Just weeks after a $575 million infusion of cash when Amazon and others invested in London-based Deliveroo, a third-party delivery platform with operations across Europe, the company is providing more details about plans for a major expansion in the United Kingdom. Bloomberg reports that the brand intends to reach half of the U.K.’s population of 66 million by the end of the year.
“We are going to go into the suburbs, go into the smaller towns,” Deliveroo CEO Will Shu told Bloomberg Television’s Caroline Hyde at the recent Sooner Than You Think technology conference in London.
“Amazon, in my view, are the best operators in the world and, to the extent we can learn from them and what they’ve been able to build over the last 20 years, that is what I’m most excited about,” he added.
U.S. grocery analyst firm Brick Meets Click said the new affiliation gives Amazon “a new way to approach covering the costs of the ‘last mile’—and it gets Amazon back into the increasingly competitive restaurant meal delivery business in the U.K.” Amazon ended its in-house delivery program in London last November. Earlier this month, Amazon also announced it will cease operations of its Amazon Restaurants subsidiary in the United States.
Brick Meets Click added that the brands working together is “a wake-up call for grocers and convenience retailers who have expanded their prepared foods and/or running restaurants.”
Even though Deliveroo doesn’t have a presence in the United States, the brand works with more than 80,000 restaurants with 60,000 drivers and 2,500 employees in its offices around the globe. It isn’t operating at significant scale anywhere in the Americas.
