Deliveroo is closing down in the Netherlands. My keyboard is covered in tears. It’s appalling that forward-thinking entrepreneurs have been forced, yes forced to stop doing business in this country due to silly rules protecting sub-contractors from being exploited.
Deliveroo Closure Announcement Email (What they really would like to say)
Dear Shallow Man,
We wrote to you in August to tell you the difficult news that we had commenced consultation on our proposals to exit the Netherlands. We have now completed the consultation process and have taken the decision to proceed with our proposals.
As the kut Dutch courts are forcing us to treat the self-employed people delivering the food as employees, we were like, “hey! we’ve gotta eat, and so do our investors. If we actually drop the pretence that our riders are self-employed, do you have any idea how much that will cost us? The next thing you know, we’ll have to pay the riders, sick pay and holiday pay. In Amsterdam, where the bike lanes are like Deathrace 2000. do you know how much money it would cost us to pay for people to lie around in the hospital? Even if we do pressure our riders to deliver food as quickly as possible, we can’t be expected to pay for the consequences. Nee! Dat kan echt niet! Or, in the words of that overrated singer and rapper Drake. Over my dead body”.
We can now confirm that our last day of operations in the market will be 30 November at 10:00 am.
Before the ceasing of operations, please make sure to use any outstanding gift cards or unused Deliveroo credit and enjoy your favourite restaurants. Please spend, spend, spend. Order as much as possible so we can have a good fiscal month.
Deliveroo’s service will be available as normal up until that time.
At Deliveroo, we’re on a mission to create the very best food delivery service in the world, (and the most profitable), and this means creating a service that works for our restaurant and ODG partners, riders and customers. Or to put it better, we need to be able to become profitable eventually. In the Netherlands, where they have silly commie labour laws protecting workers from being exploited by multinational corporations, it’s just not going to work. Or better said, “it’s not me. It’s you”.
Where we cannot fulfil this responsibility exploit workers profitably to the levels our investors expect and you deserve, we won’t operate. That’s why we have now announced the difficult decision to exit from the Netherlands quicker than a person that’s just had a King’s Day one-night stand.
Thank you for ordering with Deliveroo – we have enjoyed (your money) being able to bring you amazing food from some of the many brilliant restaurants in the Netherlands. (No comment).
For any requests, please contact us at [email protected].
We want to thank you again for using Deliveroo.
The Deliveroo Team
No under paid, overworked Deliveroo riders were hurt during the writing of this post.
