Delivery Hero calls last orders on Foodpanda in Germany, Japan as it tightens focus on Q-commerce and logistics-as-a-service
- ByStartupStory | December 23, 2021
German on-demand delivery giant Delivery Hero is pulling its food delivery service out of Germany again. At the same time it has announced it will exit the Japanese market, by divesting Foodpanda Japan, starting in Q1 next year.
In a statement accompanying the pre-Christmas exit news, the company’s CEO and co-founder, Niklas Östberg, said: “Scaling down our operations in Germany and planning to divest our Japanese business have not been easy decisions. Facing a very different reality now than we did entering these markets, it is with a heavy heart that we need to pursue other growth opportunities with larger potential.
“Despite having built up two fantastic foodpanda teams showing great progress, it has become increasingly difficult to create true value for our ecosystem in these countries. I have nothing but gratitude and admiration for the accomplishments both teams have achieved in the last months. Seeing the amazing service they built from scratch makes me genuinely proud, and we will do everything we can to support our fellow Heroes on their journey ahead.”
The European on-demand delivery giant only fully returned to its home market — under its Foodpanda brand — in August, following a few weeks of testing. Back in May, when it trailed the Germany relaunch in an interview with the Financial Times, Ostberg had talked in terms of being in it for a decade-long haul, telling the newspaper: “We don’t see necessarily that we are going to go in and win the market in the next year or so. This is a 10-year game.”
And only last month Delivery Hero was still expanding Foodpanda’s footprint in Germany — announcing the service would be launching into another six cities, as the division’s CEO, Artur Schreiber, trumpeted “great” demand and an expansion he said would create “a thousand” jobs.
Although that announcement also hinted that it might be having trouble getting customers to stick around — with Delivery Hero saying it would also be refreshing Foodpanda’s branding, launching a new app with a better user experience and expanding a loyalty program.
In the event it’s pulling the plug on a commercial delivery service in Germany — leaving only a Berlin-based R&D hub where it says it will test new services and features, so sounds like it will continue to run some (trial) deliveries in Central Berlin for employees working on developing new products.
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