A report by the BR shows that the delivery service Lieferando is building unsolicited websites for cooperating restaurants.
A nuisance for many restaurateurs.
Munich - 588 million orders.
According to its own information, 20202 was a record year for the Lieferando parent company Just Eat Takeaway.
Worldwide food orders rose by 39 percent, thanks to the corona lockdown and restaurant closings.
While the Dutch company had a record turnover of 2.4 billion euros, most restaurateurs remember the year 2020 as the “year of the epidemic”.
The corona measures hit restaurant operators particularly hard inside, as they had to close their restaurants since November 2020 despite hygiene concepts.
The only source of income for the restaurateurs is the pick-up and delivery business.
According to
a report by the
BR
,
the delivery service Lieferando in particular caused
resentment among the restaurant operators.
Lieferando creates its own websites for restaurants without asking
As the
BR
reports, the delivery service Lieferando uses a dubious method to increase its sales.
The company creates websites for restaurants that cooperate with the delivery service.
And not only that: Apparently, existing websites are simply copied - but then lead to Lieferando.
The background: With the specially created website, Lieferando wants to increase the visibility of the participating restaurants in Google searches.
Companies and resaturants are working on being listed as high up as possible in a Google search query so that they are more quickly visible to potential customers.
Munich restaurateur annoyed by Lieferando-Masche
The
BR
shows that the "optimized" websites that Lieferando creates for the restaurants are usually in a better, i.e. higher, Google position than the websites that the restaurateurs built themselves.
"People were looking for his restaurant" and they find Lieferando, that's not ok, "complains Munich restaurateur Vinh Tan Pham to the
BR
.
“In 17 years he built up this shop and this name with flesh and blood.
[...] That is very unfair to us because we plowed for it, ”continued Pham.
His own website is being superseded by the website Lieferando built for him.
As the
BR
researches, the Lieferando parent company Just Eat Takeaway applies the concept across Europe.
The company is said to have secured around 120,000 domains, 50,000 of them in Germany alone.
Lieferando sees website building according to
BR
reports as an "included additional service" for restaurateurs.
According to the research, a corresponding paragraph should also be found in the contracts that the restaurant operators sign with Lieferando.
Nevertheless, Lieferando does not act out of pure charity.
As the
BR
shows, a restaurant has to pay a 13 percent commission to the company when ordering via the “shadow website”.
If the restaurant operators use Lieferando couriers to bring the food to the customer, a commission of up to 30 percent is due.
If, on the other hand, a customer orders directly via the website of the respective restaurant, these fees are logically omitted and the restaurateur receives the full order amount.
Lieferando: EU Commission wants to improve working conditions on online platforms
Lieferando is criticized not only because of the “shadow websites”.
As the
dpa
reports, the EU Commission wants to improve the working conditions of Internet platform workers.
To this end, she started an exchange with trade unions and representatives of employers on Wednesday.
It's about services that are brokered or provided via digital platforms such as Lieferando or Uber.
Although these offers on the Internet have created new jobs, "however, the working conditions for certain types of platform work are quite precarious," the EU Commission announced on Wednesday.
With this move, the authority is probably reacting to the growing trend of ordering food via platform-based applications such as Lieferando.
(
jjf / dpa
)
