on any given day, a cohort of employees sees a balanced menu where everyone can find something that fits their tastes and constraints.
Employees still feel like they’re ordering from great local spots. Behind the scenes, you get consistency, standards, and a clear narrative about what your company chooses to serve.
Program health: “everyone for themselves” vs. structured support
How Grubhub handles health and nutrition
Grubhub gives employees:
Nutritional info at the menu level (when provided).
Filters they can click through as they shop.
What it doesn’t give is:
A way to plan the week around specific health goals.
A mechanism to ensure that the overall pattern of lunches supports your wellness initiatives.
An integrated view that connects what people eat with how they’re trying to feel and perform.
Health becomes each individual’s problem inside a general marketplace.
Parkday’s health-aligned design
Parkday is built to make “the food you meant to eat” the easiest choice:
Weekly planning
Menus appear in advance so people can map out lunches across multiple days, not just improvise each morning.Nutrition-aware meals
We work with restaurants and nutrition experts to ensure that the meals in rotation can actually support the goals people have (more protein, fewer crashes, specific dietary needs).Data connections
Meals don’t just disappear after delivery — they can be logged and tracked alongside other health data.
You’re no longer hoping employees piece together a healthy pattern from an infinite menu; you’re giving them a path that makes those decisions easier.
Fees, markups, and budget reality for office programs
The Grubhub cost pattern
Even with corporate accounts, you’re still in a world where:
Menu prices may be higher than in-restaurant.
Service and delivery fees stack up per order or per group.
Tips are expected and can become confusing to administer for multi-person orders.
Employees can learn to optimize for budget, not quality, grabbing whatever fits under a cap rather than what’s best for them.
From a finance perspective, that means:
A lot of your budget goes into friction costs of delivery and marketplace economics.
It’s harder to predict the true cost per lunch on anchor days.
Parkday’s program-level economics
Parkday’s economics are designed for exactly one job: feeding offices well, on a schedule.
Pricing is transparent and program-based, not “we’ll see what today’s mix of fees and tips looks like.”
Because we plan ahead and aggregate demand, restaurants and drivers can operate more efficiently, reducing hidden costs.
Employees experience lunch as “this is covered” or “this is my known copay,” not a confusing mix of fees and caps at checkout.
You get clarity on spend, better food per dollar, and fewer awkward conversations about what employees “should” or “shouldn’t” order.
Restaurant operations and reliability
Grubhub’s impact on the kitchen
From a restaurant’s perspective, even with a corporate pattern:
Orders still ride the same rails as regular marketplace volume.
Big office days can create short-notice spikes they can’t always serve gracefully.
There’s limited ability to collaborate on menus that fit their kitchen and your office’s needs.
When things go sideways, there’s often no single owner thinking about the office program as a whole — it’s just “today’s orders didn’t work out.”
Parkday’s collaborative model
Parkday is positioned as a partner, not just another order channel:
We collaborate on office-friendly menus that respect each kitchen’s strengths and constraints.
Our demand forecasts give restaurants the lead time they need to staff and source intelligently.
Because we’re focused on offices, we can be a single point of contact for troubleshooting and improvement over time.
That makes it easier to bring in higher-caliber restaurants and keep them engaged over the long term.
Employee experience and office culture
Grubhub: “we have delivery” as a benefit
With Grubhub, the benefit story often sounds like:
“You get a budget; use the app; enjoy.”
It’s undeniably convenient. But the experience:
Feels similar to ordering from home, just with a corporate wallet.
Fragments across many different arrival times and pickup points.
Doesn’t create much shared identity or ritual around food.
Parkday: “we have a food program”
Parkday is designed to feel like:
A recurring ritual on specific days when people know something good is happening at lunch.
A shared menu from restaurants people actually talk about.
A benefit that says something about what your company values — health, local food, simplicity.
Instead of “we’ve enabled you to fend for yourself,” you’re saying, “we’ve thought about what we put on the table.”
When Grubhub still has a place
Grubhub shines in scenarios like:
Occasional team lunches or one-off events.
Offices with very light in-person presence and no real anchor days.
Companies that primarily care about maximum choice and minimal coordination, with less emphasis on programmatic health or culture.
Where it falls short is when:
You have predictable in-office days with meaningful attendance.
You want lunch to be part of a health and performance strategy, not just a perk.
You care about supporting specific restaurants and having a cohesive food story.
Finance wants predictable, explainable spend, not “it depends which day and who ordered what.”
That’s where Parkday is designed to be the primary system, with legacy marketplaces as optional supporting tools rather than the backbone.
FAQ: Parkday vs. Grubhub for offices
We already have Grubhub corporate. Why add Parkday?
Grubhub corporate solves billing and budget management on top of a general marketplace. Parkday solves the food program itself — what gets served, when, how it fits your culture and wellness goals, and how it’s delivered to your office.
Will employees lose the variety they’re used to?
They’ll lose access to the long tail of “maybe this is fine” options, and gain a more focused roster of truly high-quality restaurants selected for your office. In practice, satisfaction tends to go up, not down.
Can we keep Grubhub for edge cases?
Yes. Many companies use Parkday for their core weekly program and keep Grubhub around for occasional events or off-cycle meals. The key is not trying to force a marketplace to be something it wasn’t built to be.
How hard is it to switch from a Grubhub-style setup to Parkday?
Operationally, it’s straightforward: we align on your office days, headcount, constraints, and goals; we bring in the right restaurants; we set up delivery playbooks for your building. The bigger shift is cultural: moving from “everyone is on their own with a budget” to “we have a shared food program we’re proud of.”
See also
