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Deliveroo is leaving Australia
- gorokan 4y agoDeliveroo goes into voluntary administration in Australia. Their website and Google Ads are still active.
- gonzo41 4y agoAustralia is not a terrible place to run a business, sure there's tax, but people love take out. I wonder if it was workers right's and conditions got them in the end. If it was it kind of points to fundamental thinness in their margins.
- dbetteridge 4y agohttps://www.afr.com/technology/gig-economy-laws-coming-in-first-half-of-2023-20220904-p5bf9k https://www.afr.com/technology/gig-economy-laws-coming-in-fi... New laws coming in 2023 that probably made the 'gig' part more like 'casual worker' which means they pay extra per hour worked, minimum 3 hours paid per 'shift/callout'. > “A delivery rider on a bike who is at the mercy of an algorithm on their phone is not the same as a genuinely empowered contractor who runs their own small business,”
- ghufran_syed 4y agoI wonder if the people who just lost their jobs feel relieved that their exploitation has ended…?
- eecc 4y ago
- dbetteridge 4y agoirrelevant, if the business is unsustainable following the laws and practices of Australia then it should not exist. We have a social safety net and a hot job market, there will be other better employers available.
- gonzo41 4y agoI actually just don't think there's a market for this to exist as a decentralized company that treats both sides as a customer. I think it could work in Australia if business had more of a share of the delivery pie, then I think it could be profitable. Kind of if KFC and Mcdonalds and a few others pooled costs on a integrated delivery solution. I would bet that deliveroo mined the restaurants for too much money, and when demand dropped they then that spiraled out to effect customer costs. And now they don't exist!
- dbetteridge 4y agoYeah I would have to agree, by their nature most of these outfits rely on VC funding + underpaid workers or tipping. Some kind of Co-op arrangement where delivery drivers band together and offer a platform that companies can subscribe too could also work (assuming a simple enough backend system).
- gonzo41 4y agoI would structure it so it's a separate company that offer's delivery. So workers are employed under one entity, and restaurants integrate. But this is a very local style solution. The Tech company part of this could probably be providing the enabling platform. But the VC money would never support essentially a coop style model because it would never return big enough.
- kiawe_fire 4y agoDoesn’t a hot job market and social safety net equally provide workers freedom to choose an alternative to the supposedly exploitative gig without regulation? Generally, if a job market is hot, it means employers are incentivized to not be jerks and try to lure workers to them with perks, thereby giving plenty of alternatives to those who feel exploited. And given a social safety net, wouldn’t one not feel “stuck” in said job as a necessity to live? If someone still chooses something “exploitative”, then perhaps there is a benefit to that job that makes it worth while in a way that regulators (and others privileged enough not work said job) don’t see themselves.
- ehnto 4y agoIf you capitulate to every crying wolf whenever regulations came about, you would end up with exploited workers.
- jsmeaton 4y agoOr other businesses will be able to compete in the labour market with real wages once the exploiters are no longer able to profit off desperation. We have minimum wage laws for a reason and skirting around them and claiming that the “contractors” should be thankful for their meagre share is nonsense.
- rippercushions 4y agoNo worries mate: Deliveroo was a distant fourth in the market, so their riders can continue to be exploited by any of Uber Eats, Menulog and Doordash.
- altacc 4y agoPerhaps child workers also feel cheated when the sweatshop they work at is closed down when pressure forces a client to stop using that factory but that isn't a valid reason to keep using child labour. Most companies will settle on the lowest level of worker compensation, benefits, security & support that they can get away with. Worker choice is an illusion when most jobs reach these low levels and it is up to governments to raise the level. While the loss of these bad jobs is a short term pain to those affected, the long term effects of working bad jobs is much worse. People aren't working there because they love the low pay, inconsistent hours and lack of security, they're working there because better options aren't available. It is the responsibility of governments to ensure companies provide jobs that pay a livable wage and reasonable benefits.
- TheHappyOddish 4y agoArchive link: https://archive.ph/11jOo https://archive.ph/11jOo
- waste_monk 4y agoToo many delivery people were getting picked off by dropbears...
- AussieWog93 4y ago>I wonder if it was workers right's and conditions got them in the end. As someone who runs a business down under, this is just a pretty poor excuse. Well compensated workers mean well compensated customers, and even our high unskilled wages don't come close to the output of a well managed worker.
- gonzo41 4y agoYes I concur. I wasn't lamenting our good laws. I very much hope this style of business folds. Especially when it erodes the already fragile social contract of workers. Ie fair work fair pay
- ehnto 4y ago> Well compensated workers mean well compensated customers Exactly, a fat middle class means more economic activity, and services are at a higher standard overall because people can afford it. The free market concept applied to labor is a farce, because people have to work to live, people can't vote with their wallets and are forced to take whatever's offered to them. Regulation is required, because history shows us that an entirely free labour market will lead to a race to the bottom, resulting in exploitation and a cheapening of services as no one has money to spend.
- OccamsMirror 4y agoToo much competition. Uber Eats and DoorDash run this space. They couldn't keep up.
- Gunnerhead 4y agoWhich of those two is the more popular one, would you say?
- relyks 4y agoWhat are the alternatives in Australia? This sounds like their competition beat them
- andrewstuart 4y agoIncorrect post deleted.
- SargeDebian 4y agoIf you’re a multinational company with local limited liability entities, “bankruptcy” sounds like a choice. If you’re subsidizing operations across countries with VC money, it just means you stopped the flow of money. You may even get away with leaving some debt/payables in the entity. Happy to hear otherwise, I’m not a bankruptcy lawyer.
- MikePlacid 4y agoBankruptcy can be avoided with money. But: > In Australia, we have concluded that achieving a sustainable position of leadership in the market is not possible without a disproportionate level of investment which would have highly uncertain returns.
- sjtgraham 4y agoIt doesn't say they're bankrupt. It doesn't even say they're insolvent. All it says is that they're ceasing operations and an administrator has been appointed to presumably wind the company down in an orderly fashion.
- esja 4y agoThat annoyed me too. Still, it's to be expected. Companies with this sort of business model are dishonest at their core.
- threeseed 4y agoNot surprising. Deliveroo cared too much about end-users: 1. Uber switched to delivering multiple orders per driver trip and then charging extra if you wanted priority. I imagine this would've helped their unit economics immensely and allowed drivers to make more money. 2. Deliveroo had a functioning customer service who would often refund orders and give discounts in order to deliver a great experience. Uber deliberately didn't. No support = more profit. 3. Uber would charge multiple tiers of fees. Service fee. Delivery fee. Eventually they were charging twice as much on top of the order as Deliveroo and it took a while for them to do the same. And then Uber One subscription likely did them in the end. The ability to save on both home delivery and trips was pretty compelling.
- geeostation 4y agodidnt use deliveroo at all as i didnt know they were this good
- Arcanum-XIII 4y agoHere in Belgium it's quite the opposite: got unlucky with 3 bad meal in a row, was told by customer support that I exceeded some threshold and that they would not refund those (and nothing else for x months). So missing part of the order, incomplete meal (burger with only the meat and bread), problematic situation (found a piece of glasses in one meal...): no action on their end - because you know, as the customer it's your fault. So no, they don't care here in Belgium. At all. But none care. Also Uber and Deliveroo cost quite often way more than local platform.
- caenorst 4y agoBeyond Uber not refunding you (which is not nice). I would also blame the restaurant (WTF, pieces glasses in your meal)...
- carl_dr 4y agoSmall point, I took it that the parent was talking about his experience with Deliveroo, in contrast to the post about Deliveroo’s service being good.
- medion 4y agoClassic investment driven startup with likely no true profit, utilizing workers without contracts who work all hours of the day, and can be dumped without a moments notice. Cute little apology about not being able to serve customers as well as they’d like - shame people can’t talk truths. I can’t wait for all this VC nonsense to come crashing down. *edit - I’ve since read they are compensating riders, so I’m retracting some of my snarkiness.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoIf you can’t be profitable on 1 unit, you won’t be profitable on 1 million units either. Scale brings complexity, and complexity has its own cost.
- sjtgraham 4y agoDoesn't make sense. If you have 10 engineers building a product and you sell one subscription for $100 you won't be profitable. When you sell a million you will have generated $100M, with have a far greater probability of being profitable.
- throwaw20221107 4y agoYa this is basic economics, fixed investment vs markup driven return.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoThat's software products that have marginal distribution costs. I'm talking about physical products and/or services. Delivering a single package to an individual has a very real cost that doesn't really go down with scale.
- bombolo 4y agoThis makes no sense. If a bar had 1 customer only, it should price drinks so that the entire rent and salaries were covered by that 1 customer. Which is not how it works in reality.
- 4y ago
- DoItToMe81 4y agoThis is because of a legal push to treat gig workers the same as any other employee. I'm not buying this tearful apology bullshit when they've gone out of their own way to take advantage of some of the most precarious workers in the country.
- sjtgraham 4y agoThey created jobs that didn't exist before. A labor market exists. If you are not happy with the terms you are free to find employment elsewhere like anybody else.
- esja 4y agoA regulated labor market exists. The regulations are there due to past problems. Like warning signs beside a crocodile-infested swimming hole.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- AussieWog93 4y agoA lot of people like to paint these services as evil, but 100% of the people I know who've driven for a restaurant delivery service (N=1) found that the pay wasn't bad, stress was low and it was a good opportunity for people who can't/don't want regular hours. Just don't accept pickups from Montrose Charcoal Chicken. :)
- TheHappyOddish 4y agoChicken bar in Churinga is heaps better anyway!
- doctor_eval 4y agoVery ironic, considering their mascot.
- contingencies 4y agoAnd indeed a kangaroo is also used by Meituan, the largest last-mile delivery service provider (in the world) here in China. Compare https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=deliveroo+kangaroo&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=deliveroo+kangaroo&iax=imag... vs https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=meituan+kangaroo&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=meituan+kangaroo&iax=images... (especially the dressed up drivers in 'roo-suits, foreign vs. China style)
- dis-sys 4y agoglad you mentioned meituan, it is prefect example on how low you can go to survive in business. let's be honest, meituan is mostly used by not well educated & low income people who don't know anything about food safety & personal hygiene. Quite often you get "food" delivered from some dark alley home to tons of mouses & cockroaches. There are a crap load of videos uploaded by those meituan delivery guys showing people how awful are those "food" & places where "food" get prepared. e.g. https://www.ixigua.com/6659332103689208333?logTag=a74d3ebf5615f3d2e40d https://www.ixigua.com/6659332103689208333?logTag=a74d3ebf56... In case of any doubt, just ask your friends will they be willing to feed their young kids with those "food" from meituan. ;)
- Reason077 4y agoGiven that, and the name "Deliveroo", I'd always kind of assumed they started in Australia!
- robertwt7 4y agoWow one more down. They used to compete with foodora here, I thought by this time thdy would have been established with a profitable business model as they came first before doordash. However it seems that it is not the case
- codefreeordie 4y agoIt is likely that none of the remaining services is actually capable of making a real profit either. These restaurant-delivery services offer(ed) a convenient way to get your restaurant takeaway delivered initially for surprisingly-not-that-much-more money than going by yourself But they work by charging the restaurants very high fees plus the fees the customer pays. Even with all of those fees, because there is no coordination with the restaurants themselves (to batch up multiple orders from the same restaurant like happens when a restaurant runs it's own delivery), it ends up being only viable for each delivery ride to take about two meals -- the algorithms try to create a path of "pickup A, pickup B, dropoff A, pickup C, dropoff B, ..." in an effort to mix efficiency with acceptable food temperature upon delivery -- but even with that pattern, many items get delivered cold or delayed and two orders per trip just doesn't create enough margin to pay both the driver and the large high-paid software engineering staff behind the app. In a world without continuous capital injection, these companies have an unworkable business model (I mean, they were always unworkable, but in VC-unicorn-world, they could pretend for surprisingly long). edit: also, if any health regulator ever decides to look in to food temperature upon delivery for these companies, all hell will break loose in the business -- there is no way that the average dish reaches the customer at a legally food safe temperature.
- alxmng 4y agoI’d like to add that they also don’t have economy of scale. Unit economics are the same no matter how many drivers and orders you process. If the economics don’t work now, why would they ever work?
- hakfoo 4y agoThe arguments I could see revolve around creating some sort of moat. There's an extremely shallow one in "I already have A on my phone, it would be three minutes of clicking and enterring my payment and delivery info to try someone else." If you could give-away-the-store to get sufficient market share-- maybe like 70-80% or more-- you might be able to start leveraging the restaurants, demanding exclusivity (or offering some cross-promotional incentive in exchange for it) to keep competitors from emerging. Or maybe this was an offshoot of the Uber endgame hypothesis: if you can survive long enough to get to driverless vehicles, you can own the largest fleet and actually get your hands on economies of scale.
- naedish 4y agoGlad I didn't take part in a promotion they offered last week for 25% off giftcards via ShopBack. Looks like a dodgy way to milk money off their customers.
- withinboredom 4y agoIt’s likely just as much as a surprise to the marketing department as it is to everyone else.
- defrost 4y agoNational Reporting: Deliveroo enters administration, leaving riders, restaurants and customers in the lurch [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-16/deliveroo-enters-voluntary-administration/101661932 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-16/deliveroo-enters-volu... > Deliveroo has entered administration, leaving 15,000 local riders — and the thousands of restaurants that use them — in need of new work and a new service to move food. ... > Despite starting in the market ahead of Uber Eats, it fell substantially behind its rival. > Competitors Menulog and DoorDash also overtook Deliveroo, pushing it into an unsustainable fourth place in an already-crowded market. > Deliveroo got out of the German market in 2019, and already this year has quit The Netherlands and Spain.
- Reason077 4y agoDon't most of the riders work with multiple apps anyway? Here in the UK it's not unusual for your Uber Eats order to be delivered by a guy with a Deliveroo jacket/bag, or vice-versa.
- defrost 4y agoI suspect the riders and food outlets will survive w/out Deliveroo, the main thrust is that they were minor players squeezed from a saturated market. As an Australian myself I'm rooting for "gig workers" being treated as well as regular workers wrt awards and conditions and am quite happy to see creeping US wage slave practices culled. Let's see how new and future conditions play out.
- saos 4y agoThey do. I’ve had a deliveroo order be delivered to me by driver in JustEat branding ha
- dang 4y agoOk, we've changed to that from https://riders.deliveroo.com.au/en/news/20221116 https://riders.deliveroo.com.au/en/news/20221116. Good third-party reporting is preferable to corporate press releases: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=corporate%20press%20release%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... Thanks!
- black_13 4y ago
- whendoyoushrink 4y agoStrange the site is still up and running - does that mean it this is less voluntary? Or that they staff work in an inconvenient timezone?
- ostenning 4y agoSame thing happened in Germany years ago
- bigbacaloa 4y agoThe margin these demiveroo/Uber/etc companies have is predicated on an exploitative relation with an unstable temporary workforce that is impossible in countries with effective labor regulation. It works in the US so they suppose it will work everywhere.
- esja 4y agoIt's also predicated on a never-ending flow of cheap debt being available to companies and their investors. When that stopped a few months ago a lot of these businesses died. It's just taken a little while for the bodies to float to the surface.
- jmeister 4y agoNice theory but wrong. They just lost out to Uber Eats and DoorDash.
- ezzaf 4y ago> All other outstanding fees, such as tips, will be reviewed as part of the administration process. Pretty low to withhold tips from their contractors.
- cormacrelf 4y agoThey're not withholding the tips, they're just handing everything to administrators who will deal with the debts of the company as must be done under the law. The alternative would prejudice any secured creditors, who are afforded preferential treatment in the winding up of a company and its assets. Most companies that enter administration have (at best) a small amount of cash, a large amount of debt, and little revenue. If you are still solvent and trading you can pay off your debts in the order you choose, like paying your drivers what you owe them as those debts arise even if you have to restructure larger debts (on the basis of your prospective revenue) to do it; if you cease to be solvent or cease to trade, you must pay them off according to the rules of winding-up. Given that it's voluntary administration and not forced, I would expect a lot of the regular creditors (including drivers) to be paid to some degree, as Deliveroo Australia probably still has some cash. But they can't just predict that to be the case and distribute the company's assets on that expectation. Administration means handing it all over and wiping your hands clean. Whatever's there will make it to whoever is owed money if the company has the assets.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TheHappyOddish 4y agoMaybe, but your lens might be off here. Tips aren't a fundamental part of Australian culture, and no driver (or anyone in hospo) is reliant on them like some other countries.
- saos 4y agoIt’s a sinking ship within an oversaturated space How many markets will deliveroo be pulling out of??
- junglee_ronaldo 4y agogfdgdfgdfgdf
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- plasma 4y agoThe announcement's top half reads like its withdrawing without imminent urgency, but its actually because they've entered voluntary administration. "An independent registered liquidator (the voluntary administrator) takes full control of the company. This allows the director or a third-party time to find a way, if possible, to save the company or its business." [1] [1] https://asic.gov.au/regulatory-resources/insolvency/insolvency-for-creditors/voluntary-administration-a-guide-for-creditors/#the-purpose-of-voluntary-administration https://asic.gov.au/regulatory-resources/insolvency/insolven...
- jp0d 4y agoMy brother in law works for a local Schnitzel chain (Schnitz) and it's hard to believe what people are ready to pay for convenience. They've a few regular customers who order fresh hot chips twice or thrice a day. Just a regular size box of hot chips that probably costs less than $5 and they're happy to pay another $4 or more for delivery! Some of them order just a can of soft drink. If they went to the grocery store and bought a pack of six cans, it'd cost them the same as just one can from the restaurant. Not to mention another $4 delivery fee! It's not a bad business to be in. Personally, I dislike them all as I like getting my own food and mostly eat at home. But there are heaps of people who're happy to pay exorbitant prices to have things delivered to them. I can't imagine how much it adds to our carbon footprint!
- oblio 4y ago> But there are heaps of people who're happy to pay exorbitant prices to have things delivered to them. What's "exorbitant" is relative. Back when I was making not a lot of money, I'd go to the farmer's market and pick some of the nicest looking cheap tomatoes. A few years afterwards, as my income grew, I just started going to the supermarket and picking what I liked. Someone asked me at home: "What was the price of those tomatoes?" and I didn't remember because I stopped checking. > I can't imagine how much it adds to our carbon footprint! And this is why we need systemic measures (i.e. regulation, national and international), not "personal responsibility". Either due to financial pressure or convenience, people's revealed preferences say that individually they don't really care about the environment. They say they do, because talk is cheap, but when they find out what they're about to lose to save it, everyone (99.999%) chooses what's cheaper or more convenient for them, personally.
- MikePlacid 4y ago> everyone (99.999%) chooses what's cheaper or more convenient for them, personally. Don’t know about 99% but I also vote for those who support cheaper and convenient policies. If, as you say, 99% prefer such policies too - how would you get the votes?
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
- andrewinardeer 4y agoReading from Deliveroo's press release [0] does this mean driver's who delivered on Tuesday and Wednesday have the monies owing to them under the administrator's control and are now unsecured creditors? If so, I'm guessing they won't see much of, if any, of it? [0] https://riders.deliveroo.com.au/en/news/20221116 https://riders.deliveroo.com.au/en/news/20221116