Delivery Hero’s return to Germany after a three-year hiatus will come with an expansion beyond its original home city of Berlin, which the food and grocery delivery company left in 2018 to concentrate on growth in Asia.
Although Delivery Hero’s service is now in 50 countries, it hasn’t had a presence in Germany since selling operations in its home base to Just Eat Takeaway for $1.1 billion. That changed this spring when Delivery Hero rolled out its service in Berlin, with plans to add Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich in the fall.
“The pace of our expansion will definitely accelerate,” Artur Schreiber, Delivery Hero head of German operations, said in an interview with Reuters.
Related: Delivery Hero Buys Stake In Rival Deliveroo
Delivery Hero announced Monday (Aug. 9) it had purchased a 5.1 percent stake in British rival Deliveroo. Delivery Hero has not operated in Britain, which comprises about 50 percent of Deliveroo’s sales, since selling Hungryhouse to Just Eat in 2016. It also owns 37 percent of Spain-based Glovo.
Deliveroo operates in 12 markets, including Australia, Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy and the U.K. The company saw an 88 percent increase in food orders in the second quarter of 2021 and raised its revenue forecast for the year.
The company said that it connects customers with over 115,000 restaurants and grocers in the U.K. and 11 other countries with its fleet of 100,000 drivers.
A U.K. court ruled in June that Deliveroo’s delivery workers are self-employed, dismissing an appeal by a union seeking to represent those workers. That ruling by Britain’s Court of Appeal affirmed previous legal setbacks by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, which sought permission for collective bargaining rights on behalf of Deliveroo riders in 2017.
The decision making Deliveroo’s drivers self-employed seems to go against an earlier ruling by the U.K. Supreme Court, which found Uber drivers were entitled a minimum wage, paid time off and other benefits, leading to Uber reclassifying all of its 70,000 drivers as workers.
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