Gorillas is not the only fast delivery app that has been affected by these issues. “Rising inflation and the deteriorating macroeconomic outlook around the world have pushed all companies, particularly in the tech industry and including Getir, to adapt to the new climate,” said Turancan Salur, Getir’s general manager in Europe.
Companies like Gorillas and Getir planned to burn huge amounts of cash by aggressively buying up market share, Gevaers says. “So, at some point, it’s not your business, but your customer base that gets interesting.” Getir has proven that its business model works, says Salur, because many of its stores in the company’s first market in Turkey are profitable.
Gorilla workers in Belgium who lose their jobs are mitigated by the country’s labor market rules, which provide workers on full-time contracts with at least four months’ pay as compensation. Some office workers have been hired by a Belgian food delivery company, Efarmz, which bought Gorillas’ “local business intelligence on fast trading,” according to a company announcement. The company declined to share more details about the deal.
In Spain, Gorillas employees look nervously at the fate of their Belgian colleagues. Just as in Belgium, before redundancies took place, they have been told that the Spanish subsidiary has limited time to find a buyer or investor. Around the rain 300 workers in the country have been sent official notification that their dismissal is imminent.
The app continues to work, but management is urging staff to look for new jobs, according to a current employee working at the Madrid office and speaking on condition of anonymity. “Warehouses do not get new products,” they say, adding that the number of orders per stock has fallen to around 20 per. day. “They just wait until they run out of stock.” Spain’s labor legislation is less generous than Belgium’s. Gorilla workers facing dismissal there will be entitled to a minimum of 20 days’ pay per employee. Gorillas declined to comment on their appointments with individual employees.
Gorillas in Denmark are also waiting to find out their fate, while the branch struggles to find a buyer or cash injection. Over the past year, it has struggled to reach sales targets, according to an employee who asked to remain anonymous, with stocks only receiving 70 to 80 orders a day. Districts that were also plagued with staffing problems, with the internal Slack channel regularly offering managers’ requests for help because not a single bicycle courier showed up for work, they add. Gorillas declined to comment on what they called “the details of its day-to-day operations.”
Equestrian groups in Belgium are concerned that Gorillas’ exit will create the impression that concert companies employing their staff on permanent contracts are not viable. “Many of us go back to working for platforms like Uber Eats,” says Camille Peteers, rider at the Brussels group Couriers Collective, adding that Uber Eats does not hire riders as employees. “At a time when some have announced that they are leaving the market, Deliveroo strongly believes in fast trading and flash deliveries in Belgium,” said Rodolphe Van Nuffel, a spokesman for Deliveroo Belgium. The company’s riders in the country are independent.
Gorillas says it believes its activities will be profitable in about three months and that the company will be profitable at the group level in about a year. But for analysts, Gorillas’ departure calls into question something more fundamental: that the current economy of delivery apps doesn’t match. As these companies have run to dominate large cities, they have taken some dubious shortcuts, says Marc-André Kamel, head of consulting firm Bain & Company’s global retail practice. “They have ignored the laws of gravity and have built companies without a clear path to full earnings,” he says. “They have promised ultra-convenience, but in most countries, customer satisfaction is very poor.” The claim of delivery in 10 minutes or 15 minutes sounds marketing-catchy, he adds, but it creates a huge expectation of service, which is often disappointed. In December gorillas quietly removed its promise to deliver in 10 minutes from its website.
“The market has sent a wake-up call to all these start-ups recently,” says Kamel, “reminding them that they need to find a way to profitability and be better retailers who please customers if they want to. to stay in business. ”