Easy come, Easy go…
European restaurant meal delivery company Take Eat Easy has announced that it has ceased trading. In a blog posted today (26 July), Chloé Roose, co-founder of Take Eat Easy, said that the company’s four-year history has been “one hell of a journey, like you wouldn’t believe”, but conceded that today “it’s over”.
Roose said that the company had been hitting milestones – “In the past year, we have reached a 30% monthly growth, hit over a million delivery, scaled our restaurant partnerships from 450 to 3200 and our customer base from 30,000 to 350,000” – and reached a million deliveries last week.
“And yet today we are filing for juridical restructuring,” said Roose.
And then she explained why: “The reasons are that 1) our revenue doesn’t cover our costs yet, and that 2) we haven’t been able to raise a third round of funding.”
It is a brutal fact which has felled on-demand delivery players in markets across the globe in recent months: when start-up funding dries up, turnover has to turn into profit.
Sources report that there is still hope that Take Eat Easy may find a buyer, but this is a very competitive market – and the recent London launch of UberEATS hasn’t made it any easier.