11 ms·

Food delivery startup Wolt raises $530M

179 points by kakoni 6y ago

klohto 6y ago
Wolt has been the only delivery service that hasn’t let me down throughout 2020. Time estimation is still the best, couriers are paid fairly well and I have not had a bad experience with one, support uses canned responses but solving is fast and without excuses.
- bittermandel 6y ago
  Exactly this. Wolt is such a great experience compared to Foodora, Uber Eats etc here in Sweden. Time estimations are most often spot on if location is no more than a few kilometers away. Recently they started supporting real pictures of dishes, rather than the fake hamburger or pizza banners in other services.
- jfim 6y ago
  > couriers are paid fairly well I wonder if that's part of their success. Costco is known for both having very sticky membership rates and relatively well paid employees for retail positions.
  - user-the-name 6y ago
    It does help to make sure that the only people who represent your business face to face are actually happy about it.
    - jfim 6y ago
      Probably. Considering that the grandparent mentioned that their service is actually reliable, I wish they were available here (South Bay, SFBA). I don't think I've even had a 50% success rate with the food delivery apps here, there's almost always an issue with the delivery. At this point it's just a toss as to whether they'll deliver according to instructions (drop the package in front of the garage), deliver to another entrance (which is further for the driver), deliver to the neighbor, call for delivery instructions, or even leave it on a fence post. It's pretty crazy to think that on top of a 30% cut that they take from the food order, the delivery fees, service fees, tip, and other arbitrary fees (I'm almost expecting a "fee collection fee" at this point), they can't even bother providing good service.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    It's almost like treating staff well is a good thing! The audacity! Anyway I hope they stay private and don't get shareholders, broadly speaking those are leeches who make the big decisions and earn big money without having to put the work in. They, and capitalist min-maxing, is part of the reason why employees are exploited, underpaid and overworked nowadays.
  - sz4kerto 6y ago
    Yes. Wolt couriers in my country often mention that they're treated much better than in their previous gig at <another delivery service>. Wolt has customer service, it just feels that they're trying to fix your problem when something doesn't work out (e.g. when you don't get the food in time, etc.).
- barrenko 6y ago
  Pretty much.
- simias 6y ago
  That's good to hear, they don't operate where I live but I'll be sure to give them a try when do. I just hope that it's not a temporary thing, I seem to recall that many of these services often start with very advantageous terms for everybody involved in order to drive adoption only to slash all that when they reach critical mass. The relative lack of regulation and collective bargaining makes it very easy to do.
- amitport 6y ago
  "couriers are paid fairly well" - Any references? From what I've heard this is not the case. Actual data would be nice.
  - user-the-name 6y ago
    Two blog posts from Wolt about it, unfortunately in Finnish: https://blog.wolt.com/fin/2019/11/01/27-kysymysta-ja-vastausta-woltista-ja-laheteista/ https://blog.wolt.com/fin/2019/11/01/27-kysymysta-ja-vastaus... https://blog.wolt.com/fin/2019/11/01/miten-ruokalahetilla-menee-ansaitseeko-han-tarpeeksi-645-lahettia-ympari-suomen-vastasi/ https://blog.wolt.com/fin/2019/11/01/miten-ruokalahetilla-me...
  - klohto 6y ago
    Talking to couriers; Wolt being a Finland company with strong morals; operating only in EU. Check their website for estimated payment. The gig market in Europe isn’t a slavery compared to US. Wolt also has higher delivery prices, which is how they can afford to do this.
    - amitport 6y ago
      Wolt is also big in Israel not only in the EU. Their reputation here is of being unfair towards both couriers and businesses. In both cases it's not about the base compensation it's about monopolistic over-controlling agreements like that restaurants are not allowed to do their own discounts and couriers get fined personally for being late (even if there was a valid reason)
- snemvalts 6y ago
  For me, their time estimation has always been terrible and dishonest - they routinely estimate 25-35 minutes for places that almost always take 70min+, on really busy days for really common orders.
baxtr 6y ago
I am amazed that against all common advice people still venture out into heavily competitive segments with strong incumbents. I am impressed and at the same time wonder how exactly they managed to convince investors. Would love to see their pitch deck.
- albertgoeswoof 6y ago
  It’s a growing market, maybe not everywhere. It’s also hard to get right- the incumbents don’t have a good business model and may collapse in short order.
- pm90 6y ago
  If there are multiple players in the market, they will either try to buy or kill the new players. Established incumbents are often not nimble enough to quickly match the newbies. If the newbies move fast and corner an important market segment, they can either replace the incumbent or be bought out by them. Both are opportunities where investors could reap big returns.
- Jnr 6y ago
  Not sure how popular it is elsewhere, but here where I live, Wolt is the most popular food delivery service by a large margin. And their service is great. For us it is like Spotify or Netflix, but for food. The rest of the EU and world probably deserve and would appreciate a service like that.
  - szatkus 6y ago
    Yup, even before pandemic I saw a lot of Wolt boxes in some cities, although they don't serve where I live.
  - emptyfile 6y ago
    I honestly thought it was EU wide, but apparently their main markets are scandinavia and eastern europe. Great service, great business model.
    - 6y ago
jack_riminton 6y ago
They went full Softbank. Curious if any startup with this amount of early funding has actually done well
- user-the-name 6y ago
  Wolt is not really a startup any longer, and it has never had access to really large amounts of money in the past.
flyinglizard 6y ago
Around here (Tel Aviv), Wolt is pretty much a monopoly on food deliveries, to the point restaurants pled for the government regulator to declare them as such. Obviously it happens because their product and UX is fantastic. Going around town during lock down seems like a scene from Mad Max where the only life that survived are Wolt couriers.
- names_are_hard 6y ago
  I do see orange couriers around as well, I think it's 10bis. But I only use Wolt. They have excellent customer service, in the rare occasion that an order I placed was delivered incorrectly (missing dish etc) they made it right very quickly and with no fuss. They also provide support in both English and Hebrew, which is is a nice benefit over the local companies that can help you in Hebrew.
  - david12345 6y ago
    Yup, the orange ones are 10bis. (Wolt also works with Cibus which caters to the hitech companies, although still most use 10bis.) The annoying thing is that you get an allowance that if you don't use it, it just goes away, so if you live outside Tel Aviv area or just don't want to go out to eat this is not useful to you, the one good thing about 'rona is that they now just give the it directly into your salary.
domatic1 6y ago
I've been using Wolt in Finland 3-4 times a week, their credit card integration with lunch benefits makes them a winner. They also have free deliveries sometimes.
- names_are_hard 6y ago
  Same here in Israel. They accept our lunch benefits card, which my employer got more generous with during WFH. So I spend about 100 usd each week with them. If I am not hungry I buy gift cards and add them to my account (the lunch money expires at the end of the week is I don't use it)
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
  Ah this begins to make sense now Tjey have a secret sauce for the finnish market. So they funded ops via captive market Still, Seems like a crazy bet by investors unless such schemes are available and exploitable elsewhere
  - user-the-name 6y ago
    Lunch benefits only launched recently.
bittermandel 6y ago
A comment from the CEO Miki Kuusi (translated from Swedish): This financing was about to make sure that we have the capacity to do long-term investments i all our countries, including Sweden, without having to do an IPO (go to the stock market). Source: https://digital.di.se/artikel/finska-wolt-tar-in-4-miljarder-kronor-i-ny-runda-eqt-gar-in-med-mer-kapital https://digital.di.se/artikel/finska-wolt-tar-in-4-miljarder...
timdaub 6y ago
sifted.eu lists Wolt as "Deeptech News". I find the word deeptech cringe. It's just tech.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  It's barely tech, it's just a delivery company.
Keyframe 6y ago
Parallel with amazon is interesting. Last mile in Europe is either non-existent or severely lacking. Wolt has successfully been bringin up this first. In that parallel, it can be considered a contender to amazon with a bottom-up approach. I've personally already seen it through wolt, with using their partners shops/storage. I was considering buying a bike for a toddler either through amazon (too long of a wait, but great choices), visiting shops locally (ain't nobody got time for that) or Wolt - we chose a model and within an hour (including assembly) toddler was already sprinting.
jb1991 6y ago
"The opportunity is to equip brick and mortar stores to compete with Amazon and Alibaba — and be better than them.” This is fantastic. It makes sense -- get the convenience of ordering online, but with the tremendously better quality of buying from a local and known source, while also supporting your local economy and peers. I try everything I can to avoid Amazon, as there is just so much garbage, counterfeit, scammed reviews, and just sheer anti-competitive crap that it's a real sore in our world.
- user-the-name 6y ago
  It is a whole new kind of thing to sit in your house, look at something you want, place the order, and then have it in your hands in 45 minutes.
  - szatkus 6y ago
    I did my first online grocery order in the middle of pandemic. I needed to wait to 6 days :D
    - insickness 6y ago
      My parents live in northern New Jersey, about an hour away from NYC. For the first two months of the pandemic, it was impossible to get them food delivery. The wait times were exactly that a week or longer. Now it's fine. But it was so frustrating at it first.
  - jeffrallen 6y ago
    Then hopefully suffer more than 45 minutes of guilt for the externalities of your decision, including the likely fact that your delivery person is not making a living wage. Why not walk to your neighborhood store and buy something from a fellow citizens in your own community? Bonus points if you manage to find a replacement for an import made by a local company.
    - user-the-name 6y ago
shapiro92 6y ago
They are competing here in Berlin, against DeliveryHero (which bought foodora and other smaller deliveries). They are both the same, except the restaurant coverage. From that I can assume they have a better b2b model. Wolt prices are higher, even though DeliveryHero prices are already higher, including the distance extra payment for me it makes it stupid to order. I understand that the drivers get paid more and it is obvious, but as a consumer to pay 30% more for a delivery, is insane. Back in the day you would get FREE delivery from restaurants and even extras. Being corona lockdown I prefer to walk and get my food. This is not a judgement against Wolt, but against this whole delivery system.
- aserafini 6y ago
  They are not competing in Berlin against Delivery Hero. Delivery Hero exited Germany and sold Foodora, Pizza.de AND Lieferheld.de to Lieferando: who promptly shut those 3 platforms down leaving only Lieferando. So now Wolt is competing in Berlin in takeaway food market against only Lieferando, and seeing as they only started last year, Google Trends suggests they are getting a reasonable % of the market already, somewhere around 12% of Berlin online food delivery: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=DE-BE&q=lieferando,wolt https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=DE-BE&q=liefera...
  - avh02 6y ago
    also that lieferando delivers a pathetic user experience (too many bugs and poor UX decisions to list here). I would love to see Wolt take over the Berlin/German market.
  - FlyingSnake 6y ago
    DeliveryHero's primary market is S.E. Asia, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc, and they don't have any sales in Berlin. Also Wolt don't even operate outside the Kreuzkölln bubble, I've never heard of it till now, and I don't understand why people are fawning over Wolt operating in Berlin.
    - magnusmundus 6y ago
avipars 6y ago
The next uber? only time will tell
emptyfile 6y ago
Interesting, good luck to them. In my country at least (Croatia) Wolt seems to stand out from the rest by competing on quality of service and delivery instead of price, and slowly during this year they have won me over. I'll gladly pay something extra to support a business model I trust and which just works better.
mxschmitt 6y ago
Cool, excited how the market will grow in Germany/Berlin. I really prefer Wolt over Lieferando in Germany. The user experience is way nicer, you have pictures of the meals which you want to order. The only thing which I miss is that you can't filter directly for vegan/vegetarian meals.
- shafyy 6y ago
  I really want to use Wolt in Berlin, but their delivery area just ends literally 50m north of where I live (Neukölln). Hope they extend it soon :-)
  - dracyr 6y ago
    I think they extended it fairly recently, I also live in Neukölln and fell outside of the delivery area before Christmas at least. But I did a quick check after reading the article, and now everything seems to be working.
    - shafyy 6y ago
      Luck you. I checked here (https://wolt.com/en/discovery https://wolt.com/en/discovery) and they still don't seem to deliver (Richardkiez). Maybe I need to check in the app?
- olkki 6y ago
  Wolt employee here - would be happy to help you with the Vegan/Vegetarian filter. We have a Vegan category of venues, and you can directly search for vegan/vegetarian restaurants as well. Is the issue in particular dishes?
  - mxschmitt 6y ago
    I mostly struggle, when I have a specific restaurant open, some restaurants have an own category for that (vegan/vegetarian) and some add it as a text to the meal description. For some you have to choose e.g. a vegetarian patty to make a burger vegetarian - I'm confused with this mostly. A feature which i would really like is a list of all the meals which I can order nearby restaurant independent and filter them e.g. by vegetarian/vegan ones to discover new restaurants.
artemonster 6y ago
I couldn't find any information what differentiates them from any other similar service?
- mxschmitt 6y ago
  Better UX/UI afaik
  - rasse 6y ago
    Absolutely! And they have a truly excellent customer service and reply within minutes. If you have any problems with your order (be it related to the delivery time/estimate or the product itself), they are quick to compensate (usually with credits or a delivery voucher). On the other hand, rumor has it, their commission is around 30 % of all sales in addition to the delivery charged directly from the customer.
vages 6y ago
In Oslo, Norway, I prefer Foodora to Wolt. Foodora's workers unionized and went on strike about a year ago in order to have sick leave. Meanwhile, Wolt hires their cyclists as independent consultants, circumventing the Norwegian labor laws.
fredsted 6y ago
Here in Denmark, Wolt started taking off recently, and these days you see Wolt couriers delivering food constantly. Over the last 10 years, I've several hundred orders on Just-Eat, but due to the improved UX of the Wolt app, I've now switched to it completely.
- tokai 6y ago
  The UX might be good. But their business would not work if they stopped using young foreigners on tourist visas. Like Uber their business model works due to taking local laws lightly.
  - 4gotunameagain 6y ago
    B..but they are "partners" /s
  - hogFeast 6y ago
    I am not really sure why people think the model is economic. The fixed costs are huge, it is either difficult or impossible to actually offset a living wage to the delivery person if they are only fulfilling one order at a time. The only way this model works now is by hosing down restaurants (in many places right now, there is literally no choice for restaurants but to make delivery apps money). It is true, lots of these restaurants got themselves into this mess by not realising how valuable deliveries were...but...I don't understand how this is long-term viable. Paying someone EUR10 to deliver EUR20 of food makes no sense for most customers.
    - user-the-name 6y ago
      Couriers definitely are not only fulfilling one order at a time. As you correctly surmise, that would not be possible to do economically. Orders are routed so that couriers pick up multiple orders, and pickups and dropoffs can be interleaved to keep multiple orders live at all times.
  - user-the-name 6y ago
    Local laws are most definitely not taken lightly. Labour legislation in Finland, the initial market, is very strict.
sorenjan 6y ago
I walk to the restaurant and get the food myself. I refuse to take part in this gig economy with modern exploited day laborers, and big international companies dipping in to the already small margins of local businesses.
- pasiaj 6y ago
  I sympathise with what you're saying. As a Nordic person, it does feel like the gig economy is undoing a hundred years worth of advancements in employee well-being. Still, enabling day labor is beneficial in multitude of ways. The problems introduced by gig economy need to be solved at governmental level. Social safety nets and UBI are good tools for that. Combining modern regulation with sharing economy would allow the society to enjoy the multitude of benefits of gig economy without sacrificing anyones well-being.
- Symbiote 6y ago
  I do the same. It's odd when I walk or cycle past 20 Wolt people waiting outside the restaurants and takeaways on Nørrebrogade. I feel like the only person not attached to an insulated blue box.
rkul 6y ago
Loving Wolt. Btw, try tapping on the time estimate circle after placing an order. What's the highest score you ever got? :)
woeirua 6y ago
I can't help but think that companies like this that are planning on the disruption in consumption habits due to Covid continuing into the subsequent years are going to get burned badly when everyone abruptly starts going out again. I think a lot of people have realized that dining and even going to the grocery store is a lot more about the social aspect than they originally believed.
kakoni 6y ago
One thing to note about courier wages/payments. In Finland wolt started initally with more generous payments to the couriers and then gradually started to bring them down.
mandeepj 6y ago
"But Wolt won’t be putting Amazon out of business just yet. It needs to crack grocery delivery first." Ha! Son - fly little slow. You are standing on a thin crust provided by your investors. Have a quick call with Instacart to get a check on reality.

179 points by kakoni 6y ago

Wolt has been the only delivery service that hasn’t let me down throughout 2020. Time estimation is still the best, couriers are paid fairly well and I have not had a bad experience with one, support uses canned responses but solving is fast and without excuses.

bittermandel 6y ago
Exactly this. Wolt is such a great experience compared to Foodora, Uber Eats etc here in Sweden. Time estimations are most often spot on if location is no more than a few kilometers away. Recently they started supporting real pictures of dishes, rather than the fake hamburger or pizza banners in other services.
jfim 6y ago
> couriers are paid fairly well I wonder if that's part of their success. Costco is known for both having very sticky membership rates and relatively well paid employees for retail positions.
- user-the-name 6y ago
  It does help to make sure that the only people who represent your business face to face are actually happy about it.
  - jfim 6y ago
    Probably. Considering that the grandparent mentioned that their service is actually reliable, I wish they were available here (South Bay, SFBA). I don't think I've even had a 50% success rate with the food delivery apps here, there's almost always an issue with the delivery. At this point it's just a toss as to whether they'll deliver according to instructions (drop the package in front of the garage), deliver to another entrance (which is further for the driver), deliver to the neighbor, call for delivery instructions, or even leave it on a fence post. It's pretty crazy to think that on top of a 30% cut that they take from the food order, the delivery fees, service fees, tip, and other arbitrary fees (I'm almost expecting a "fee collection fee" at this point), they can't even bother providing good service.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  It's almost like treating staff well is a good thing! The audacity! Anyway I hope they stay private and don't get shareholders, broadly speaking those are leeches who make the big decisions and earn big money without having to put the work in. They, and capitalist min-maxing, is part of the reason why employees are exploited, underpaid and overworked nowadays.
- sz4kerto 6y ago
  Yes. Wolt couriers in my country often mention that they're treated much better than in their previous gig at <another delivery service>. Wolt has customer service, it just feels that they're trying to fix your problem when something doesn't work out (e.g. when you don't get the food in time, etc.).
barrenko 6y ago
Pretty much.
simias 6y ago
That's good to hear, they don't operate where I live but I'll be sure to give them a try when do. I just hope that it's not a temporary thing, I seem to recall that many of these services often start with very advantageous terms for everybody involved in order to drive adoption only to slash all that when they reach critical mass. The relative lack of regulation and collective bargaining makes it very easy to do.
amitport 6y ago
"couriers are paid fairly well" - Any references? From what I've heard this is not the case. Actual data would be nice.
- user-the-name 6y ago
  Two blog posts from Wolt about it, unfortunately in Finnish: https://blog.wolt.com/fin/2019/11/01/27-kysymysta-ja-vastausta-woltista-ja-laheteista/ https://blog.wolt.com/fin/2019/11/01/27-kysymysta-ja-vastaus... https://blog.wolt.com/fin/2019/11/01/miten-ruokalahetilla-menee-ansaitseeko-han-tarpeeksi-645-lahettia-ympari-suomen-vastasi/ https://blog.wolt.com/fin/2019/11/01/miten-ruokalahetilla-me...
- klohto 6y ago
  Talking to couriers; Wolt being a Finland company with strong morals; operating only in EU. Check their website for estimated payment. The gig market in Europe isn’t a slavery compared to US. Wolt also has higher delivery prices, which is how they can afford to do this.
  - amitport 6y ago
    Wolt is also big in Israel not only in the EU. Their reputation here is of being unfair towards both couriers and businesses. In both cases it's not about the base compensation it's about monopolistic over-controlling agreements like that restaurants are not allowed to do their own discounts and couriers get fined personally for being late (even if there was a valid reason)
snemvalts 6y ago
For me, their time estimation has always been terrible and dishonest - they routinely estimate 25-35 minutes for places that almost always take 70min+, on really busy days for really common orders.

baxtr 6y ago

I am amazed that against all common advice people still venture out into heavily competitive segments with strong incumbents. I am impressed and at the same time wonder how exactly they managed to convince investors. Would love to see their pitch deck.

albertgoeswoof 6y ago
It’s a growing market, maybe not everywhere. It’s also hard to get right- the incumbents don’t have a good business model and may collapse in short order.
pm90 6y ago
If there are multiple players in the market, they will either try to buy or kill the new players. Established incumbents are often not nimble enough to quickly match the newbies. If the newbies move fast and corner an important market segment, they can either replace the incumbent or be bought out by them. Both are opportunities where investors could reap big returns.
Jnr 6y ago
Not sure how popular it is elsewhere, but here where I live, Wolt is the most popular food delivery service by a large margin. And their service is great. For us it is like Spotify or Netflix, but for food. The rest of the EU and world probably deserve and would appreciate a service like that.
- szatkus 6y ago
  Yup, even before pandemic I saw a lot of Wolt boxes in some cities, although they don't serve where I live.
- emptyfile 6y ago
  I honestly thought it was EU wide, but apparently their main markets are scandinavia and eastern europe. Great service, great business model.
  - 6y ago

jack_riminton 6y ago

They went full Softbank. Curious if any startup with this amount of early funding has actually done well

user-the-name 6y ago
Wolt is not really a startup any longer, and it has never had access to really large amounts of money in the past.

flyinglizard 6y ago

Around here (Tel Aviv), Wolt is pretty much a monopoly on food deliveries, to the point restaurants pled for the government regulator to declare them as such. Obviously it happens because their product and UX is fantastic. Going around town during lock down seems like a scene from Mad Max where the only life that survived are Wolt couriers.

names_are_hard 6y ago
I do see orange couriers around as well, I think it's 10bis. But I only use Wolt. They have excellent customer service, in the rare occasion that an order I placed was delivered incorrectly (missing dish etc) they made it right very quickly and with no fuss. They also provide support in both English and Hebrew, which is is a nice benefit over the local companies that can help you in Hebrew.
- david12345 6y ago
  Yup, the orange ones are 10bis. (Wolt also works with Cibus which caters to the hitech companies, although still most use 10bis.) The annoying thing is that you get an allowance that if you don't use it, it just goes away, so if you live outside Tel Aviv area or just don't want to go out to eat this is not useful to you, the one good thing about 'rona is that they now just give the it directly into your salary.

domatic1 6y ago

I've been using Wolt in Finland 3-4 times a week, their credit card integration with lunch benefits makes them a winner. They also have free deliveries sometimes.

names_are_hard 6y ago
Same here in Israel. They accept our lunch benefits card, which my employer got more generous with during WFH. So I spend about 100 usd each week with them. If I am not hungry I buy gift cards and add them to my account (the lunch money expires at the end of the week is I don't use it)
IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
Ah this begins to make sense now Tjey have a secret sauce for the finnish market. So they funded ops via captive market Still, Seems like a crazy bet by investors unless such schemes are available and exploitable elsewhere
- user-the-name 6y ago
  Lunch benefits only launched recently.

bittermandel 6y ago

A comment from the CEO Miki Kuusi (translated from Swedish): This financing was about to make sure that we have the capacity to do long-term investments i all our countries, including Sweden, without having to do an IPO (go to the stock market). Source: https://digital.di.se/artikel/finska-wolt-tar-in-4-miljarder-kronor-i-ny-runda-eqt-gar-in-med-mer-kapital https://digital.di.se/artikel/finska-wolt-tar-in-4-miljarder...

timdaub 6y ago

sifted.eu lists Wolt as "Deeptech News". I find the word deeptech cringe. It's just tech.

mrweasel 6y ago
It's barely tech, it's just a delivery company.

Keyframe 6y ago

Parallel with amazon is interesting. Last mile in Europe is either non-existent or severely lacking. Wolt has successfully been bringin up this first. In that parallel, it can be considered a contender to amazon with a bottom-up approach. I've personally already seen it through wolt, with using their partners shops/storage. I was considering buying a bike for a toddler either through amazon (too long of a wait, but great choices), visiting shops locally (ain't nobody got time for that) or Wolt - we chose a model and within an hour (including assembly) toddler was already sprinting.

jb1991 6y ago

"The opportunity is to equip brick and mortar stores to compete with Amazon and Alibaba — and be better than them.” This is fantastic. It makes sense -- get the convenience of ordering online, but with the tremendously better quality of buying from a local and known source, while also supporting your local economy and peers. I try everything I can to avoid Amazon, as there is just so much garbage, counterfeit, scammed reviews, and just sheer anti-competitive crap that it's a real sore in our world.

user-the-name 6y ago
It is a whole new kind of thing to sit in your house, look at something you want, place the order, and then have it in your hands in 45 minutes.
- szatkus 6y ago
  I did my first online grocery order in the middle of pandemic. I needed to wait to 6 days :D
  - insickness 6y ago
    My parents live in northern New Jersey, about an hour away from NYC. For the first two months of the pandemic, it was impossible to get them food delivery. The wait times were exactly that a week or longer. Now it's fine. But it was so frustrating at it first.
- jeffrallen 6y ago
  Then hopefully suffer more than 45 minutes of guilt for the externalities of your decision, including the likely fact that your delivery person is not making a living wage. Why not walk to your neighborhood store and buy something from a fellow citizens in your own community? Bonus points if you manage to find a replacement for an import made by a local company.
  - user-the-name 6y ago

shapiro92 6y ago

They are competing here in Berlin, against DeliveryHero (which bought foodora and other smaller deliveries). They are both the same, except the restaurant coverage. From that I can assume they have a better b2b model. Wolt prices are higher, even though DeliveryHero prices are already higher, including the distance extra payment for me it makes it stupid to order. I understand that the drivers get paid more and it is obvious, but as a consumer to pay 30% more for a delivery, is insane. Back in the day you would get FREE delivery from restaurants and even extras. Being corona lockdown I prefer to walk and get my food. This is not a judgement against Wolt, but against this whole delivery system.

aserafini 6y ago
They are not competing in Berlin against Delivery Hero. Delivery Hero exited Germany and sold Foodora, Pizza.de AND Lieferheld.de to Lieferando: who promptly shut those 3 platforms down leaving only Lieferando. So now Wolt is competing in Berlin in takeaway food market against only Lieferando, and seeing as they only started last year, Google Trends suggests they are getting a reasonable % of the market already, somewhere around 12% of Berlin online food delivery: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=DE-BE&q=lieferando,wolt https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=DE-BE&q=liefera...
- avh02 6y ago
  also that lieferando delivers a pathetic user experience (too many bugs and poor UX decisions to list here). I would love to see Wolt take over the Berlin/German market.
- FlyingSnake 6y ago
  DeliveryHero's primary market is S.E. Asia, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc, and they don't have any sales in Berlin. Also Wolt don't even operate outside the Kreuzkölln bubble, I've never heard of it till now, and I don't understand why people are fawning over Wolt operating in Berlin.
  - magnusmundus 6y ago

avipars 6y ago

The next uber? only time will tell

emptyfile 6y ago

Interesting, good luck to them. In my country at least (Croatia) Wolt seems to stand out from the rest by competing on quality of service and delivery instead of price, and slowly during this year they have won me over. I'll gladly pay something extra to support a business model I trust and which just works better.

mxschmitt 6y ago

Cool, excited how the market will grow in Germany/Berlin. I really prefer Wolt over Lieferando in Germany. The user experience is way nicer, you have pictures of the meals which you want to order. The only thing which I miss is that you can't filter directly for vegan/vegetarian meals.

shafyy 6y ago
I really want to use Wolt in Berlin, but their delivery area just ends literally 50m north of where I live (Neukölln). Hope they extend it soon :-)
- dracyr 6y ago
  I think they extended it fairly recently, I also live in Neukölln and fell outside of the delivery area before Christmas at least. But I did a quick check after reading the article, and now everything seems to be working.
  - shafyy 6y ago
    Luck you. I checked here (https://wolt.com/en/discovery https://wolt.com/en/discovery) and they still don't seem to deliver (Richardkiez). Maybe I need to check in the app?
olkki 6y ago
Wolt employee here - would be happy to help you with the Vegan/Vegetarian filter. We have a Vegan category of venues, and you can directly search for vegan/vegetarian restaurants as well. Is the issue in particular dishes?
- mxschmitt 6y ago
  I mostly struggle, when I have a specific restaurant open, some restaurants have an own category for that (vegan/vegetarian) and some add it as a text to the meal description. For some you have to choose e.g. a vegetarian patty to make a burger vegetarian - I'm confused with this mostly. A feature which i would really like is a list of all the meals which I can order nearby restaurant independent and filter them e.g. by vegetarian/vegan ones to discover new restaurants.

artemonster 6y ago

I couldn't find any information what differentiates them from any other similar service?

mxschmitt 6y ago
Better UX/UI afaik
- rasse 6y ago
  Absolutely! And they have a truly excellent customer service and reply within minutes. If you have any problems with your order (be it related to the delivery time/estimate or the product itself), they are quick to compensate (usually with credits or a delivery voucher). On the other hand, rumor has it, their commission is around 30 % of all sales in addition to the delivery charged directly from the customer.

vages 6y ago

In Oslo, Norway, I prefer Foodora to Wolt. Foodora's workers unionized and went on strike about a year ago in order to have sick leave. Meanwhile, Wolt hires their cyclists as independent consultants, circumventing the Norwegian labor laws.

fredsted 6y ago

Here in Denmark, Wolt started taking off recently, and these days you see Wolt couriers delivering food constantly. Over the last 10 years, I've several hundred orders on Just-Eat, but due to the improved UX of the Wolt app, I've now switched to it completely.

tokai 6y ago
The UX might be good. But their business would not work if they stopped using young foreigners on tourist visas. Like Uber their business model works due to taking local laws lightly.
- 4gotunameagain 6y ago
  B..but they are "partners" /s
- hogFeast 6y ago
  I am not really sure why people think the model is economic. The fixed costs are huge, it is either difficult or impossible to actually offset a living wage to the delivery person if they are only fulfilling one order at a time. The only way this model works now is by hosing down restaurants (in many places right now, there is literally no choice for restaurants but to make delivery apps money). It is true, lots of these restaurants got themselves into this mess by not realising how valuable deliveries were...but...I don't understand how this is long-term viable. Paying someone EUR10 to deliver EUR20 of food makes no sense for most customers.
  - user-the-name 6y ago
    Couriers definitely are not only fulfilling one order at a time. As you correctly surmise, that would not be possible to do economically. Orders are routed so that couriers pick up multiple orders, and pickups and dropoffs can be interleaved to keep multiple orders live at all times.
- user-the-name 6y ago
  Local laws are most definitely not taken lightly. Labour legislation in Finland, the initial market, is very strict.

sorenjan 6y ago

I walk to the restaurant and get the food myself. I refuse to take part in this gig economy with modern exploited day laborers, and big international companies dipping in to the already small margins of local businesses.

pasiaj 6y ago
I sympathise with what you're saying. As a Nordic person, it does feel like the gig economy is undoing a hundred years worth of advancements in employee well-being. Still, enabling day labor is beneficial in multitude of ways. The problems introduced by gig economy need to be solved at governmental level. Social safety nets and UBI are good tools for that. Combining modern regulation with sharing economy would allow the society to enjoy the multitude of benefits of gig economy without sacrificing anyones well-being.
Symbiote 6y ago
I do the same. It's odd when I walk or cycle past 20 Wolt people waiting outside the restaurants and takeaways on Nørrebrogade. I feel like the only person not attached to an insulated blue box.

rkul 6y ago

Loving Wolt. Btw, try tapping on the time estimate circle after placing an order. What's the highest score you ever got? :)

woeirua 6y ago

I can't help but think that companies like this that are planning on the disruption in consumption habits due to Covid continuing into the subsequent years are going to get burned badly when everyone abruptly starts going out again. I think a lot of people have realized that dining and even going to the grocery store is a lot more about the social aspect than they originally believed.

kakoni 6y ago

One thing to note about courier wages/payments. In Finland wolt started initally with more generous payments to the couriers and then gradually started to bring them down.

mandeepj 6y ago

"But Wolt won’t be putting Amazon out of business just yet. It needs to crack grocery delivery first." Ha! Son - fly little slow. You are standing on a thin crust provided by your investors. Have a quick call with Instacart to get a check on reality.