Just Eat Takeaway said it was ramping up its recruitment of tech staff in London despite a mass wave of layoffs earlier in the year.
The firm let go as many as 1700 delivery drivers in March amid a downturn in orders, and said it was scrapping having employed drivers in favour of gig economy workers.
CEO Jitse Groen said: “The employed model was only a single digit percentage of our orders. We are supportive of better arrangements for employees but that doesn’t work if we have an uneconomical model for the business.
“We are net adding employees in the UK, it’s not that our employee force in the UK is shrinking. In some areas we are actually adding staff, we are adding a lot of tech staff in London and Bristol and a new call centre in Sunderland.”
Just Eat could not confirm the number of additional tech employees but said there were more than 70 vacancies for roles like engineers and developers.
It comes as the delivery giant increased its full-year EBITDA guidance from 225 million euros to 275 million euros despite a significant drop in orders.
Orders with the firm fell 14% to 228 million in the first three months of 2023, while orders in Southern Europe saw an even sharper drop, down 18% to 25 million.
Gross transaction value (GTV), a measure of the total size of orders, declined more modestly, down 8% to 6.6 billion euros. GTV stayed flat in Northern Europe to 1.9 billion euros and declined 6% in the UK.
Just Eat Takeaway shares fell 4.9% to 1,366p.
Dave Reynolds, analyst at wealth management firm Davy, said: “The online foodies perhaps personified the end of the ‘growth’ love affair over 2022.
“A profoundly negative share price performance and a meaningful pivot across all business models points towards faster and better EBITDA profitability. At Just Eat, it may also be that there is something of a perception challenge as well -- the equity is down almost 40% year-to-date, with the other foodies treading water.”
