By Spencer Feingold

Wearing the pinstripe suit he wore when his company went public five years ago, GrubHub CEO Matt Maloney said remembering where he started helps him continue to change the way restaurants feed their customers ー and let people eat what they want, when they want, with less hassle.

“People are recognizing that through digital ordering they can access far more restaurants, far more conveniently,” Maloney told Betty Liu, the executive vice chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, on Cheddar’s SL[ICE] program on Wednesday.

Grubhub ($GRUB), the online and mobile food-ordering and delivery platform, has fundamentally changed the way hungry customers order in since the company went public in 2014, and it has enabled restaurants to feed more people since the advent of the gig economy.

Maloney said GrubHub's acquisitions ー it owns Seamless, Eat24, and Allmenus ー have allowed the company to expand significantly, and improve the take-out experience in cities around the country. Last November, Grubhub acquired for $150 million the campus ordering app Tapingo, which lets college students place pickup orders at campus dining facilities.

“It is really about the technology behind their pick up experience, and how can we role that out to major metros like Manhattan or Chicago,” Maloney said. It's part of his strategy to make Grubhub a comprehensive food platform ー delivery, pick-up, catering, “drive it all through the same engine,” he said.

With more than 17 million active users accounting for $5 billion in food sales last year, GrubHub reported $1 billion in revenue, a sharp increase from 2017 when it booked $683 million. But it's stock has struggled since last fall, down about 9 percent in 2019.

The company faces competition from other food delivery services like Caviar, DoorDash, PostMates, and UberEATS. But Maloney is as ambitious as ever.

Looking ahead, he said he wants to be a better partner for restauranteurs, who he said should focus on feeding hungry customers.

GrubHub can "really help restaurants make sense of this new digital world," Maloney said. "They are crying for help and we are here to help them.”