Grubhub buys Israeli Tapingo for $150 million
US online and mobile food-ordering and delivery marketplace Grubhub announced on Tuesday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Israeli campus food ordering platform Tapingo for $150 million, subject to standard closing conditions. The deal will be completed in the fourth quarter of 2018. With more than 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 pick-up and delivery orders.
With offices in Tel Aviv, San Francisco and Denver, Tapingo was founded in 2012 by CEO Daniel Almog and CTO Udi Oster. The company has 90 employees in Israel and the US.
“Joining Grubhub is an important step forward for Tapingo,” Almog said. “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. By joining forces with Grubhub’s network of more than 85,000 restaurant partners which 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.”
Tapingo has built a technology platform custom designed for campus use, with direct integration into college meal plans and point-of-sale 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 in the US.
“We are excited to add Tapingo, a company that shares our vision of bringing greater convenience to diners and improving the restaurant ordering and pick-up experience through technology,” said Matt Maloney, Grubhub founder and CEO. “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.”
Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Fischer Behar Chen Well Orion & Co. served as legal counsel to Grubhub in connection with the acquisition.
Advs. Yair Geva and Aviram Hazak of Herzog Fox & Neeman Law Office and Silicon Legal Strategy served as legal counsel and JMP Securities LLC served as a financial adviser to Tapingo.
(Globes)