‘Eat Out To Help Out hasn’t damaged our business’ says Just Eat Takeaway.com boss

Just Eat Takeaway.com boss has said Eat Out To Help Out hasn’t damaged the business, despite takeaways being excluded from the government scheme.

Chief executive Jitse Groen said during a press call: “Food delivery is rarely in direct competition with restaurant visits – and that doesn’t change under these circumstances. Restaurants have limited capacity because they can only seat a certain number of people. We don’t believe there will be a material impact on our figures.”

Groen said he wasn’t “upset” the Competition and Markets Authority cleared Amazon’s 16% stake in Just Eat Takeaway.com’s UK rival Deliveroo but added: “I am an entrepreneur – I don’t particularly care who’s competing with us. I think the UK consumer should be upset that happened and that has nothing to do with Deliveroo, that has something to do with Amazon.”

Earlier on Wednesday (12 August), Just Eat Takeaway.com reported revenue grew 44% to more than €1bn (£927m) with a pre-tax loss of €121m. “Just Eat Takeaway.com is in the fortunate position to benefit from continuing tailwinds,”

Groen said. “On the back of the current momentum, we started an aggressive investment programme, which we believe will further strengthen our market position. We’re convinced our order growth will remain strong for the remainder of the year.”

Just Eat Takeaway.com is in the process of buying US rival Grubhub for $7.3bn. The deal is likely to complete in the first half of 2021 but Groen declined to discuss the deal.