Food delivery company Menulog says it will cease operating in Australia in two weeks’ time.<\/p>\n
In an online statement, the company said it would stop taking orders from midnight on Wednesday, November 26, and customers with any unused credits or vouchers were urged to use them before that date.<\/p>\n
The company said around 120 employees would be affected, and it had offered redundancy packages and employment support.<\/p>\n
It said “eligible couriers” would be entitled to a four-week voluntary payment.<\/p>\n
“Today is a tough day for the Menulog business and I would like to reassure everyone this decision was not taken lightly,” said Menulog’s chief executive Morten Belling.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Menulog has been operating in Australia for about two decades. (Facebook: Menulog)<\/p>\n
The Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) has called for remaining food delivery companies such as DoorDash and Uber Eats to “get on board to ensure there are decent standards in place as quickly as possible”.<\/p>\n
“This will be a shock to the thousands of food delivery riders who rely on Menulog for income,” said TWU national secretary Michael Kaine.<\/p>\n
“We will be working to ensure those workers receive pay for their work and fair exit payments over the coming weeks.”<\/p>\n
Mr Kaine blamed the former Coalition government for not acting quickly enough on standards in the gig economy.<\/p>\n
“Menulog wanted to do the right thing by its workforce, but years of regulatory neglect by Coalition governments has meant that change has come too late,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We are paying the price for Coalition governments’ inaction now, not just with jobs that are exploitative and dangerous, but with less options for customers in an unsustainable industry engaged in a race to the bottom.”<\/p>\n
The company has been operating in Australia for about 20 years.<\/p>\n
The company said it had been “navigating challenging circumstances” and its local closure would allow it to “focus on accelerating growth and investments in other markets”.<\/p>\n
Menulog is the latest casualty in the cutthroat food delivery market, with Deliveroo<\/a> and Foodora<\/a> also shutting down in Australia in 2022 and 2018, respectively.<\/p>\n Menulog’s exit leaves Uber Eats and DoorDash as the dominant players in the Australian food delivery sector, with a handful of smaller operators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Food delivery company Menulog says it will cease operating in Australia in two weeks’ time. In an online…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15452,161628,51521,43,161627,44,9617,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-278860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-close","9":"tag-couriers","10":"tag-customers","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-menulog","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-redundancy","15":"tag-top-news","16":"tag-top-stories","17":"tag-topnews","18":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}