Hey, so I wanted to do some digging and dig into some questions I had about this space. This is what I found.
https://foodtruckempire.com/coffee/fail-rates/
These are the #1 and #2 reasons given in the survey that coffee shops fail out of a survey of 232 former coffee shop owners:
Unprepared for business ownership – 128 responses
No Distinct Brand / Experience – 94 responses
So it's clear to me that the "Independent Coffee" sub vertical is struggling. Further I'd worry that "Cloosiv" (and this would be true with "Grubhub") dilutes brands if they're not already strong. The distinct brand / experience goes away when every independent coffee shop has the same app for order ahead that the others do. Instead of the "Stomping Grounds" ordering experience, you get the Cloosiv ordering experience for "Stomping Grounds".
With GrubHub, your customer has no personal experience anymore with your store, employees, or brand. Instead, you get a GrubHub employee (hopefully not too grubby) and trust that your customer experience / brand is handled by the delivery person -- something which is completely out of your control.
So one way to think of this is that the independent coffee shop market is a scourge to investment opportunities and you should pivot off coffee shops ASAP.
Another way to think of this is that the independent coffee market is the right market, but the ordering ahead app is not the solution they need. They need strong branding.