UK’s Deliveroo Will End Operations In Germany

Deliveroo, the British food delivery service, said it will end its operations in Germany and shift its focus to other markets.

Reuters reported that the announcement came on Friday (August 9) that the company would exit that market. The company has been backed by Amazon, where the eCommerce giant invested $575 million in Deliveroo earlier in the year.

In terms of its presence in Germany, the company has had 1,100 riders spread across five cities, with an overall employee count of 100.

As noted by Reuters, the shift could smooth the competitive landscape for rivals such as Takeaway.com, a Dutch firm that agreed last year to buy the German operations of another food delivery firm, Delivery Hero.

Deliveroo will bring its focus to other markets across Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. The global food delivery market is rumored to be worth as much as $100 billion.

As quoted by the newswire, a Deliveroo spokesman said that “we’ve decided to focus on other markets,” but that a return to Germany could be in the cards.

The European competitive arena for food delivery has recently been marked by a $10 billion deal between Takeaway.com and the U.K.’s Just Eat. The merger of the two will create a food delivery firm that would be among the market leaders in Britain, Germany and other countries such as Canada. The company will be called Just Eat Takeaway.

Just Eat, as reported in this space at the end of last month, has undergone a number of changes in recent months, including the acquisition of restaurant tech companies City Pantry, Flyt and Practi. After merging its customer and restaurant operation teams earlier in July, Just Eat went through a round of layoffs in the U.K. and Ireland to eliminate redundancies.

Upon its exit from Germany, Deliveroo has said that “appropriate compensation and goodwill packages” would be extended to employees and riders.