Dublin, Amsterdam, Berlin The German fast food delivery service Gorillas relies on partnerships in the struggle for financial progress. The aim is to work with large supermarket chains, co-founder and Chairman Ugur Samut said at a conference in Dublin on Wednesday.
The “Tescos and Alibabas of this world” would offer gorillas more purchasing power and higher margins. So far, the high-loss Berlin startup has only been able to secure test runs with Tesco and a delivery alliance with the organic supermarket Alnatura. The Berlin competitor Flink, on the other hand, works together with Rewe and Carrefour.
Gorillas have to cut costs to achieve their own goals. “We believe that we will be profitable operationally in three months and as a group in twelve months,” Samut said. Gorillas is suffering from high inflation, the economic slowdown and the decline of technology values and therefore had to say goodbye to its expansion course, which was launched in the corona crisis. To ensure that the company does not run out of money, 300 employees in the administration were laid off in May and the stores in Italy, Spain, Denmark and Belgium were put in the shop window.
Getir from Turkey and the British provider Zapp are also cutting jobs. “We realized, we need to adjust, we need to correct the course and we need to do it quickly, which is why there were some difficult decisions and now the whole focus is on profitability,” Samut said. Gorillas investor Christophe Maire of Atlantic Food Labs told Reuters the strategic realignment was the right move to build a long-lasting business.
Fast food delivery services such as gorillas, the DoorDash company Flink and Getir from Turkey have sprung up like mushrooms in the corona crisis. Financial investors willingly provided capital to the loss-making startups. In view of the turnaround in interest rates, the money is no longer so loose. Gorillas was able to collect around 860 million euros for the last time in October. At that time, the globally active food delivery service Delivery Hero also came on board as an investor with a capital injection of 200 million euros.
According to an insider, Gorillas has now hired the investment bank JPMorgan to negotiate with investors about a fresh injection of money and other strategic options, which include a sale. Gorillas are a good catch for food delivery services that are friends of a consolidation, said the person familiar with the matter.
