Delivery services don't always run smoothly. Startup Gorillas is no exception. In addition to a lack of profitability, there is always trouble with the employees. The latest approach to increasing the pace is likely to backfire.
According to a report, the delivery service Gorillas wants to give preference to fast drivers when assigning shifts. This is based on a draft company agreement that was reported by "Spiegel". According to this, strict time windows should be prescribed for which drivers can register for shifts - but fast drivers should be able to bypass these queues.
The legal representative of the Gorillas works council, Martin Bechert, criticized the company's plans as "anti-social". "Anyone who cannot offer their drivers higher salaries is just introducing a two-class society," he told the "Spiegel". The company said the plans are just a "draft" that has not yet been finalized. The first thing to do is to negotiate with the works council.
Fast food delivery services like gorillas have sprung up like mushrooms during the Corona crisis. Financial investors willingly made capital available to the loss-making start-ups. The companies used the money to set up mini warehouses in cities, hired drivers and advertised to convince as many customers as possible to order supermarket items and have them delivered quickly. In addition to gorillas, competitors Flink flanked by DoorDash and Rewe, Getir from Turkey and Jokr spread around the world.
In the meantime, however, the wind has turned: food delivery services such as Delivery Hero or Lieferando owner Just Eat Takeaway.com have experienced an unprecedented downturn on the stock exchanges, capital is no longer so cheap with the expected interest rate hikes by the central banks and the high inflation and the War in Ukraine will dampen the economy. Accordingly, Gorillas had also announced that it wanted to become profitable in 2023.
Gorillas closed the loss-making business in Belgium at the end of June. Already in May 300 employees in the administration had been dismissed, the shops in Italy, Spain, Denmark and Belgium were traded as divisions for sale. Gorillas was last able to collect around 860 million euros from investors in October.
