Let’s call her Chen. She owns three Asian restaurants in London, which she built in ten years of hard work. Like the vast majority of restaurateurs, she does not want to openly attack Deliveroo by giving her name. “I am like everyone else, I depend a lot on them”, she laments. In England, restaurants have been closed since November 2020, and only take-out and state aid allow it to hold out.
However, Chen asks all of his loyal customers to come and collect the meals themselves, to bypass Deliveroo and Uber Eats, the other platform that delivers his meals. The first takes 30% commission, the second, 22.5%. “At this price, I have a hard time making a profit. Besides, I’ll be frank, with them, I can’t be paid in cash and I have to declare everything. “
Chen’s case sums up the love-hate relationship that binds restaurants to Deliveroo (but also to Uber Eats, Just Eat and others). The British platform, which went public on Wednesday March 31, valued at 7.6 billion pounds (8.9 billion euros), has become absolutely essential. Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, orders placed on Deliveroo in the twelve countries where the British group is present have jumped 64%, to 4.1 billion pounds.
Junk food dominates
For a whole generation, this use is taking root deeply. According to UBS, which has studied the market of fourteen countries, those under 35 now order more than once a week on average on these delivery platforms, i.e. three times more than those over 55 years. The study aims to double the market by 2024.
Several large investment funds, including Aviva and Aberdeen Standard, are worried about the working conditions of delivery men, but also about the abysmal losses of the company
The junk food (junk food) dominates: In the UK, Nando’s, a chain that sells fried chicken, is number one for Deliveroo, while McDonald’s is for Uber Eats. The result is sometimes spectacular. For two of Chen’s restaurants, located in high-traffic areas, delivery platforms did not compensate for the closure to customers. The third, located a little more in the suburbs, now manages to record the same turnover as before the pandemic – but not the same profit, because of the commissions.
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