Lieferando cuts 2,000 driver positions in Germany – and wants to work with subcontractors

Lieferando is reducing its fleet in Germany by almost a fifth. The CEO says it has to survive in the fierce competition.

The food delivery service Lieferando plans to lay off around 2,000 drivers nationwide by the end of the year, many of them in Hamburg. This corresponds to around 20 percent of the entire fleet, Lieferando announced. The reason is that the platform will be working more closely with subcontractors for last-mile deliveries in the future.

"The competitive landscape and the market are changing ever more rapidly and profoundly," said Germany CEO Lennard Neubauer to the German Press Agency. "Customers expect reliable service and short order times." In some places, this cannot be adequately ensured with the current structures.

Especially in smaller markets, such as Wiesbaden, Lübeck, or Bochum, Lieferando will therefore work with specialized logistics companies that will handle deliveries with their own drivers, Neubauer continued. Lieferando is also taking this approach in Hamburg. Due to its size, the job cuts will hit the Hanseatic city particularly hard.

The general works council was to be informed of the measures this afternoon. "Negotiations on a social plan should begin at the sister company as soon as possible," Neubauer emphasized. The goal is to complete the process by the end of the year, or by the first quarter of 2026 at the latest.

Lieferando is part of the Dutch delivery service Just Eat Take Away. The German business is managed by the subsidiary Lieferando Marktplatz Gesellschaft. The drivers were previously almost exclusively permanently employed by the company through another subsidiary, Takeaway Express.

This will remain the case for most drivers in the future. Around five percent of the delivery volume will be outsourced to specialized third-party providers, it was announced. The concept has already been tested in Berlin with a subcontractor. It will also be implemented in some districts of the capital.

"That's pretty much the most important and critical component of the whole story: the criteria of the fleet partners we want to work with," said Neubauer. A rigorous selection process is in place to ensure that the riders are permanently employed and paid accordingly.

Lieferando points out that working with subcontractors is common practice in the market. In fact, competitors like Uber Eats and Wolt also operate this way. Riders often operate independently, and employee representatives criticize exploitative conditions and widespread bogus self-employment. The problem is so significant across the EU that the EU Commission has issued a Platform Directive to prevent bogus self-employment in the platform business. This directive has yet to be implemented at the national level.

The fact that Lieferando mostly employed its drivers directly was met with approval by employee representatives. The outcry is likely to be correspondingly strong now.

The Food, Beverage and Catering Union (NGG), for example, has been fighting for years for a collective agreement for Lieferando employees and a minimum wage of €15 per hour. The union recently called for further warning strikes in Hamburg. With the outsourcing of part of the delivery business to third-party companies, the union is likely to find it significantly more difficult to ensure uniform employment conditions.