EXB-205_Web

BERLIN AT WORK
work nights and be expected to do unpaid
overtime. He became involved in union activity
“more out of a conviction” than a complaint,
he said.
Left in the cold
However, Reza’s opinion of the food delivery
company has since gone down, particularly
after a recent rift. While delivering orders, he
received a text message from the company
saying that he had been “standing in one
place too long” and that he would receive a
formal warning. This was due to a persistent
glitch on his work app which was not updating
the GPS. When he called his supervisor
to explain, he was told to email the company,
which responded with a copy-and-paste
warning of the consequences of not working
while on duty. Although the matter was
later resolved, it left Reza thinking that the
company did not value its couriers.
Lieferando was acquired by Takeaway.
com in 2014, which merged in February 2020
with the UK-based Just Eat to form a food
delivery behemoth consisting of several
companies, operating under different names
in different countries
(but just Lieferando in
Germany). The merger
was controversial; the
UK Competitions and
Markets Authority
delayed the merger until
April 2020 due to concerns
that it would result
in “a substantial lessening
of competition”.
More seasoned Berliners
may also recall Foodora, which originally
Overall, it wasn’t
a bad job except for
two horrible winter
months.
started in Munich in 2014 and was bought
out the following year by Delivery Hero,
which itself was purchased by Takeaway.com
in 2018. Following the finalisation of the deal
in the first half of 2019, the parent company
decided to discontinue the Foodora brand
and merge all businesses under Lieferando.
Next, Deliveroo pulled out of the market, unable
to compete with the Dutch heavyweight,
leaving Lieferando with a quasi-monopoly
on the Berlin market – until last year’s Wolt
intrusion.
Noah, a UK expat who moved to Berlin to
work in the music industry, has experienced
this creeping consolidation of the market in
Berlin first hand. Struggling to support himself
solely through music, he started working
for Foodora in 2017 through to their merger
with Lieferando in 2019. “Overall, it wasn’t
a bad job except for two horrible winter
months,” he says. He was able to work there
while he learned German through podcasts.
The job is less social than among the rider
crew of Gorillas, but not having to deal with a
boss or coworkers “suited me as an introvert”,
Noah says. Plus, the job was “very easy
to get”.
Noah felt his job change drastically after
Foodora changed hands. Gone was the startup
culture, with the offer of free yoga classes
and a real-life human to talk to when you had
issues. He noticed a new and cold company
environment, where you could receive warning
messages like the one Reza got if you
were deemed to be standing around. Delivery
areas increased dramatically in size, so now
you could be “finishing a shift at 23:30 in
Neukölln then get an order in Wedding”. The
flexibility Noah had enjoyed about courier
work was suddenly gone – and with it, his
enthusiasm. He was not offered an e-bike
when they began to be phased into the Lieferando
model and when his Foodora contract
expired he was not rehired.
Bicycle race
Today, the couriers of Berlin are predominantly
tricolored: orange for Lieferando, blue
for Wolt, and black for Gorillas. Things are
set to get more colourful – and more crowded
– as new companies join
the market. Flink, another
Berlin start-up, is positioning
itself as a challenger
to Gorillas, while Uber
Eats has also arrived in the
Hauptstadt. Meanwhile, the
DAX-listed Delivery Hero
is planning its return to
Germany under the name
Foodpanda, two years after
it sold its business here.
CEO Niklas Östberg has said the company
will be delivering takeaways and “everything
else”, with a test phase to start this month.
Amazon got the green light from regulators
to take over Deliveroo in April 2020, leading
to an influx in funding and plans to publicly
list the company. As a result, we may soon
see that teal-coloured, beleaguered brand
return to Berlin’s streets.
And then there’s the grassroots offering
Khora, an underdog by design. This food
delivery collective was founded by former
Deliveroo rider Stefano Lombardo and
promises its riders better conditions as
autonomous freelancers. The takeaways are
more expensive with this local alternative,
which has shirked investment but struggled
to break out of its sparsely covered territories
in Neukölln, Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain
as a result. Digital giants like Lieferando,
Wolt and Gorillas are hardly quaking in their
boots as they focus on their own battles for
dominance. So it’s go big or go home in this
highly competitive sector – but the legions of
couriers are here to stay. T
Gorillas
20
EXBERLINER 205