After four years abroad, Grubhub is coming back home. Netherlands-based Just Eat Takeaway will sell the food delivery service to billionaire entrepreneur Marc Lore’s restaurant startup Wonder in a deal worth $650 million.

Just like the lukewarm food it sometimes delivers, Grubhub’s performance in recent years was really disappointing. Just Eat, Europe’s largest meal delivery company, paid $7.3 billion for Grubhub during peak Covid four years ago. But when people returned to restaurants and the food delivery field became more competitive, Grubhub went from Just Eat’s ticket to expanding its food delivery empire in the US to an expensive flop.

It’s a Wonder someone bought it

Lore is the entrepreneur heavyweight behind e-commerce companies Diapers.com (sold to Amazon for $545 million) and Jet.com (sold to Walmart for $3.3 billion). In 2022, he left his gig running Walmart's website to become CEO of Wonder, the company he had founded a few years earlier.

Originally started as a caravan of Sprinter vans that provided made-to-order meals to New Jersey suburbanites, Wonder pivoted to brick-and-mortar locations. These virtual food halls offer takeout and delivery and feature extensive menus inspired by (and in partnership with) celebrity chefs such as José Andrés and Bobby Flay.

• Some locations can serve up to 500 dishes, from pasta alla vodka to fried chicken sandwiches.
• The logistics is the secret sauce: The food is prepared in a central facility and then shipped to the location where they speed cook the semi-prepared dishes using only a hot water bath, a rapid-cook oven, and a fryer.
• Lore said the company has spent around $60 million as of March snapping up IP-infused offerings (i.e., Bobby Flay strip steak) and hundreds of millions more developing the food preparation system.

Looking ahead…Grubhub and its delivery drivers are another piece of the puzzle for Wonder to achieve its goal of becoming the “super app of mealtime.” In the next five years, Lore wants to IPO the company at a valuation of $30 billion.—MM

The GOP wins the House, secures Republican trifecta. Republicans were projected to keep their narrow majority in the House of Representatives, meaning that come January, the GOP will gain control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. That single-party domination could pave the way for President-elect Trump to extend and deepen the trillions of dollars in tax cuts he enacted during his first term. Over in the Senate, free trade advocate Sen. John Thune of South Dakota was elected as the next Republican majority leader, replacing Mitch McConnell, who has been the No. 1 Senate Republican for a record 18 years. Trump also announced a slew of nominations for his cabinet, including loyalist Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general, a surprise pick that has stunned GOP lawmakers.

Inflation ticks up, but no alarm bells set off. US consumer prices rose at a 2.6% annual pace in October, up from 2.4% the month prior, according to yesterday’s inflation report. Time to panic? No. In fact, investors saw this as good news: The inflation rate for October matched expectations and appears to be on a long-term downward trend, setting the stage for the Fed to cut rates again at its next meeting in December. Prices for airfare, medical care, and used vehicles all rose on a monthly basis, but online grocery prices posted their first annual decline since Covid began more than four years ago, a separate report from Adobe found.

Amazon launched its competitor to Temu and Shein. Amazon Haul, as the ultra-discount storefront is called, offers a variety of products including apparel, home goods, electronics, and more priced at $20 or less. The mobile-only store is Amazon’s response to upstarts Shein, Temu, and TikTok Shop, which offer cheap goods shipped directly from China and have eaten away at its market share. But selling an iPhone case for $1.79 comes with its compromises: Amazon Haul says items will take one to two weeks to be delivered and shipping fees will be charged for orders under $25.

It’s been a dizzying post-election week for Elon Musk’s X. Many users appear to be fleeing the platform, but more advertisers might return.

More than 115,000 US users deleted their X accounts the day after the election, the biggest exodus in a single day since Musk took over the company, per Similarweb. Many seem headed to Bluesky, the smaller X rival which yesterday sat at the top of the Apple App Store’s US chart.

The platform has gained 1 million new users since the election, bringing its total user count to 15 million. (For comparison: Twitter reported 330 million monthly users in 2019.)

Marketers could be coming back

Over a year after a flurry of brands left X over Musk’s paring back of content moderation, advertising agencies expect some to return following the election of Donald Trump, the Financial Times reported. Media experts said it’s likely that some advertisers will start to spend more money on X as a way to gain “political leverage” with the incoming administration, in which Musk figures to play an influential role.

Big picture: X needs to get more brands buying ads to reverse a sharp revenue decline. Total US ad spend among the top 100 advertisers on X during the first half of this year dropped 68% from the first half of 2022, according to Sensor Tower.—CC

If you live in New York City, your next apartment move might be cheaper than your last: Under a new bill passed yesterday, renters will no longer be on the hook for the multi-thousand-dollar realtor’s commission that in part makes NYC moving so expensive.

Shift of burden: The Fairness in Apartment Rental Expenses (FARE) Act, introduced by Gen-Z council member Chi Ossé, will require NYC landlords to pay broker fees to brokers they’ve hired, as soon as May. That’s how it already works in most US cities, but in NYC, tenants have shouldered the fee for decades.

In the Big Apple:

• The median rent was $3,500 last year, or $42,000 for a 12-month lease, per The Guardian.
• The broker’s fee tends to be 10%–15% of full-year rent, or $4,200–$6,300, for the average pad.
• Including broker’s fee, first month’s rent, and security deposit, moving into an NYC rental this year required an average $12,951 upfront—48% more than no-fee moves, according to the online real estate service StreetEasy.

The bill was opposed by the real estate industry, which argued that landlords would pass along the extra costs to tenants by raising rents. Supporters include StreetEasy and two city officials trying to unseat Mayor Eric Adams next year. The bill received a big enough majority to override a potential veto from Adams, who did not publicly support or oppose it.—ML

Your friend who bets on every single NFL game and claims to know more than Vegas may actually be onto something—at least this season.

DraftKings and FanDuel have recently said that increased payouts to sports bettors will lead to lower revenues this year, which DraftKings CEO Jason Robins blamed on the “most customer friendly stretch of NFL sport outcomes we have ever seen,” according to the WSJ.

DraftKings slashed its 2024 revenue guidance by $250 million, while FanDuel parent Flutter cut its annual US revenue forecast by $50 million. What’s happening? Popular teams to bet on, like the Chiefs and the Lions, are winning. On the second Sunday of October, FanDuel’s worst day of the NFL season, 11 of the 13 favorites beat their opponents.—NF