Amazon Extends Deal With Grubhub for Prime Members

An Amazon worker walks past his Amazon Prime delivery truck in Washington on Feb. 19, 2022. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

Amazon Prime members in the United States will continue to have Grubhub subscriptions included in their membership on an ongoing basis, the online retail giant announced on May 30.

The move, under which Grubhub’s food delivery service will be added to Amazon’s website and app, comes nearly two years after the e-commerce acquired a minor stake in the food delivery platform, which is owned by Just Eat Takeaway.com.

All Prime members in the United States can use Grubhub’s service to order food from hundreds of thousands of restaurants in all 50 states with Grubhub via Amazon.com and in the Amazon Shopping app, Amazon said in a statement.

Amazon previously granted Prime members a yearlong subscription to the food delivery service, which includes free delivery on orders over $12, lower service fees, 5 percent credit back on pick-up orders, and exclusive offers, according to Amazon.

However, the retailer said on May 30 that it is now making the food-delivery service a permanent fixture of its Prime membership program, which costs $14.99 per month or $139 per year.

Typically, the Grubhub+ subscription service costs $120 on an annual basis, according to its official website.

According to Amazon, since the company first rolled out the Grubhub+ offer in 2022, Prime members have saved “hundreds of millions of dollars” from waived subscription fees and discounts.

The retail giant claims that Prime members who place at least one order a month save an average of $300 per year in delivery fees and promotions with the Grubhub+ offer.

Prime Memberships on the Rise

Amazon had 180 million Prime subscribers in the United States as of March 2024, an increase of roughly 8 percent from the March 2023 quarter, according to estimates from Chicago-based research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

However, the Jeff Bezos-founded company continues to face stiff competition from rivals such as Walmart and Target, prompting it to explore new ways to expand, including via a failed attempt to start a food delivery service called Amazon Restaurants in the United States.

Following its failure in 2019, the company acquired a 2 percent stake in Grubhub in July 2022, noting at the time that it could increase its stake to 13 percent, depending on the number of new Prime members who started using Grubhub because of the promotion.

“Whether it’s saving money on your favorite takeout with Grubhub+, exclusive deals on Prime Day, prescription savings with RxPass, entertainment with Prime Video, or free shipping on 300 million items including tens of millions of products available with Same-Day or One-Day Delivery, Prime keeps getting better for members,” Jamil Ghani, vice president of Amazon Prime, said in a statement.

“We know Prime members value savings on food delivery, so we are extending the $0 delivery fees and exclusive savings with Grubhub+ for Prime members, and now, customers can enjoy easy access to Grubhub from the Amazon store and app.”

Amazon Sued Over Prime Memberships

The May 30 announcement also comes after a federal judge on May 28 declined to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accusing Amazon of tricking users into signing up for Prime memberships and forcing them to go through a complex and difficult process to unsubscribe.

U.S. District Judge John Chun in Seattle denied Amazon’s request to dismiss the FTC’s complaint, noting that courts grant motions to dismiss under the reasonable consumer test only in “rare situations” in which the facts alleged in a complaint “compel the conclusion as a matter of law that consumers are not likely to be deceived.”

Amazon has denied the allegations made in the FTC’s lawsuit, branding them “false on the facts and the law.”

“The truth is that customers love Prime, and by design, we make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up for or cancel their Prime membership,” a company spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

“As with all our products and services, we continually listen to customer feedback and look for ways to improve the customer experience, and we look forward to the facts becoming clear as this case plays out.”

Reuters contributed to this report.