Deliveroo pulling out of the Netherlands next month; Couriers will be compensated

Meal delivery service Deliveroo will leave the Netherlands at the end of next month. The company previously announced that it was planning to withdraw from the Dutch market. The company will compensate not only its employees but also its deliverers for the departure. Deliveroo made agreements for this with the trade union FNV, which has been advocating for deliverers’ rights for some time.

According to Deliveroo, its position in the Dutch market is not good enough, and it would cost too much money to improve it. Deliveroo faces a great deal of competition from Thuisbezorgd.nl and UberEats in particular. At the same time, the Netherlands is only a small market, so the consequences of a departure are not massive. Only 1 percent of all orders placed with Deliveroo in the first half of this year came from the Netherlands.

Deliveroo’s permanent employees in the Netherlands will receive compensation for the loss of their job. The deliverers are not permanently employed, however. Deliveroo made agreements with FNV about compensation for them. According to the trade union, this is unique. How much they’ll get depends on what they earned from August 2021 to August this year. How long they have delivered for Deliveroo will also play a role. The deliverers do not have to accept the agreed-upon compensation.

Despite its departure, the originally British delivery service still has a few issues to face in the Netherlands. This year, a Dutch court will rule on whether delivery workers are self-employed or employees. And next spring, the Supreme Court will determine whether the company fell under the collective labor agreement for professional freight transport. Those rulings could still cost Deliveroo a lot of money.

After November, Deliveroo will be active in 10 countries. The company, founded in 2013, has been active in the Netherlands since 2015. The company started only in Amsterdam and later expanded to about 20 Dutch cities.