GrubHub Rival Just Eat Expands Latin American Presence

Recently made public company and GrubHub rival Just Eat announced this week that they had bought out Mexican online take-out service SinDelantal.mx, adding it to the Spanish SinDelantal it had bought three years ago as Latin America increasingly becomes a battleground for online food delivery.

“This is an important day for Just Eat as we secure long term strategic leadership in Latin America. We are delighted to be entering the thriving Mexican market, which offers exciting growth opportunities and strengthens our international portfolio,” said David Buttress, CEO of Just Eat, in a company blog post from Feb. 16.

While the terms of the deal were not openly disclosed, TechCrunch is reporting rumors that the purchase was over $20 million for the Mexican operations, up from the estimated $4 billion that the Spanish SinDelantal was bought for back in 2012. The two heads of the Mexican operation, Evaristo Babé and Diego Ballesteros, have agreed to become the managers of Just Eat’s Mexican network as part of the deal.

The purchase of SinDelantal.mx allegedly gives Just Eat the largest restaurant delivery network in Mexico, with more than 3,000 restaurants processing over 60,000 orders per month, according to company sources. This might be disputed, however, by its main rival in the region, Rocket Internet’s FoodPanda. Rocket Internet also recently entered the Latin American delivery market with its recent purchase of Delivery Hero, giving it a foothold in Brazil as well as Mexico, and Just Eat’s recent purchase means that the regional online ordering market is increasingly a tale of two companies.

Outside of Latin America, the industry is consolidating as larger firms eat up smaller companies. Last week, Yelp announced the purchase of Eat24 after a stint as partners in order to expand its own online delivery service in an effort to challenge GrubHub in the United States.