Lieferando (Just Eat Takeaway) cut 2,000 jobs in Germany, as part of a major re-structuring of the country’s largest food delivery platform.
The job cull, announced in July 2025, amounts to about 20% of the workforce.
The company is also hiring riders via sub-contractors for the first time, having first trialled the move in Berlin.
The company closed operations in 34 German cities, where sub-contractors have taken over, while in 11 other cities the number of directly employed riders was reduced.
Just Eat was bought by South African firm Prosus for €4.1 billion in February 2025 and has continued cost-cutting moves across many of the countries it operates in since then.
In the UK, France and, most recently, Austria, employed riders have also been fired as the company has shifted away from the employee model it embraced in 2020 towards ‘self-employment’ and sometimes employment via sub-contractors.
Responding to the job cuts, Mark Baumeister, head of the NGG’s hospitality industry department, said that it was a “terrible development” and criticised the fact that the Lieferando Works Councils, which exist in cities across the country, were not given any information before the announcement was made.
“What is happening here before our eyes is precaritisation, a further deterioration in working conditions for delivery services, and this at the market leader of all companies,” Baumeister added.