The fast food and takeaway industry is very successful in the UK, and it continues to gain popularity. While many businesses struggled during the Covid-19 pandemic, some businesses thrived, as many takeaways capitalised on the higher demand for fast food. The story of the pandemic is more complicated from Deliveroo’s point of view.

While ordering takeaway was simple and effective anyway, the likes of Deliveroo and Just Eat made the process even simpler. While it was always convenient to ring your local takeaway and place your order, now it can all be done via a mobile app, with multiple fast food restaurants to choose from.

Deliveroo facts and statistics

Deliveroo was founded in 2013 in London, and operates in over 200 locations across the United Kingdom, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

It may be surprising to hear that Deliveroo has still not made a profit; in fact, they lose money on every single order that’s placed. While their global revenue has increased each year, their losses have also worsened until recently. Many would assume they have been highly profitable the last couple of years, but their claim to success is not that they are making huge profits but that their losses are shrinking. Their net loss in 2019 was £317m, as opposed to their net loss in 2020 of £223m.

While many takeaways have done well out of the pandemic, the same can’t be said for the likes of Deliveroo. It has not been a complete disaster, but Deliveroo does not only work with local takeaways; it always works with big-name restaurants such as McDonalds and Nandos, and many of these restaurants were closed during the pandemic. Nando’s closing made a significant difference to Deliveroo’s performance. During the pandemic, Deliveroo laid off 15% of its staff, although this was apparently in anticipation of sales taking a dip after the pandemic, rather than any immediate struggle.

Deliveroo Revenue

The below figures were sourced from the Financial Times.

Deliveroo’s competitors

You may struggle to remember a time when it wasn’t like this, a time before the widespread availability of fast food delivery services, a time when you would have to search your house for a takeaway menu and have to call up the restaurant to place your order. To be fair, you wouldn’t have thought this process could be made any easier; it was already convenient to be able to do this, but somehow, the ordering of fast food to your home has been greatly simplified.

In the UK, Deliveroo’s main competitors are JustEat and UberEats. It was in 2017 that JustEat announced they were competing with Deliveroo and UberEats by working with branded restaurant chains. Before, JustEat mainly worked with independent local restaurants, such as pizza shops and curry houses, whereas Deliveroo and UberEats main focus was on more upmarket chain restaurants. So there are three main choices if you are living in the UK and are wanting food delivered to your house, with all three companies providing a similar service. In addition to choosing what food you would like to order, you also need to choose which fast food delivery company to use.

Google searches

We have looked into some statistics surrounding Google searches for ‘Deliveroo’ and ‘Deliveroo Rider’ to see if interest has increased or decreased over time. We also wanted to see how the pandemic has affected interest. You can see the number of Google searches below, we have also included figures for searches for their competitors, ‘Uber Eats’ and ‘Just Eat’.

As you can see there the Google searches for all of these terms has increased over time, with a spike in searches during the first lockdown. The searches for ‘Deliveroo Rider’ have almost doubled in 18 months, and the other three terms have also increased massively.

Whilst Google searches are not a measurement of success, it certainly is an indication of how popular these types of fast food services are, and the popularity is only increasing.