Stay-at-home Brits fuel Just Eat sales bonanza

JUST Eat revealed booming order numbers and sales as people stuck at home during the lockdown devoured takeaway meals.

The food delivery firm received 257m orders in the first half of 2020, up 32pc on last year.

That fuelled a 44pc increase in revenues, which rose to more than £900m for the period.

And Just Eat said it expects the sales bonanza to continue for the rest of the year, even though the Government’s new ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme does not apply to takeaways.

Just Eat Takeaway’s chief executive Jitse Groen said: ‘Food delivery is rarely in direct competition with restaurant visits, and that doesn’t change under these circumstances.’

He said that restaurants still had limited capacity because of social distancing rules, and added: ‘We don’t believe that there will be a material impact on our figures because of these relief measures from the Government.’ However, despite the surge in demand for takeaways, Just Eat still reported a loss of £143m – even bigger than its £24m first-half loss in 2019.

The company blamed this on the costs associated with its creation earlier this year, from the merger of British company Just Eat and Dutch rival Takeaway, as well as its proposed £5.8bn takeover of US competitor Grubhub.

Just Eat’s purchase of Grubhub will make it one of the biggest delivery firms in the world outside China.

On top of the rush of orders, Just Eat added a record number of new restaurants and customers to its system during the first six months of this year. The number of active customers increased from 44m to 54m and they also ordered more.

Its markets include the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, the Netherlands, France and Spain, among others.

Groen added: ‘Just Eat Takeaway is in the fortunate position to benefit from continuing tailwinds. On the back of the current momentum, we started an aggressive investment programme, which we believe will further strengthen our market positions.

‘We are convinced that our order growth will remain strong for the remainder of the year.’

Yesterday shares in Just Eat rose by 3.7pc, or 320p, to close at 8998p.