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The boss of one of the largest food delivery platforms in the world has told the BBC that he intends to end performances at his company across Europe.
Jitse Groen, who runs Just Eat Takeaway, says he would rather run his business with staff who receive benefits and more protection in the workplace.
It’s the model he used in the Takeaway.com section of the company he founded 20 years ago.
Gig workers have flexible hours, but usually no benefits such as vacation pay.
In many industries, coronavirus has made income unsteady for these workers as companies look to cut back.
Asked if the pandemic had made him more sensitive to the difficulties facing gig workers, Mr Green said: “It is our intention not to have them in Europe.”
He said he did not like people relying on his company to supply food from restaurants to maintain expensive working conditions.
“We are a large multinational company with quite a bit of money and we want to insure our people,” he said. “We want to make sure they have benefits, that we pay taxes on those workers.”
Those workers have at least been busy since coronavirus lockons began in Europe.
In the company’s three largest European markets – the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands – orders increased 34% in the first half of this year to 149 million compared to the same period in 2019.
Mega mergers
Two huge mergers mean that Just Eat Takeaway will become the largest food delivery company in the world outside of China.
A $ 7.3 billion June deal with US rival Grubhub was announced in June, while Mr Green’s Takeaway completed a £ 5.9 billion deal for Just Eat in the UK in January.
- Just Eat Takeaway to buy Grubhub at a £ 5.75bn deal
- Just Eat battle ends with Takeaway.com as winner
Mr Green said demand for the companies’ services had recovered from a first drop when Europe first went into lockdown, leading to a 30% drop in turnover.
“What we saw in March was that our revenue was actually falling because people were looking for food in the supermarkets and were basically surrounded by a lot of food and therefore there was no need to order online,” he said.
Just Eat Takeaway CEO Jitse Groen wants workers to benefit
However, eating habits have since changed, with millions ordering food because they could not visit restaurants.
Mr. Green said: “If you sit in your house for two weeks, you also want to eat something else, and so from April we saw an increase in demand.
“And now we’re actually growing much faster than we thought.”
The Grubhub deal means that growth will accelerate even faster, and Mr Green will allow more to deepen at a time when many companies are putting expansion plans on hold due to the pandemic.
He said the merger “was a logical thing to do” and although he would have won more time between that deal and the Just Eat, he said: “Let’s be realistic, it probably would not have been possible in two years.”
In the first six months of this year, Grubhub, which operates in 4,000 U.S. cities, took an average of 581,700 orders per day.
That could mean Mr Green hiring a lot more staff. Currently, freelance managers take those meals from restaurants to customers.
He says: “We are still evaluating Canada, for example, and of course we will have to look at the US later.”
But that does not mean that riders necessarily lose the flexibility that many enjoy and some use to supplement the salaries they receive from a major job.
Mr. Green says there may be room to maintain the freelance model in some countries if it is possible to pay insurance for them, but he said: “It is our intention to make the liveability of these people a lot better. then what it could be now. “
You can see The full interview of Jitse Groen about Talking Business with Aaron Heslehurst on BBC World News on Saturday 23:30 GMT, Sunday 16:30 GMT, Monday 06:30 GMT and 13:30 GMT, Tuesday 05:30 GMT and 11:30 GMT.
