The move comes amidst rising food costs and challenges in the food delivery sector.
Today sees another blow for European food delivery companies with Delivery Hero announcing that it will close its global tech hubs in Türkiye and Taiwan and adjust its headcount at its Berlin headquarters.
Spreading bad news leading into the holiday season, the company has reduced the workforce of its Berlin headquarters and global service roles by around 13 percent this year, saying in a statement:
“While we believe that this is a necessary step as our business enters the next stage of its maturity, it does mean we will be letting go of employees who have made many valuable contributions in their time with us.”
According to Webrazzi, the Global Technology and Innovation Center closure in Türkiye means a layoff of up to 250 people.
Per the company’s half-year financial report, Delivery Hero employed 47,208 people as of June 30, 2023, reduced from 51,118 at the end of 2022.
Rising food prices have hit the last-mile and food delivery sector hard with the consequences of rapid expansion, raising food costs, ,and challenges to labour breaches affecting companies already dealing with narrow profit margins.
In November Delivery Hero and its Spanish business Glovo were raided for the second time in an EU antitrust investigation into hiring practices and information sharing.
Last week, the European Union gave provisional approval to a platform worker directive enabling millions of gig economy workers to access employment rights.
According to Yolanda Díaz, Spanish Second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Work and Social Economy, the move “will help ensure that those workers who have wrongly been classified as self-employed have easier access to their rights as employees under EU law.”
Source: tech.eu