The Bears didn’t get to the Super Bowl this year, but one Chicago company will be making its first appearance.
Grubhub, the pioneering Chicago-based food delivery service, announced Monday it is running a TV commercial during the Super Bowl LX broadcast Feb. 8 from Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
The Big Game is a big bet for Grubhub, a former tech unicorn that has sold twice in the last five years at a significant decline in valuation as it continues to lag market leaders DoorDash and Uber Eats. Commercials for the matchup between New England and Seattle on NBC are reportedly selling for a record $8 million per spot.
“Our Super Bowl debut isn’t just an ad—it’s a reset for the Grubhub brand,“ Marnie Kain, vice president of brand for Grubhub, said in a statement.
Grubhub released a 15-second teaser of its spot, which also represents the Super Bowl debut for absurdist Greek film director Yorgos Lanthimos, who is nominated for an Academy Award again this year for his latest offering, “Bugonia.”
While little is revealed in the teaser, the ad pans along a dining table filled with trays of food as an announcer delivers the mangled idiom “this February, one food delivery app will finally put their mouth where their money is.” A steaming serving dish is delivered to the end of the table and its top is removed as four guests look on with some degree of consternation.
The full Super Bowl ad will ostensibly resolve the mystery as to what is being served.
“We’ve partnered with acclaimed director Yorgos Lanthimos to address the category’s biggest pain point through a bold, cinematic lens,” Kain said. “This teaser is the first step in a broader ambition to fundamentally change what people expect from delivery.”
Last year, a record 127.7 million viewers tuned in for Super Bowl LIX on Fox, according to Nielsen, as the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22. Making an advertising splash at the Super Bowl can be a gamechanger for companies looking for national exposure or a marketing reboot.
Grubhub could use both.
Founded in 2004 by Chicago software engineers Mike Evans and Matt Maloney as a way to move restaurant menus from the cluttered kitchen drawer to an organized website, Grubhub started with a single merchant — a now-closed Uptown Chinese restaurant — building what would become a national e-commerce platform and launching a new industry that changed the way consumers ordered food delivery
In 2014, Grubhub filed for an initial public offering, raising $193 million and valuing the company at north of $2 billion.
