Food delivery service Just Eat has made almost half of its staff in Dublin redundant, The Irish Times has learned, as the group centralises a number of functions.
The London-1listed company is understood to have made the decision to relocate its customer care and restaurant support roles to the UK, making 26 mainly part-time staff redundant at its Irish operation.
The company will continue to employ about 30 staff in Ireland, a market that it recently said contributed “good growth” to the group in the first three months of the year.
It’s understood the decision has been made at a group level, rather than at Just Eat’s Irish arm, in an effort to drive cost efficiencies. It is merging all of its customer and restaurant support roles to one operation, and Ireland was one of the last countries to be affected by the decision.
Just Eat operates in 13 markets around the world and offers access to more than 2,000 restaurants in the Republic, according to its website.
It’s understood that the 26 staff that have been made redundant were primarily part-time shift workers, including students. They are understood to have been offered an exit package including statutory redundancy plus five weeks per year of service.
In 2017, the most recent year for which accounts are available, the Irish entity paid a dividend to its UK parent of €4 million. While turnover rose from €13.9 to €20.5 million, profit before tax dipped from €4.8 million to €4.7 million.
However, the performance in the Republic is understood to be strong. A spokeswoman said: “Just Eat’s Irish business continues to perform very well.
“In our full year results we talked about organising and energising the business to execute our strategy at pace. In order to ensure our operations are set up to deliver the best possible service we are proposing to merge our existing customer and restaurant operations teams into one.”
The company added that it would “support all those affected during this time”.
In May, competition in the sector ratcheted up after Amazon led a $575 million funding round for Deliveroo after the US giant shut down its own food delivery service Amazon Restaurants in the UK.
As Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats vie for market share, the support of Amazon was seen as a significant boost for Deliveroo, which now plans to “invest heavily” in its technology team to build new products.
Just Eat has been under pressure at a corporate level recently as shareholder Cat Rock expressed anger at board appointments and ordered it to seek a merger with an industry peer. Cat Rock Capital owns about 2 per cent of the company, which has a market value of €4.1 billion.
