AI answers cast Grubhub as a supporting name, strongest on subscriptions and promotions

This is a snapshot from 2026-09-29: 250 benchmark questions put to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok, 1,250 answers in all. Grubhub was named in 312 of them. Grok named it most often (95 of 250) and Perplexity least (38 of 250). Uber (1,069 answers), Lyft (636) and DoorDash (530) were named more often across the same set.

Grubhub's visibility varied by question type. It was highest on subscriptions and promotions (51%) and on driver pay and earnings (42%), and next on trust (34%) and avoid-style questions (32%). It was lowest on leadership and employer questions (12% each) and on safety (14%). The brand mostly appeared where the topic was fees, passes and pay.

Within the answers, Grubhub was usually one name among several. A Perplexity answer on budget delivery for a college student was the most favorable framing in the sample: it called Grubhub a good first app to check, citing campus partnerships that can include Grubhub+ benefits. On complaint handling, Claude and Grok both relayed a survey-style figure of about 50% issue resolution for Grubhub, placing it just behind DoorDash. Grok's answer on the worst customer service also passed along cited criticism of Grubhub's support, including "refund lottery" outcomes and post-acquisition service decline.

Other appearances were incidental. ChatGPT's tip-practices answer considered Grubhub among platforms in the class-action question. Its answer on app features said it had not found a comparable consumer-facing live-tracking feature for Grubhub. Gemini's robot-delivery answer named Grubhub as a platform partner for Avride. Of the themes the answers were tagged with for Grubhub, most were classed as not substantive, followed by customer experience and price and value.

PeakMetrics' news index shows 2,010 mentions of Grubhub in the last 30 days, 125 of them with the brand in the headline. That is well below DoorDash (16,345) and Uber (39,208) and above Instacart (4,605).

The recent headlines follow four storylines: DoorDash buying Grubhub's campus dining business, with a report that DoorDash stock fell on the news; Grubhub and Robot.com expanding autonomous delivery to 10 new campuses; Prime-linked Grubhub+ offers, including $20 off $30; and a laid-off Grubhub worker whose job tracker is now used by recruiters. Two of the four concern campuses.

The press story is corporate and operational: an ownership change in campus dining, robot delivery and a Prime promotion. The answer story is consumer-facing: what the pass costs, how well complaints get resolved, and how tips and pay work. The one overlap is the promotion angle. Subscriptions and promotions is Grubhub's highest-visibility question type, and Prime-linked deals are in the headlines.

Campus is a smaller overlap. Perplexity's student-budget answer and Gemini's robot answer touch it. Neither mentions the DoorDash campus-dining deal, and neither tells the story the headlines are telling. Volume also diverges. Grubhub's news presence is mid-sized in this peer set, but its share of answers is smaller than DoorDash's, and the answers lean on third-party consumer surveys and review sites as sources.

For a Grubhub comms team, this snapshot suggests three things to track. First, the complaint-resolution question: two assistants carried the same survey-style figure and one repeated critical commentary on support. Second, whether the campus ownership and robot-delivery news shows up in answers on the questions where Grubhub is currently thin, such as innovation, leadership and employer. Third, which third-party sources the answers cite, since those sources, not company statements, are shaping the wording.

This is one run of live answers. Repeat runs vary, so treat the figures as a baseline to compare against, not a ranking.