This is the end of the adventure in the United States for Just Eat Takeaway. An adventure which cost the Dutch group specializing in meal delivery dearly. On Wednesday, November 13, it formalized the cut-price sale of its American subsidiary Grubhub.
The sale price amounts to 642 million dollars, including 500 million debt assumption. At the end of the operation, only 50 million will return to Just Eat’s coffers. A sum much lower than the $7.3 billion spent in 2021 to get their hands on Grubhub.
Loss of market share
At the time, the meal delivery sector showed strong growth, precipitated by the health crisis and confinements. The previous year, Denmark’s Just Eat merged with Dutch rival Takeaway.com. The new entity had thus become one of the giants in Europe. She also dreamed of becoming one in the gigantic American market.
But nothing went as planned. In four years, Grubhub has been supplanted by Doordash and Uber Eats in the United States. According to estimates from the Second Measure firm, its market share has fallen from 17% to only 8%. Performance which weighed on the accounts of Just Eat, which is still not profitable.
Closure in France
The company’s management had been seeking to separate from Grubhub for several years. But several takeover offers had failed to be finalized. Just Eat therefore had to accept a discounted offer, with the objective of concentrating its efforts on a few priority European markets. This summer, the company announced the upcoming closure of its activity in France.
Grubhub’s buyer is the American company Wonder, which initially aimed to revolutionize the sector by relying on a network of “food trucks”. It was founded by Marc Lore, known for having founded Diapers.com then Jet.com, respectively bought by Amazon and Walmart.
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