Just Eat passes one billion UK orders

Hungry households in the UK have placed one billion orders on online food delivery platform Just Eat since its inception in 2001, the company has revealed.

The milestone was reached during the summer, and included 200 million orders in the first nine months of this year.

Bosses said business in the UK increased 51% in the three months to the end of September compared with a year earlier following a heavy investment programme to win new customers.

Globally, Just Eat Takeaway processed 266 million orders in the past three months, up 25% compared with the same period in 2020.

The sector’s preferred measure of success – gross transaction value – rose 23% to 6.8 billion euros (£5.8 billion).

In the US, orders were up 3% in the period compared with a year ago, where it said the firm “started to implement an improvement programme re-focusing the company on Grubhub’s strongholds”.

US delivery platforms recently faced a setback in New York, after price caps were imposed on how much the services could charge restaurants.

Matt Maloney, founder of Grubhub, one of the US’s biggest food delivery platforms, recently quit the board of Just Eat Takeaway, just months after the company was taken over.

In Germany, Just Eat Takeaway said the country was the second fastest-growing region, adding 10 million incremental orders in the period compared with the previous year – a 35% increase.

Looking ahead, bosses said they will transform their recent takeover of Slovakian rival Bistro.sk.

They added that full-year order growth is expected to be above 45% year on year, with global gross transaction values of between 28 billion (£24 billion) and 30 billion euros (£25.5 billion).