Grubhub to acquire Tapingo

Grubhub (NYSE: GRUB), the nation’s leading online and mobile food-ordering and delivery marketplace, today announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Tapingo, a leading platform for campus food ordering.

With over 150 college campus partners, Tapingo enables tens of thousands of order-ahead transactions per day for more than half a million active diners at on-campus cafes, restaurants, and cashier-less stores. The combination of Tapingo’s network with Grubhub’s restaurant marketplace and delivery capabilities will bring greater convenience to students and help campus restaurants capitalize on pickup and delivery orders.

Tapingo’s U.S.- and Israel-based teams have built a technology platform custom designed for campus use, with direct integration into college meal plans and point-of-sale (POS) systems, ensuring seamless order-taking and accurate, up-to-the-minute transparency on wait times for diners. The Tapingo platform also streamlines operations and increases in-store efficiency for campus restaurant partners—including Taco Bell, Chipotle, Chick-fil-A, Panda Express and Jamba Juice—and powers partnerships with Aramark and Sodexo, the leading providers of food services and facilities management nationwide.

“We are excited to add Tapingo, a company that shares our vision of bringing greater convenience to diners and improving the restaurant ordering and pickup experience through technology,” said Matt Maloney, Grubhub’s founder and chief executive officer. “We value the college student population, many of whom we hope become life-long Grubhub diners with their first order. Tapingo makes students’ lives easier, allows merchants to efficiently capitalize on online ordering, and enables colleges and universities to give students the technology they’ve come to expect.”

“Joining Grubhub is an important step forward for Tapingo. Grubhub is the industry leader in food delivery, allowing us to provide even greater value to our campus partners and student diners with access to Grubhub’s technology and delivery expertise,” said Daniel Almog, Tapingo’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “By joining forces with Grubhub’s network of over 85,000 restaurant partners that offer online delivery and pickup, we’ll continue to serve our loyal diners long after they graduate from college, which has always been our aspiration.”

Grubhub has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Tapingo for approximately $150 million, subject to standard closing conditions. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2018. Grubhub will discuss the financial impact of the expected acquisition on its third quarter earnings call. Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Fischer Behar Chen Well Orion & Co served as legal counsel to Grubhub in connection with the acquisition. Herzog, Fox & Neeman and Silicon Legal Strategy served as legal counsel and JMP Securities LLC served as a financial advisor to Tapingo.