After searching for a buyer for more than two years, Just Eat Takeaway.com has finally closed its menu on Grubhub. On Tuesday, the Dutch food delivery giant said it completed the sale of its US business to Wonder, the grocery startup founded and led by e-commerce veteran Marc Lore. The deal has an enterprise value of $650 million, but Grubhub is coming loaded with $500 million in debt. Adding in other M&A fees, Just Eat Takeaway will walk away with just $50 million, a fraction of the $7.3 billion valuation Grubhub had when Just Eat Takeaway gobbled it up in an all-stock deal in 2020.
The sale, which was first announced in November 2024, underlines continued downsizing – or right-sizing? — in the industry to focus more on profitability after years of overinvestment and unrealistic growth targets. Just Eat Takeaway says it will shift its focus to “investing in countries where it has the greatest competitive advantage”.
In Wonder’s case, Lore is somewhat of a legend in the e-commerce world, having previously founded and sold companies to Amazon and Walmart. Wonder has raised about $1.7 billion and has ambitions to go public in the next few years at a $40 billion valuation, Lore said, but that means the business needs to grow significantly beyond what it is today. Grubhub gives it a national footprint — though it’s been operating heavily in debt for some time. The challenge will be whether Wonder manages to eventually turn it around.
