Just Eat & Online Food Delivery in Spain

I started working at Just Eat eight months after it was launched in Spain. The commercial structure consisted of a sales director and then four people – myself included – who were in Madrid, Valencia, Seville and Barcelona. We were selling directly to the restaurants, in those cities, as well as launching new cities, such as Bilbao, Palma de Mallorca, Murcia. After a year and a half, and with a stronger commercial structure, the company decided that there should be a regional sales manager for half of Spain, managing a team of seven people, organizing the launch of new cities and also selling directly to medium-sized restaurant chains, who had 20 to 30 restaurants.

In January 2017, the company appointed me as head of sales, managing a team of 14 people in the field as well as people in telephone positions. We managed to increase the offer of restaurants, launched in new cities and implemented new processes and established the company growth strategies.

During the launch, it was to achieve the largest possible offer of restaurants, with mixed cuisine. The offer brings the demand. It was very concentrated in large cities. At the same time, the other strategy was to make the brand as visible as possible. As there was no large marketing budget, part of the visibility was achieved with the stickers on the doors of restaurants, with the stickers being as large as possible. 25% of new users we achieved was due to the stickers on the restaurant doors.

At that time, the quality of the restaurants didn’t matter so much. The important thing was to attract new restaurants, that had their own delivery and the more motorcycles they had, the better. That meant that they were able to cope with a greater volume. We paid special attention to Chinese restaurants which were the ones with the most orders. At the same time, we began to scale, in various departments, depending on the needs. This was particularly relevant in the area of operations and customer care.

The commercial department looked for small delivery companies to deliver to restaurants who didn’t have their own delivery service. Finally, we started to think that Just Eat needed to have their own riders, in 2016. In the first years we had a big problem in Spain, because the Spanish restaurants don’t tend to have their own bikers. Eventually, the commercial department realized they had to find small companies to help us to contract with restaurants who don’t have their own delivery service.

Yes. I can give you the example of Barcelona. When I joined Just Eat, in Barcelona, there were 150 restaurants making deliveries. Now there are more than 1,000 restaurants making deliveries in Barcelona. When we entered into the market, the big problem was that the restaurants were a bit fearful of Just Eat, because they thought we would steal users. They were used to receiving their orders by phone and they thought that we would steal these customers, so it was a bit difficult. The best way that the sales department could do it was to find a small delivery company that could help us to contract with restaurants who were not making their own delivery.

Today, it’s more than 1,000.