While ordering in is almost always a mouth-watering proposition, there’s one part that’s often hard to stomach: the extra fees.
For its Super Bowl debut, Grubhub has enlisted actor George Clooney and award-winning director Yorgos Lanthimos to address those unwelcome cost additions head on.
After presiding over a lavish dinner party, the host announces the final course, demanding, “Who will eat the fees?”
Guests take turns declining—one’s too full, another has an allergy. Then, from the other end of the long dining table, Clooney announces that “Grubhub will eat the fees,” prompting a chorus of disbelief and celebration. A voiceover then announces that Grubhub is waiving delivery and service fees on restaurant orders over $50.
The change is something that Grubhub is planning to institute indefinitely, said Marnie Kain, vp and head of brand marketing for Grubhub. Neither service fees nor delivery fees will apply to orders over $50.
“The Super Bowl is really our launching pad for a category disrupting benefit,” Kain told ADWEEK. “This is a fundamental change to how we’re going to market.”
The decision represents an investment in Grubhub’s brand and an effort to “put people over profits,” Kain said. “This is not something we’re passing along to our restaurant partners. We are literally eating the fees.”
That does come with a cost, Kain acknowledged, but the company aims to make up for that cost with the additional users and orders it hopes this change—and big ad campaign—will bring to the platform.
“We are offering value to them that is really unprecedented in the category,” Kain said.
Taking a big swing like this makes sense for Grubhub, which is trailing competitors DoorDash and Uber Eats by a significant margin. Total monthly active users haven’t grown year-over-year since 2021, according to marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower. In 2025, Grubhub’s monthly active users dropped 20% year over year to 8 million. DoorDash and Uber Eats had 49 million and 21 million monthly active users last year, respectively.
