Lieferando allies with Getir - a pact that has only one big winner

The competition for super-fast food delivery services in German cities is entering a new round: now the Turkish pioneer Getir is allying itself with the supplier Lieferando, which has grown into a pizza delivery service. As of next week, the Getir offers will also appear in the Lieferando app. The step could bring Getir new customers in Germany and other European countries - at noticeable costs. Lieferando, in turn, benefits from cut-throat competition on the market.

For almost two years, the Berlin providers Flink and Gorillas have been fighting for market leadership - with risk capital in the billions. Gorillas alone has raised 1.3 billion euros from start-up investors. Another attacker from abroad is Getir. The Istanbul provider has even more money available.

The problem for all three fast delivery services: the business model of delivering groceries from small neighborhood warehouses by bicycle courier within less than 30 minutes is not even remotely profitable for any of the providers.

The situation is different for restaurant delivery services. Your business model is already more mature, the biggest takeover battles in Germany have been fought. The most important domestic provider, Delivery Hero, sold its entire German business to the Dutch Lieferando parent company Just Eat Takeaway (JET) four years ago and is concentrating on foreign markets.

The business model of the remaining top dog Lieferando is also operationally profitable in Northern Europe because the app mainly acts as an intermediary: the provider receives a revenue share from restaurateurs for using the app to place orders with them, which the pizza taxis then deliver with their own drivers . The expensive business with own Lieferando couriers in orange clothes only rounds off the offer in big cities.

Lieferando is now extending this lucrative business model as an intermediary to Getir. Here, too, Lieferando gets a share of the sales for the mediation, said a spokeswoman. Getir will continue to take care of everything else, from warehousing to delivery. Cooperation in logistics is expressly excluded. This is a double benefit for Lieferando: Not only is there additional sales without major additional costs - the Lieferando app is also becoming more relevant for users.

Because the provider has been fighting for months not to lose its customers to the fast delivery services, which also offer snacks. Grocery offers from third parties should help with this: In Germany, Lieferando brought small delivery services in Berlin and Leipzig to the app.

However, these young cooperation partners quickly capitulated to the highly financed competition. Currently there are still food offers from small stationary shops such as Spar, Shell, station kiosks and the North German bakery chain Dat Backhus on the Lieferando platform.

It should stay that way: Getir has not secured any exclusivity with Lieferando. The yellow delivery service remains one of several providers on the app, which should theoretically even integrate direct competitors.

So Getir is ready to line up and pay for new customers at Lieferando - and thus reduce its shortcoming of being less well known than its two Berlin competitors, Flink and Gorillas. The international Getir also lacks a German partner: Rewe is invested in Flink and Delivery Hero in Gorillas.

However, Getir, which is active in seven German cities, could soon grow significantly in Germany. The company is in talks with its troubled competitor Gorillas about a takeover. The Berliners are in danger of running out of money. Most recently, the company received 250 million euros as a cash injection from its investors – in order to hold out at all. At the beginning of the year, founder Kagan Sümer had expected three times as much and calculated the growth far too generously.

Because of the failure on the capital market, Gorillas has been on a shrinking course since the summer and has left the Spanish and Danish markets, for example. That could make a possible takeover easier for Getir, since the Turks are already internationally positioned.

By the end of the year it should be clear whether the deal will go ahead, according to those involved. There would be money for the takeover: Shortly before the start of the Ukraine war, Getir secured fresh 768 million dollars from investors. In addition, start-ups usually pay for takeovers of competitors with company shares. Getir is rated significantly higher than gorillas.

First, however, Getir wants to grow in Germany via franchisees who operate individual locations, initially in Berlin. The new partner is even competing with the company: Lieferando has been running its first delivery shop in the capital for a few weeks, where the supplier is testing the food business on its own account - a remnant of one of the failed small partners.

The test should continue despite the new cooperation with Getir. "We are extending the pilot project for a further month in order to optimize the processes and adapt the offer to our customers and demand," said a spokeswoman.

With a view to the entire group, however, this is only a small project: Worldwide, the Delivery Hero competitor JET had half a billion orders in the first half of 2022. The share of sales that gets stuck in the group was 2.8 billion euros. An adjusted operating loss (Ebitda) of 134 million euros was incurred globally. The Northern Europe region, to which the German business belongs, was the only one that was operationally profitable at EUR 124 million.

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