Delivery giant: ‘We’re okay with Rishi deal’
THE boss of food delivery giant Just Eat said the Government’s scheme to give diners half-price restaurant meals will not damage his business.
Chief executive Jitse Groen said even though takeaways were excluded from Eat Out To Help Out – which gives diners a 50 per cent discount up to £10 – he is seeing little effect.
“Food delivery is rarely in direct competition with restaurant visits and that doesn’t change under these circumstances,” the Dutch boss said.
Restaurants have limited capacity because they can only seat a certain number of people, he said.
“We don’t believe that there will be a material impact on our figures because of these relief measures from the UK Government.”
Mr Groen said he was not personally upset that the Competition and Markets Authority cleared Amazon to take a stake in its UK rival, Deliveroo.
But he added: “I am an entrepreneur, I don’t particularly care who’s competing with us.
“I think the UK consumer should be upset that that happened. And that has nothing to do with Deliveroo, that has something to do with Amazon.”
Just Eat Takeaway.com processed around 257 million orders in the first six months of the year as takeaway companies supplied food to people in lockdown.
The company said that had pushed up its revenue, while it added a record number of new restaurants and customers to its system. The number of active customers increased from 44 million to 54 million compared with the same time last year. “We are in the fortunate position to benefit from continuing tailwinds,” Mr Groen said.
Just Eat Takeaway is in the process of buying US peer Grubhub for $7.3billion US (£5.6billion).