Uber Eats plans Germany launch in challenge to Just Eat

Uber will launch Uber Eats in Germany in the next few weeks, the company said on Wednesday.

Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, Uber’s senior vice president, said that Uber had already signed up ‘dozens’ of restaurants in Germany to launch its Uber Eats service in the country.

In remarks to the Financial Times, Uber said that it was attempting to break what it called Just Eat Takeaway.com’s "monopolistic" stranglehold on the German food delivery market.

In Germany, Gore-Coty said, "you have one player that is effectively dominating that country," describing Just Eat Takeaway’s commission rates as "extraordinarily high".

"That translates into consumers and merchants actually being quite desperate for additional options," he added.

The country is one of the fastest-growing markets in ride-hailing and is a "strategically important country", according to the vice president.

“Europe in particular has been a bright spot for [Eats], both in terms of some of the growth we’ve seen, but also, frankly, in terms of the strengthening of our market position,” he said, pointing to market share gains in the UK and Spain.

The service will be offered in Berlin first and later rolled-out to other cities.

In 2020, more than 24m Europeans used Uber Eats to order meals, from over 126,000 restaurants, which were delivered by about 370,000 couriers.