Berlin Based Rocket Internet has acquired a 30% stake in Delivery Hero. Delivery Hero is a competitor to Rocket Internet’s FoodPanda. This is part of a major purchasing spree from Rocket Inter in a move that sees significant consolidation of the online ordering and food delivery business across Asia and Europe. It also purchased JUST EAT and Food Runner. These businesses will form part of the Rocket Internet ‘Global Online Takeaway Group”
Rocket Internet now has food delivery businesses in 39 countires, covers 140,000 restaurants and it claims to process 78 million orders per month.
Delivery Hero claims to be operating in 24 countries at the moment and that it is the market leader in 19 of these markets. One country where it is not the market leader is Australia, where the leader and number two companies, Menulog and Eatnow, recently merged their operations as part of a buyout from Menulog.
Delivery Hero has not stated if any of the existing shareholders have exited as a part of the deal.
Delivery Hero’s competition against their own Restaurant Customers
Delivery Hero in Australia partakes in the common industry practice of registering a similar domain name and putting up a website thank creates the impression that the website is the Restaurant’s official website, when if fact it is operated by Delviery Hero and used to charge 10% commission for all of the orders acquired. One question is how many customers are confused by the multiple websites.
Many Restaurants have a website which appears to be the Restaurants official website, when in fact it is owned by Delivery Hero.
Delivery Hero has raised $1.2 Billion in total. What does this mean for Restaurants?
It will be interesting to see what will happen in the medium term. The obvious danger for Restaurants is that if there is significant consolidation of online ordering companies, they will be able to ratchet up the prices. We have seen this with companieslike Realestate.com.au and carsales.com.au. They originally started out with a significant price advantage versus their competitors, which were ads in print media. As they stole almost all of the market share from print media, they were able to start focusing on increasing prices. Online ordering, with the high 10% commissions from Restaurants is a very profitable industry. The raising of cash is to enable more consolidation and rapid growth.
Delivery Hero Alternative?
Marketing4Restaurants’ Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering System is shaping up as a significant Delivery Hero Alternative in Australia, with intentions to grow in to other markets over the next 12 months. The system, which allows restaurants to take online orders on their own website for free (excluding third party gateway fees) also allows Restaurants to keep their customers contact details secure. Some Restaurants are looking to save over $500 per week as they transition their customers away from using Delivery Hero and other online ordering companies. There appears to be a gentlemens agreement to keep fees at around 10%. This level of commission is unsustainable for many Restaurant owners. As more Restaurants look for ways to decrease costs, this will put pressure on the industry accepted 10% and will significantly alter the profitability of the online ordering companies.
If you are looking for a Delivery Hero Alternative, check out the Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering system. It’s Free 🙂
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Is Poor SEO Killing Your Restaurant?
Too many times we see customers with websites that are costing restaurants thousands of dollars every month through poor design, poor messaging and poor SEO. If your website could be improved to bring in 200 extra visits per month and just 10% of those made a booking, and each booking was for 2.5 seats on average at $50 a seat, you would have an extra $2,500 in revenue a month. A 30% food cost, that is $1,750 in profit extra a month. This ignores those customers coming back as regulars – which is more profit.
Remember, if these customers aren’t finding your Restaurant, they are finding your competitors.
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