Deliveroo Expands Staff In Response To Spiking Orders

U.K.-based food on demand firm Deliveroo has announced that orders were up over 650 percent last year — despite increasing competition from bigger-name players like Uber and Amazon.

In response to the swell of demand, the firm will be taking on over 1,000 full-time employees in its business globally and has announced that it will increase its workforce by a third in the coming year.

Those new roles will be spread throughout the firm in software engineering, behavioral economics and algorithm development — most of whom will be staffed in Deliveroo’s new Cannon Street office in the U.K. capital.

“London is where I founded this company, and it’s from our headquarters here that we export our British-born technology around the world,” said Will Shu, chief executive. “That’s why we’re now on the lookout for more than 300 people to join our engineering team. When so many of the success stories in the on-demand economy have been grown from America, I am particularly proud to be doing this here in Britain.”

The revenue picture for the four-year-old firm is somewhat less clear — though recently recorded losses were in the £18.1m range in 2015, according to accounts filed at Companies House. Those losses were largely the outcome of global expansion, according to Deliveroo. And that expansion has brought growth — Deliveroo claims a 25 percent month-on-month order growth since inception, and its daily orders have grown tenfold since January 2015. New figures show a 7.5 times increase in orders in 2016 alone.

The firm has raised around $472m from investors and is the rare European “unicorn” with a valuation over $1B.  It has recently faced labor issues, as workers have made noises about unionizing and fuller compensation. Currently Deliveroo is online with 20,000 restaurants, including chains such as PizzaExpress and Gourmet Burger Kitchen.