How Grubhub Delivers 400M Images Across Every Device

ABOUT

Grubhub

Grubhub is a leading global online food delivery marketplace dedicated to connecting customers with their favorite local restaurants, merchants and convenience retailers. Grubhub elevates online ordering through innovative restaurant technology, easy-to-use platforms, and an improved delivery experience. Part of Wonder Group, Grubhub features over 415,000 merchants in more than 4,000 U.S. cities.

THE CHALLENGE

Eating With Their Eyes: Delivering Pixel-Perfect Images at Scale

Imagery is central to the food delivery experience. Before partnering with Cloudinary, managing images at scale was a challenge for Grubhub. Merchants supplied the imagery for the marketplace, but these didn’t always live up to customers’ high standards. With customers “eating with their eyes first,” inconsistent, low-quality, or improperly sized images compromised engagement and ordering decisions.

Behind the scenes, the operational demands were challenging. Grubhub was responsible for handling enormous volumes of visual assets contributed by merchant partners, and delivering them across millions of daily customer interactions. Image optimization and transformation were handled manually or through inefficient tools, making it difficult to keep pace with growth. Each image had to be adapted for multiple contexts, such as headers, menus, or promotions, and consistently rendered across phones, tablets, and desktop devices, all while maintaining performance and visual appeal.

THE CLOUDINARY SOLUTION

‘All the Work Off Our Team’s Plates’

Since adopting Cloudinary, Grubhub has significantly streamlined its operations, as the platform has “taken all the work off our team’s plates” relating to image management. The system now manages around 400 million merchant images and delivers between 60 and 70 billion impressions. Cloudinary automates an estimated 1 billion essential transformations to optimize image quality and sizing across various formats and devices.

The partnership with Cloudinary has also driven tangible business results by helping merchants achieve better image coverage and higher-quality visuals on their menus. Beyond static images, Grubhub is now able to innovate faster in areas like AI integration and video. This offers even greater potential to tell merchant stories that engage and entice customers to place food orders.