Seamless revives the dollar slice in New York
That’s one way to encourage app downloads!
Here’s some New York nostalgia: Remember the dollar slice? I do! It’s a concept so beloved it has its own Wikipedia page. For a time — for a long time, actually — hungry New Yorkers could walk up to any number of local pizzerias and buy a to-go slice for just $1.
That’s mostly in the past; today, a slice is more likely to cost between $3 and $5 according to New York-based critic Ryan Sutton from
. But the days of one-dollar pizza have (briefly) returned thanks to a city-specific ordering and delivery app promotion. In celebration of Grubhub reviving the New York-centric Seamless delivery brand, it’s offering $1 slices at about 40 city pizzerias.New Yorkers can cash in on a slice of nostalgia by downloading the Seamless app and ordering for pickup from a participating pizzeria, listed at seamlessdollarslice.com. The promo runs through May 20.
It feels like a triumphant homecoming. Seamless merged with Grubhub, then a Chicago-based online ordering and delivery company, over a decade ago. Later, Grubhub fell out of favor with many consumers and was sold to Amsterdam-based Just Eat Takeaway, who decided to demote the Seamless brand in favor of marketing one U.S. option to consumers. Almost immediately after the acquisition closed, JET admitted it wanted to unload the company.
This took some time. Plenty of us were surprised when so-called “mealtime superapp” Wonder bought Grubhub earlier this year for $650 million. The sale itself wasn’t a surprise, but the buyer was. New York-based Wonder, helmed by successful serial entrepreneur Marc Lore, plans to use Grubhub’s nationwide presence to pad its own online ordering and delivery ambitions.
I talked to Lore shortly after the Grubhub buy. He was light on specific plans for the service, saying only that Wonder would likely keep the Grubhub name and branding as it worked to revamp the onetime industry leader.
Grubhub said that an internal audit revealed “unwavering brand preference for Seamless in New York City,” and plans to invest significant resources supporting the brand’s reemergence.
I asked Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, about Grubhub’s decision and potential next steps.
“Discounts will help,” he said, “but it's not really the way to build a strong, long term brand.” Instead, Calkins said, a sense of nostalgia could work in Seamless’s favor as long as it differentiates itself as New York’s homegrown delivery service among a sea of younger, out-of-state competition. The return to the dollar slice, however fleeting, is a coded message sent straight to the city’s restaurant lovers. It doesn’t get more New York than street pizza.
