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Just Eat Takeaway to acquire Grubhub for $7.3B

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Re: Just Eat Takeaway to acquire Grubhub for $7.3B

#81
I hate Just Eat in my country. For the life I couldn't get them to put VAT on my receipt. Stopped ordering food almost completely because I was tired of something simple like that failing over and over. Now they're slowly turning into a monopoly, can't imagine how bad their service will get at that point.

Re: Just Eat Takeaway to acquire Grubhub for $7.3B

#82
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everywhere I've worked, 75% or more of acquisitions or acquihires went extremely well and resulted in strategic benefit and/or gain of great talent. There are only a couple of instances that stand out as being a bad fit, and one of those companies later got sold to another player in the same space for a profit. So it's really never been a bad use of capital from my perspective.

Are you sure it isn't 76% with all that hard cold data you're using?

A lot of big company initiatives are acquisitions in non-obvious ways. For example even Google Maps started off as an acquisition of Keyhole Corp - a small startup focused on mapping technology.

Android was an acquisition.

YouTube was an acquisition.

Google Docs was an acquisition.

Re: Just Eat Takeaway to acquire Grubhub for $7.3B

#83
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* They may expect to achieve efficiencies with the business that will throw off more profit. * They may be protecting their own territory from grubhub's eventual entry. * They may simply have extra cash (or stock purchasing power) and want to use it to secure greater future cash flows rather than just sit on it. * They may feel more able to enter other markets via grubhub than their own brand/company. etc. Edit: Also…

The economics of food delivery can’t be solved with efficiency. There’s not enough pie to split.

But, Just Eat and co did solve it with volume; they made it possible for countless food places to add delivery to their repertoire, and their app added discoverability.

I would never have learned about local food places if it wasn't for that app.

Re: Just Eat Takeaway to acquire Grubhub for $7.3B

#84

Is it just me or are all these delivery apps pretty much the same thing, just with different restaurants? In SF at least Grubhub tends to have some of the more "typical delivery" choices (pizza, chinese food, thai) and decent customer service, Doordash seems to have the most variety but the dashers take their merry time on their way to you (and customer service is nonexistent), Uber Eats is somewhere in between grubh…

> Is it just me or are all these delivery apps pretty much the same thing, just with different restaurants?

They're surprisingly different in both how good the software is and how efficiently they operate. I'll give three examples of my experiences with European apps.

Wolt (Finnish) - Super polished native app. Very accurate to-the-minute ETA predictions, you can see GPS tracking of couriers as soon as they start heading towards the restaurant. The menus are polished and full of pictures. You can rate couriers and food. The app even includes a mini-game on the ETA screen. Payment by card associated with your account.

Bolt (Estonian) - A comparatively new entry in food delivery with an ok native app. ETAs are all over the place as it keeps re-calculating, although eventually the delivery is reasonably paced. GPS tracking starts after the courier has picked up the food. About a third of the food items have pictures. No rating of food or couriers. No mini-games. Occasional crashes. Payment by card associated with your account.

Lieferando (German - owned by Just Eat Takeway, the company buying Grubhub) - Complete dumpster fire. The "native app" is just a webview of some 2010 style webpage. No pictures of food, no GPS tracking. A static "ETA 30min" estimation that never changes or counts down, it's just always 30min. Payment is a per-order giant form of options that's super German, prioritizing cash-on-delivery. I made the mistake of paying by card. The food never arrived at all. The app itself doesn't give any notifications that there's a failed delivery or anything - the ETA was 30min even 48h later. Customer support is extremely hostile and only responds after several days. The iOS reviews are full of people complaining that they got scammed with no delivery. Ended up having to do a chargeback through my bank.

Re: Just Eat Takeaway to acquire Grubhub for $7.3B

#85
I am a bit confused by the legal structure of this business: Article states that just eat is dutch, but it is not based in the Netherlands. It is a UK company that used to be based in Denmark. According to Wikipedia it recently merged with Takeaway but is still operating as a subsidary with its own brand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Eat

Re: Just Eat Takeaway to acquire Grubhub for $7.3B

#86
post #85

I am a bit confused by the legal structure of this business: Article states that just eat is dutch, but it is not based in the Netherlands. It is a UK company that used to be based in Denmark. According to Wikipedia it recently merged with Takeaway but is still operating as a subsidary with its own brand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Eat

Just eat was acquired by Takeaway which is a Dutch company. From your link "It was listed on the London Stock Exchange until it was acquired by Takeaway.com in February 2020."

Re: Just Eat Takeaway to acquire Grubhub for $7.3B

#87
post #65

Wow. I thought Uber were going for it? The food delivery market share war is really interesting. For folks in the UK. The Competition Markets and Authority (CMA) delayed a decision on whether Amazon could invest $500m in Deliveroo as of yesterday[1]. Deliveroo are more established in Europe but I can now see the CMA approving Amazon investment into Deliveroo[2]. Why? Just Eat provided evidence to the CMA recently on…

Just Eat are getting too big. They destroyed Hungry House by buying it a few years ago. This was before Deliveroo and Uber Eats were known to most people. Seems like Just Eat are afraid of competition.

Re: Just Eat Takeaway to acquire Grubhub for $7.3B

#88
post #85

I am a bit confused by the legal structure of this business: Article states that just eat is dutch, but it is not based in the Netherlands. It is a UK company that used to be based in Denmark. According to Wikipedia it recently merged with Takeaway but is still operating as a subsidary with its own brand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Eat

In general, confusion around this subject stems from the fact that some jurisdictions focus on place of incorporation, whereas others look to the location of the principle place of business.

So you can have a company that is incorporated in the Netherlands, but which has its principal place of business in London. Depending on who you’re talking to, this is either a Dutch business or a British business.

A maneuver like this would often be done for tax purposes.

Re: Just Eat Takeaway to acquire Grubhub for $7.3B

#89
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait... this comment is confusing. how is he not contributing towards "keeping the restaurant in business" by ordering delivery vs picking it up in person?

When you order through a delivery service, the restaurant is generally paid less than their normal menu price, and none of the tips go to the kitchen staff. In addition to charging the restaurant, the delivery service charges the customer a higher price than the restaurant would. They add delivery fees and service fees. On top of that, the online menus in the delivery service apps often have higher prices than the re…

Yes, but a restaurant wouldn't be entering into these special deals if it wasn't beneficial to them as well. Even if the margins are much lower, it could be offset by the increase in number of customers/orders.

Re: Just Eat Takeaway to acquire Grubhub for $7.3B

#90
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How different would Disney be without Pixar? Not different at all. And fox? Too early to tell.

Name one decent Disney animated movie that was released after Pixar was founded (excluding Pixar films post-acquisition). There aren’t many because most of Disney’s talent left around when Pixar was founded. Without movies to continuously hook new kids, their entire empire is a house of cards.

I don't know if this supposed to be an argument that acquisitions are good, or that they're bad?
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