After nearly 12 years, Just Eat Takeaway will close all operations in New Zealand in the coming weeks. This “difficult decision” to discontinue its operations in the country is to expand its growth. The company says this is to “drive efficiencies and focus on building strong, sustainable, profitable positions.”
The food platform says the size of the Menulog platform in New Zealand represents a small part of the Just Eat Takeaway business. Menulog is a subsidiary of Just Eat. The company says it is “insufficient to maintain a healthy business in this market.”
From May 16, the Menulog delivery platform will be inactive. The business confirms support will be provided to the “limited number of employees” directly impacted by this decision.
A spokesperson of Menulog has told the New Zealand Herald that self-employed independent couriers on contract will still receive their four-week payment. This is only applicable to drivers who completed deliveries in New Zealand for Just Eat in the last three months.
Details of its financial status of Menulog remain undisclosed, as the impact on the company and Southern Europe and Australia segment is “immaterial.”
Those with unused vouchers have been urged to either use them or return them for reimbursement during the transition period.
Financial outlook
Last year, there was a “significant improvement” in Just Eat Takeaway’s financial books. It generated an adjusted EBITDA of $ 343 million compared with $ 20 million in 2022. The leap in profitability resulted in the company reaching the “critical milestone of returning to positive free cash flow” in the second half of 2023.
The strong momentum was particularly shown in the UK and Ireland. The adjusted EBITDA margin rapidly approached a similar level as that of Northern Europe.
The business was on a high, in a “strong position,” and the goal was to “capture further improvement to our topline performance” in 2024.
Food delivery market size
According to HTF Market Intelligence, the food delivery market will increase by $642 billion at a CAGR of 11.3% by 2029.
The research data company says four factors contribute to the rapid growth of online food delivery markets:
- People have access to smart devices.
- Urbanization.
- Number of working professions increased.
- More restaurants have opened.
Just Eat Takeawy.com future
Headquartered in Amsterdam, Just Eat Takeaway has nearly 700,000 connected partners offering consumers access to deliveries from restaurants and retail.
Just Eat Takeaway has rapidly grown in the last few years, delivering online food to marketplaces in Australia, the UK, the US, Canada, and Germany.
It’s now focusing on faster and more efficient deliveries.
NOW READ: Just Eat makes ordering faster with new AI assistant
About the author
Mia is a multi-award-winning journalist. She has more than 14 years of experience in mainstream media. She's covered many historic moments that happened in Africa and internationally. She has a strong focus on human interest stories, to bring her readers and viewers closer to the topics at hand.
