Deliveroo Adds Pickup Option For Restaurant Orders

U.K.-based on-demand food delivery service Deliveroo is expanding its platform to include a pickup option, TechCrunch reported on Monday (Nov. 11).

The new Deliveroo service will be called Pickup and gives people a no delivery fee option. The service is live in 13 U.K. cities and at over 700 restaurants. The plan is to offer the feature in 10,000 U.K. restaurants within one year.

With pickup orders, restaurants still pay Deliveroo commissions, just less than it would be with delivery.

Deliveroo is offered in over 500 cities across 13 markets — Australia, Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. 

The additional revenue from a pickup service will help Deliveroo remain competitive while it waits for approval for an investment from Amazon as part of a Series G funding round. The funds are being delayed due to an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). 

The CMA has until Dec. 11 to decide whether to take Amazon’s investment into the next phase of the investigation. In May, Amazon led a $575 million fundraising round in Deliveroo.

Deliveroo said the Series G round of venture funding also included T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Management and Research Company and Greenoaks as investors.

The investigation will circle around whether there was or will be a “substantial lessening of competition” as a result of the investment.

Amazon wants to be able to compete with rival Uber Eats and needed a well-known inroad into the food delivery world. The industry is worth in the neighborhood of $100 billion a year.

In August, Deliveroo announced it was going to end its operations in Germany.

In terms of its presence in Germany, the company had 1,100 riders spread across five cities, with an overall employee count of 100. Deliveroo said it will bring its focus to other markets across Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

Upon its exit from Germany, Deliveroo has said that “appropriate compensation and goodwill packages” would be extended to all employees and riders.