TheChek News Flow

The Takeaway

• DoorDash held talks with Trendyol before Uber announced deal

• Uber and DoorDash vie over table-booking services as new growth area

• DoorDash, Uber and Prosus face tough market share battles in U.K., Italy, France

A recent delivery dealmaking frenzy in Europe has kicked off a race between DoorDash, Uber and investment firm Prosus, as the three firms aim to grab more business in the already fiercely competitive market.

Some of that has been playing out publicly, with a series of rapid-fire announcements. But behind the scenes, U.S. delivery archrivals DoorDash and Uber have also been fighting over some of the same deals. DoorDash made overtures to Trendyol Go, a Turkish delivery service Uber wound up agreeing to buy most of, people familiar with the matter said, while the rivals also competed on expanding into restaurant reservations.

DoorDash has long been battling Uber to defend its position as the dominant food-delivery service in the U.S., where it has more than 60% of the market. But the two firms’ rivalry is also intensifying overseas, most visibly with DoorDash’s recent $4 billion deal to buy U.K.-based Deliveroo. The acquisition gives DoorDash a foothold in several big countries where Uber Eats is beating it, including France and Germany.

Europe has long been a tantalizing but tough delivery market—it’s big but mostly slow-growing, with consumer adoption of food delivery lagging U.S. trends. Homegrown European food-delivery firms have stagnated in recent years, and some have shuttered or sold particularly poor-performing segments, setting in motion a changing of the guard in ownership.

At the same time, DoorDash and Uber, whose Uber Eats is the No. 2 delivery service in the U.S., are looking to wring more revenue from restaurants and delivery customers in the U.S. and other big existing markets. That’s prompted both to seek ways to link up table-booking and delivery services.

Recent months saw a head-spinning series of announcements on both fronts. In February, investment firm Prosus said it would acquire Amsterdam-based Deliveroo competitor Just Eat Takeaway.com for roughly $4.3 billion cash, making Prosus the biggest delivery group outside the U.S. and China. Just Eat has been trying to stem its losses and focus on profitability in recent years—it sold off its U.S. Grubhub business to food startup Wonder in November.

Then in early May, DoorDash announced its planned all-cash Deliveroo acquisition, along with a deal to buy OpenTable competitor SevenRooms for $1.2 billion. That same day, Uber said it was acquiring a majority stake in Turkish delivery service Trendyol Go for $700 million in cash.

“Now, it looks like Just Eat is going to get some fresh capital behind it. Uber Eats is now trying to continue to grow share there. It’s kind of now or never” for DoorDash to expand in Europe, said Michael Morton, an analyst at MoffettNathanson.

Leading up to those announcements, DoorDash and Uber went head-to-head on deals and partnerships. Trendyol was close to finalizing a deal to sell most of the delivery business to Uber when DoorDash approached Trendyol in recent months about a potential deal, a person familiar with the negotiations said.

Ultimately Uber prevailed. Trendyol Go represents a small addition for Uber, with $2 billion in gross bookings in 2024, less than 5% of Uber’s nearly $43 billion in overall ride-hailing and delivery volumes. However, Trendyol is fast-growing, with bookings surging 50% year on year in 2024.

DoorDash taking the plunge on Deliveroo, which it reportedly explored buying last year before balking on price, also explains the timing of its SevenRooms acquisition. That deal could add higher-margin software revenue and further lock restaurants into working with DoorDash, which could help it defend its U.S. business while it pursues European expansion.

SevenRooms sells booking and management software to high-end venues like Mandarin Oriental hotels and Wolfgang Puck restaurants. DoorDash will combine that software with its delivery-management software, a person who worked on the strategy said. DoorDash is also weighing the addition of table booking to its main consumer delivery app, the person said. The two companies had previously teamed up on a pilot in 2022 of similar reservation features.

Since then DoorDash had approached OpenTable, a bigger competitor to SevenRooms, about a commercial partnership. And Uber also started discussions with OpenTable earlier this year, a person with direct knowledge of the talks said.

By March, Uber announced that it was teaming up with OpenTable to pair their services in countries including the U.S., Canada and the U.K. And in May, days after the DoorDash-SevenRooms announcement, OpenTable and Uber unveiled more details about their partnership, including adding OpenTable reservations to Uber Eats’ app and discounts on Uber rides to OpenTable-booked meals.

“OpenTable evaluates hundreds of partners a year. With Uber, there was an immediate rapport and mutual vision when the teams met to discuss a collaboration. We admire their partnership philosophy and Uber’s focus on winning the right way,” an OpenTable spokesperson said in a statement.

Prosus, DoorDash and Uber didn’t provide statements.

Fresh Firepower

DoorDash, for its part, has indicated it’s prepared to spend heavily for Deliveroo to win share, since its overall U.S.-dominated business is profitable. That’s a change from how Deliveroo has operated recently.

Deliveroo turned a profit in 2024 after operating at a loss for most of its history, generating positive free cash flow. But its gross order volume grew 6% to roughly $10 billion, a slowdown from recent years and below its overall order growth rate.

DoorDash expanded outside the U.S. in 2022, with a roughly $8 billion acquisition of Finland-founded Wolt, which focuses on smaller Eastern European countries. It has nearly quadrupled European order volume to around $11.5 billion since, but it loses money there on an adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization basis, according to MoffettNathanson estimates.

Prosus, the biggest shareholder in Tencent, has cash on hand from selling some of its stake in the Chinese tech giant. Its Just Eat Takeaway deal is its first outright acquisition in Europe, where Prosus has a minority stake in Berlin-based Delivery Hero.

Just Eat is bigger than Deliveroo in Europe, with over $21 billion in order volumes in 2024, but grew orders just 1% year over year. Prosus plans to restart growth by spending on technology and improved customer service.

Uber, like DoorDash, is operating profitably overall but hasn’t made a big delivery acquisition in Europe previously. Instead, it’s used its ride-hailing business, which operates in 28 European countries, as a launchpad for delivery. Uber hasn’t disclosed whether its European operations are profitable.

The Trendyol deal offered Uber a quick way into a newer, fast-growing market for delivery, a person who worked on the strategy said. Uber also has faced challenges in its ride-hailing business in Turkey, where regulators banned it between 2019 and 2021.

Tough Battles Ahead

All three contenders now face a tough and likely expensive battle growing or defending delivery businesses across Europe.

Food-delivery companies need to attract customers, restaurants and drivers in each city or market—spending on brand building, driver incentives and customer discounts—while also complying with local worker regulations and EU competition laws.

“There’s not a lot of synergies in the traditional sense for buying cross-border food-delivery assets, where there’s no branding synergies,” said Morton, the MoffetNathanson analyst. “The person in the East Village doesn’t care about your restaurant inventory in London.”

At the same time, fresh firepower behind Just Eat and Deliveroo will inflame longstanding country rivalries. In the U.K., for instance, there’s already a tight three-way battle between Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo, with each taking roughly a third of market share, according to YipitData.

In Italy, meanwhile, Deliveroo has roughly 40% share, just ahead of Delivery Hero–owned Glovo. And in France, Uber Eats has roughly 65% market share, YipitData shows, and Deliveroo has roughly 35%.

Analysts say delivery consolidation in Europe is likely done for now. Still, they haven’t ruled out Chinese firm Meituan, which operates the world’s largest food-delivery business and could be tempted to break into Europe.

Meituan launched food deliveries outside mainland China in 2023 with its own service, Keeta. That service started with Hong Kong, where it underpriced firms including Deliveroo, which wound up exiting that market earlier this year. Meituan expanded to Saudi Arabia and plans to add Brazil later this year, but it hasn’t said anything about Europe yet.