The New York Times this morning reports that "Just Eat Takeaway, a European food delivery service, said on Wednesday that it had agreed to buy Grubhub for $7.3 billion, a deal that would give it a foothold in the United States."
The Times notes that "Uber had been in talks to buy Grubhub, but those discussions foundered over price and regulatory concerns, said people with knowledge of the discussions, who were not authorized to speak publicly. If Uber had bought Grubhub and combined it with Uber Eats, the result would have been the largest food delivery service in the United States, with about a 55 percent market share. That had attracted antitrust scrutiny."
Uber is saying that it will continue looking for food-centric companies to acquire.
Jitse Groen, CEO-founder of Just Eat Takeaway, launched "Takeaway.com in 2000 when he was a student frustrated with the challenge of ordering pizza online. He took Takeaway.com public in 2016, and now has a net worth of more than $1.5 billion, according to Forbes.
"In addition to the deals for Grubhub and Just Eat, Mr. Groen bought the German portion of Delivery Hero’s business for about $1 billion in 2018."
- KC's View:
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It'll be interesting to see what addition M&A activity takes place now in the hot food delivery sector. I'd expect to see a bunch of interesting deals … and maybe even a move by some traditional retailer to get into the space by writing a check. (Let's face it. The GrubHub deal would've been even more interesting if it had been bought by the likes of Walmart.)
