Deliveroo pulls out of Germany

Deliveroo, one of Europe’s largest, best-funded and fastest-growing food delivery startups, has announced that it will be pulling out of Germany this week.

This morning, Deliveroo emailed German customers informing them that its food delivery service will cease from Friday.

The company said that it was not able to offer customers, riders or restaurants the kind of service it hoped to — and so would be focusing on other markets. Deliveroo is also present in the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy.

“At Deliveroo we’re on a mission to create the very best food delivery service in the world, and at the heart of this is offering a service that works brilliantly for our customers, riders and restaurants. Where we cannot do this to the level that we expect and you deserve, we won’t operate. Therefore, Deliveroo’s focus will now be on growing our operations in other markets around the world.”

Competition in Germany has always been stiff. Several Deliveroo competitors were founded in Berlin, including Delivery Hero in 2011, Foodpanda in 2012 (now owned by Delivery Hero) and Foodora in 2014 (now owned by Dutch company Takeaway.com).

In 2018, Delivery Hero itself pulled out of the German market (despite remaining headquartered in Berlin) and sold its German operations to Takeaway.com.

When Deliveroo ceases to operate in Germany on Friday, Takeaway.com’s Lieferando.de will have the lion’s share of the market — although Deliveroo said it is not ruling out returning to the market in the future (as unlikely as that seems).

A Deliveroo spokesperson said: “We want to thank all of the riders and restaurants who worked with Deliveroo in Germany, as well our wonderful customers. It has been an honour to serve so many people amazing food from Germany’s many great restaurants and to work with so many brilliant, hard-working riders.”