GrubHub Seamless to shut down Salt Lake City office by end of 2014, moving functions to NYC and Chicago

Following a recent merger, and ahead of a potential IPO, online food delivery service GrubHub Seamless is looking to consolidate its U.S. operations.

The company plans to wind down its Salt Lake City office by the end of 2014, which currently houses more than 100 employees, according to a letter sent to employees by CEO Matt Maloney yesterday (full text below).

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GrubHub Seamless plans to move all of the functions from that location to its New York City and Chicago offices (NYC is where Seamless was founded, while Chicago was GrubHub’s home turf). The company will house its Java & open source development team across both offices, while its operations and care functions will be consolidated in Chicago. GrubHub Seamless also has an office in London.

“There is no sugar-coating this news; this is painful, and I’m sorry that we need to make this decision,” Maloney wrote. “It’s especially challenging because the team in Utah has built Seamless to where it is and has been integral to the company’s success. The timing is especially difficult, coming up on the holidays, but we wanted to give people as much notice as possible; once we made the decision, we didn’t want to withhold the information.”

Even though the two companies merged back in May, both the GrubHub.com and Seamless.com websites still operate independently and offer different features. GrubHub, for example, has let you track the progress of your delivery order for some time now, while Seamless only recently introduced the feature in NYC. It makes sense for GrubHub Seamless to bring its operations together to unify all of its services under a single platform.

Maloney notes that the company is offering relocation packages to “most” of its Utah team and is providing severance packages for the rest of the team. For the affected workers, there’s at least some time to process the news: The company says it won’t start transferring employees until “key quarterly milestones are met,” and workers will get “at least” three months of notice before their job gets shipped out.

Read the full text of Maloney’s letter below:

Difficult decision about Salt Lake team

It is with a heavy heart that I’m writing this e-mail to let you know
that we’ve made the difficult decision to transfer all Salt Lake City
functions to NY and Chicago over the next year and close down the
Sandy office by the end of 2014.

While I’m confident that this is the right course of action for the
company, it was an extremely difficult decision, and one that was made
with a lot of thought and consideration, because we really value all
of our team members in Salt Lake. For our tech team, we made the
decision to move to a single technology platform to optimize for
scalability and organizational focus. We will be housing these
Java/Open Source skills in NY and Chicago, where we can co-locate with
product. For operations and care, we will be consolidating the
functions in Chicago.

Fundamentally, this decision was based on efficiency of workflow and
systems – not people. Our Utah team members are very strong and as a
result, we are offering relocation packages to most of the team. We
also are offering severance to everyone not receiving relocation.

These changes will not happen overnight. Jobs will not start
transferring until key quarterly milestones are met, with the final
transfers in December 2014. Everyone impacted will be provided with at
least three months of notice as well as a package to help assist them
through this transition. However, we hope that many of our colleagues
will take us up on the opportunity to relocate to NY or Chicago, which
is available for all Care and Ops employees in good standing.

There is no sugar-coating this news; this is painful, and I’m sorry
that we need to make this decision. It’s especially challenging
because the team in Utah has built Seamless to where it is and has
been integral to the company’s success. The timing is especially
difficult- coming up on the holidays, but we wanted to give people as
much notice as possible; once we made the decision, we didn’t want to
withhold the information.

I’m sure you have questions. Today I am in Utah with Jonathan and
other senior leaders to help our team understand this decision. Your
managers will be gathering people this afternoon to talk through
whatever is on your mind. I am happy to meet or speak with anyone to
further discuss this decision or its impact on you and your team.

As difficult as this is, especially for our colleagues in Sandy, I do
want to provide reassurance regarding the bright future of GHS in NY,
Chicago, London and the field. We’re charting a course to make takeout
better and are anticipating enormous growth for our restaurants and
diners everywhere. Let’s keep focused on integrating our companies and
on driving growth for our restaurants in 2014.

Matt Maloney
CEO, GrubHub Seamless