Grubhub on Thursday launched The Drop, a weekly dine-in rewards program that pays users Grubhub credit for eating at participating restaurants — the company's first product aimed squarely at in-person dining rather than delivery.

The mechanics are card-linked. Every Thursday, customers receive up to three personalized offers from nearby restaurants inside the Grubhub app. A user claims one offer, dines at the restaurant, and pays the bill with a card connected to their Grubhub account. The reward — for example, $5 off a $20 purchase — lands in the customer's Grubhub account as credit toward future orders.

Grubhub declined to detail the program's underlying economics, but the company said restaurants pay only when a diner walks in and spends. There are no upfront costs or participation fees for operators. That performance-based model lowers the barrier for chains and independents at a moment when third-party delivery commissions, which commonly run well into the double digits, remain a sore point across the industry.

The Drop also marks the first consumer-facing deployment of technology from Claim, a restaurant rewards app specializing in cash-back offers that Grubhub acquired. Until now, Grubhub had kept Claim's capabilities in reserve; The Drop converts that acquisition into a live product that bridges the dine-in and delivery sides of the business. For Grubhub, the logic is retention: a diner who earns credit at a restaurant's table has an incentive to place a delivery order later, and vice versa. For restaurants, the pitch is incremental foot traffic with no fixed cost.

The launch is deliberately limited. Select customers in New York City and Chicago will receive their first offers Thursday, with the pilot running for several weeks before The Drop opens to all Grubhub users in those two markets. Grubhub has not announced a timetable for expansion beyond New York and Chicago.

The initial restaurant roster skews toward fast-casual chains concentrated in those cities: Tacombi, Juice Generation, Chopt Creative Salad Co., Dig Inn, Dos Toros, Momoya, 7th Street Burger and Pokeworks, among others.

Grubhub is not first here. DoorDash and Uber Eats both already operate dine-in rewards programs that give customers credits redeemable on future spending, and the move follows a broader industry push by delivery platforms to capture restaurant occasions beyond the doorstep. All three players are working from the same thesis: the delivery market has matured, and the next growth lever is total share of restaurant occasions — in-person meals included — funded through loyalty economics rather than commission alone.

What separates Grubhub's approach, at least on the operator side, is the pay-on-performance structure and the absence of fees for participation, which could make The Drop an easier sell to operators wary of adding another platform cost. The open question is scale: Grubhub, owned by Wonder Group, has trailed DoorDash and Uber Eats in market share, and a two-city pilot with fast-casual partners is a narrow test of whether card-linked dine-in rewards can move behavior.

If the New York and Chicago rollout lifts both dine-in traffic and repeat delivery orders, expect Grubhub to expand The Drop quickly — and expect the program's no-upfront-cost pitch to sharpen competition with rival platforms already courting restaurant operators for the dine-in occasion.