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Restaurant-services specialist LevelUp is being sold to Grubhub Inc. for $390 million.
Announced Wednesday, the deal weds Boston-based LevelUp, with its expertise in digital ordering, payment, and loyalty, with Grubhub’s online and mobile food-ordering services. Chicago-based Grubhub also owns the Seamless, Eat24, AllMenus, and MenuPages brands.
The deal is an effort to offer national and independent restaurants the technology to drive online delivery and pickup orders, Grubhub says. “LevelUp accelerates Grubhub’s existing point-of-sale integration capabilities and provides restaurants with powerful (customer relationship management) and analytical tools to help them drive more diners to their platform and increase volume from existing diners,” Grubhub said in a press release. The deal is expected to close after customary closing conditions are met.
LevelUp will continue to operate out Boston with its staff intact. “As part of Grubhub, LevelUp will have the resources to double down on our R&D, recruitment and other efforts to ensure we continue to outperform every other provider in the space and deliver the absolute market-leading experience for you,” LevelUp founder and chief executive Seth Prietbatsch said in a post on TheLevelUp.com.
Initially a daily deals platform at its 2011 launch, LevelUp soon switched its model to that of CRM and loyalty provider for small businesses. In the past seven years it struck various deals, such as one in 2017 with JPMorgan Chase & Co. that saw LevelUp’s order-ahead technology adapted for the Chase Pay mobile wallet. LevelUp also announced an integration with POS system provider Revel Systems in 2017.
In 2014, NCR Corp. added LevelUp as an options for merchants using NCR Silver, the company’s tablet-based POS system.
