Seamless Buys Menupages, Doubles Markets

Seamless, an e-commerce and food delivery platform for local restaurants, has purchased Menupages.com from New York Media, the companies announced this morning. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Menupages brings menus and listings for more than 30,000 eateries, according to New York-based Seamless. It is one of the oldest providers of user-generated content around restaurants. Seamless hopes to parlay Menupages’ relationships with those restaurants into e-commerce partnerships.

“We’ll approach the restaurants about our ability to monetize their websites,” Jonathan Zabusky, Seamless CEO, told ClickZ News this morning. He said his team will highlight “our ability to manage restaurants’ online and digital presences.”

Seamless has been serving 7,000 merchants in 26 U.S. cities. The Menupages acquisition drives those numbers to nearly 40,000 local partners in more than 50 markets. Seamless has recently shifted its focus to mobile, and it has 300,000 downloads of its iPhone/Android app. Zabusky said 550,000 people have downloaded Menupages’ mobile app.

Menupages’ 20-odd employees will report to work at Seamless, the CEO said. “We see this not only as a content and product acquisition, but also a talent acquisition,” he said.

Today’s announcement marks Seamless latest move as it jockeys for position against chief rival Grubhub, which raised $50 million last week. Chicago-based Grubhub has primarily used the cash to buy Dotmenu, a New York firm with two food delivery sites in Campusfood and Allmenus.

When asked if the Menupages purchase was a reaction to Grubhub’s play, Zabusky answered, “Absolutely not. They are not comparable….We got the assets we wanted.”

Meanwhile, the sale suggests New York Media – which owns New York magazine – wasn’t happy with what Menupages brought to the table after purchasing the menus site only three years ago.