Money Quote: "Deliveroo grew a lot in 2016, with revenue up 611 per cent to £129 million. But losses were up too — a 300 per cent increase to £129 million. However, the figure to really watch is the food delivery company’s gross margin percentage, which sat at just 0.7 per cent. " How can an investor, justify this as a solid investment when the gross margins are 0.7%?
It's been clear to me for a while that valuations lack any rational basis. I reached this conclusion shortly after Yo was valued at something like $10 million.
Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding
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Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding
#52What have Deliveroo done differently to be more successful than the food delivery startups that came before?
Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding
#53I find it funny they're claiming some sort of AI system will help them make better margins. In my city, Nottingham. all the deliveroo people gather in Trinity Square waiting for jobs. There's obviously no special AI needed. I do think though that it raises the issue that they should be paying for their own business premises and stop using our public spaces as their company waiting spots.
Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding
#54So where is Deliveroo's margin on that? There isn't one, and there's no way they can pay delivery drivers as actual employees (which the law will eventually catch up with by the way), even at minimum wage you'd need to cover £15+/hour to include holiday pay, sick pay, insurance and other standard benefits.
MAYBE, delivery drones / robots will arrive before the funding runs out, but I doubt it very much.
Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding
#55Another unicorn that can only exist because it uses fake self-employment to turn their workforce into a cheaper one. Just like Uber and so many others this only works because for some reason turning paid work into something that is not even self-sustaining suddenly is accepted. Does nobody have ethical issues with seeing value in devaluing people?
It's even worse than Uber. With Uber, at least you can drive for multiple companies at the same time. If you want to bike for both Deliveroo and, say, Foodora you need to first go home and swap one branded backpack for the other. (Not sure if that's an international thing - here in NL the delivery people use bikes and have branded backpacks)
There may be some kind of rule around consistent branding, but I have never seen it enforced.
Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding
#56Currently there is a £2.50 fee for deliveries in London with Deliveroo. Even with extreme optimization a Deliveroo rider can't possibly make more than 3-4 "proper" deliveries in an hour (food gets cold fast! And when it gets returned deliveroo & the restaurant suffers) so maybe they can generate around £10/hour in revenue for Deliveroo. Then you need to take out costs for the driver, development, marketing, integrati…
Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding
#57For those wondering about these numbers, Deliveroo has a great concept, solid execution and huge brand recognition. Just-eat (worth 4.6B) connects people to shitty takeaways and has a terrible website. Deliveroo connects people to restaurants and provides the delivery service themselves, through bikers (here in London). They have taken this and spread throughout Europe. They are going to (and are) completely canablis…
What makes you think Just-Eat ran out of steam "years ago"? Stock price is higher than ever: http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/prices-and-marke... They are reporting good growth: http://www.cityam.com/256734/just-eat-reported-order-growth-... I see lots of Deliveroo bikes around where I live in the centre of London, but they are basically non-existant when I go to other towns and cities. Also, Deliveroo sta…
In the UK, Deliveroo originally differentiated primarily by only accepting high quality restaurants, rather than takeaways.
Just Eat, etc. may try to improve their image, offer remotely usable interfaces, clean up their offerings in terms of food quality, but I don’t think their reputation will ever recover to the point that anyone in London etc. would consider them above Deliveroo/Uber Eats.
Not sure how closely these views tally with others, but they are representative of my friends/peers.
Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similar at Angel, London. They gather at the shell petrol station; also for some strange reason pretty much all of them speak brazilian portuguese.
Is that strange because they aren't Brazilian?
Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding
#59Currently there is a £2.50 fee for deliveries in London with Deliveroo. Even with extreme optimization a Deliveroo rider can't possibly make more than 3-4 "proper" deliveries in an hour (food gets cold fast! And when it gets returned deliveroo & the restaurant suffers) so maybe they can generate around £10/hour in revenue for Deliveroo. Then you need to take out costs for the driver, development, marketing, integrati…
Re: Deliveroo raises $385M in new funding
#60Currently there is a £2.50 fee for deliveries in London with Deliveroo. Even with extreme optimization a Deliveroo rider can't possibly make more than 3-4 "proper" deliveries in an hour (food gets cold fast! And when it gets returned deliveroo & the restaurant suffers) so maybe they can generate around £10/hour in revenue for Deliveroo. Then you need to take out costs for the driver, development, marketing, integrati…