Expansion strategy Takeaway.com delays profits

Meal delivery service Takeaway.com has seen its turnover grow by 42 % to 110.2 million euro in the first half of the year. The company still does not make profit, but the loss is shrinking.

Germany catching up to the Netherlands

An increase in the number of orders and in commissions that restaurants have to pay Takeaway.com lead the meal delivery service to strong growth in the first half of 2018. Turnover improved by 42%, mainly due to strong growth in Germany (+ 45 %). Germany will soon overtake the Netherlands as the largest market for the Dutch company.

In France however, the activities of the group were stopped in February. Meanwhile, the delivery service acquired BG menu in Bulgaria as well as Romanian Olivera and Foodarena (the Swiss branch of Delivery Hero). The acquisition of Israeli 10bis for 135 million euro means that Takeaway.com now expands into business-to-business deliveries.

Profit expected in two to three years

Large investments prevented the group from achieving a profit: the adjusted gross operating result amounted to -6.1 million euro and net loss was 14.7 million euro, which was already considerably better than the -21.8 million euro last year. CEO Jitse Groen is not in a hurry to see his company become profitable: he predicts to make a profit within two to three years.

In the delivery market, there is a fierce competition between services such as Deliveroo, UberEats, Foodora and Takeaway.com. Until now, the first three only supplied their own couriers, while Takeaway.com had the restaurants delivered to them. More and more the different players are competing on each other’s ground: Takeaway.com has now launched Scoober, which takes care of the deliveries itself. 2.3 % of the orders already went through that service in the past six months.