The Ledger
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Will Shu: Over 50% of Deliveroo riders work on multiple platforms
“Over 50% of our riders work on multiple platforms.”
Will Shu: Investment bankers are only useful for driving competitive tension
“I think, look, at the end of the day, what is a banker good for? I think bankers are great for running processes. They're great for, you know, driving sort of competitive tension.”
Deliveroo CEO Will Shu admits he is not a professional manager
“Practical, tactical elements of management, frankly, are things that you learn at other companies. And we're building this muscle today, but that's one area where I'm like, hey man, there's a million people better at that than me. I'm not a professional CEO, r…”
Will Shu predicts dark kitchens will experience huge growth post-COVID
“Because I do think about just the restaurant industry and what's happened during COVID, and it's very clear that this part of it's going to keep growing hugely, and it's beneficial for restaurants.”
Will Shu: Food delivery unit economics require hyper-local order density
“What we realized pretty quickly was driving density of orders would actually make the unit economics work pretty quickly, but it's kind of hard to do that all at once, you know, let's say 200 cities, because this is a hyper local marketplace, right?”
Will Shu: European online food delivery penetration remains at just 3%
“Online penetration of food is three to five percent still today. Now, I think the US sort of leapfrogged a lot during COVID, but if you look at Europe, It's still in that, you know, one meal out of 21 a week is online. So I think we're super, super early.”
ML models make delivery platforms far more profitable than greedy solvers
“While a greedy solver can get you maybe initially 70% of the way there, that's fine for a while. Layering on, you know, all of this, you know, additional machinery made it, you know, much more profitable over time.”
Will Shu: Tracking rider drops per hour leads to gamed metrics
“We don't track drops per hour because it's a number that's highly prone to gaming by the teams.”
Will Shu: Monitoring short-term stock price makes leaders worse
“I think that, you know, focusing on a share price in the short term is something that's probably inevitable, right? People do it. I certainly do it, right? I'm sure my employees do it. But it actually doesn't help do your job in any way at all. It actually, it…”
Deliveroo CEO Will Shu has never had formal mentors or advisors
“I've never developed a sort of regular relationship with someone where you meet them once a week or once a month. The sort of advice has been more ad hoc as needed.”
Shu: Grocery accounts for over 7% of Deliveroo's business
“Our grocery business, I think we said in our H-one results is over seven percent of our business now, right?”
Will Shu: Dark stores beat supermarket store-pick models on inventory accuracy
“The inventory management side of a small warehouse is a better consumer experience than a store pick model from an inventory standpoint.”
Will Shu: Deliveroo will continue investing heavily in dark kitchens
“Today, some markets, it's a really big part of our business, and we're going to continue to invest a lot in these kitchens.”
Deliveroo launched with only three initial restaurant sign-ups
“So before that, we were setting everything up, and I could only get three restaurants to sign up.”
Will Shu personally signed Deliveroo's first 50 restaurants
“But I signed up every single restaurant up until probably, you know, restaurant number 50, and then I hired a guy called Justin, who's still at the company, and he, him and I worked on that side of things.”
Will Shu self-funded Deliveroo's 2012 launch with 30,000 pounds
“I funded the company myself. It's not like we had any money. It was a very different fundraising environment in 2012. So I had savings, you know, I put in 30,000 dollars or pounds.”
Will Shu personally performed Deliveroo food deliveries for a full year
“I did the most unscalable things. I did deliveries for an entire year. I, you know, signed up every restaurant at nighttime worked on product.”
Will Shu: Uber Eats used McDonald's as a global expansion weapon
“They had McDonald's. Right. They had this secret weapon and McDonald's is the world's most famous food brand.”
Deliveroo skipped investment bankers because of Will Shu's finance background
“Look, we didn't use a banker because we never used a banker. I come from finance, so I understand, you know, the concept of a participating preferred, and, you know, I can have a sort of high-level understanding of this stuff.”
Deliveroo's 12 markets represent a $1.8 trillion total addressable market
“If you think about the tan of the 12 markets we're in between grocery and restaurant food, it's 1.2 trillion pounds or 1.8 trillion dollars, right?”
Shu: Deliveroo CEO still completes rider deliveries every few weeks
“I was a delivery writer for a year every day. I do the job, you know, every few weeks now. I just did it in Paris last week when I was there.”