Take Eat Easy suspended as owners seek buyer

The Brussels meal delivery service Take Eat Easy has suspended deliveries while it looks for a buyer, following a disappointing capital round that ended this month.

The company was set up in 2013 and came to be seen as a textbook example of a successful start-up. In partnership with city restaurants, the company delivered meals to customers at home using bicycle couriers. The prices were the same as the restaurants charged, with Take Eat Easy adding a flat-rate delivery charge of €2.50.

The company made its money, theoretically, by negotiating a lower price from the restaurants, who could make a sale without the overhead of service or catering to a customer taking up a table. However, the margin was not enough to pay for the growth, from 10 employees to 160 in a year, from 450 to 3,200 partner restaurants, and from a client base of 30,000 to 350,000.

Originally serving Brussels, Take Eat Easy soon branched out to Antwerp and Ghent before moving on to Paris, Barcelona and London. The expansion required investment and the company began a search for capital. However, strong competition – from the likes of the London-based Deliveroo in Belgium and Uber Eats in Paris – made attracting investors difficult.

The company is now looking for someone to take it over. The asking price is reported to be €30 million, less than double the €16 million funding raised last year. Two potential buyers are being mentioned: Delivery Hero from Germany and GeoPost from France.

“We are proud and happy to have been at the centre of this revolution, and have loved being able to deliver to you from the best restaurants, but sadly it is time to say goodbye,” co-founder Chloe Roose wrote on the blog site Medium.com.

Photo courtesy Take Eat Easy