Undoubtedly one of the most fascinating brands of the past year is Just Eat Takeaway, a British-Dutch dot-com company; in this episode, we enjoyed speaking to Canadian subsidiary company SkipTheDishes CEO Kevin Edwards.

Kevin talks about the lessons learned throughout the pandemic; the effect on their business and independent restaurants.

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HISTORY OF JUST EAT TAKEAWAY

Canadian online food delivery company SkipTheDishes was acquired by Just Eat in 2016 for $200M.

The following years saw several mergers and acquisitions across many international markets of scale-up delivery services. By 2020 UK's Just Eat (which had already acquired SkipTheDishes, Menulog, hungryhouse) merged with takeway.com to become Just Eat Takeaway.

In March 2021, Just Eat Takeaway said it expected further growth in orders in 2021 after the pandemic helped drive a sharp rise in revenue for the year.

The food delivery group hailed an "exceptional" 2020 after posting revenue of €2.4bn (£2bn), up 54 per cent from €1.6bn in the previous 12 months. The company reported three consecutive quarters of growth over the year, with overall orders rising 42% to 588m.

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ABOUT KEVIN EDWARDS

Kevin was appointed Chief Executive Officer, SkipTheDishes in November 2018 after joining the business in April as Chief Marketing Officer. Proving to be a transformational leader, he was appointed to lead Just Eat’s North American portfolio as Skip entered their next stage of global business growth. With over 30 years of consumer strategy experience, global logistics expertise, and organizational change leadership, Kevin brings a depth of experience to the rapidly-growing business and industry.  

Prior to joining Skip, Kevin was the Chief Marketing Officer for the global Movember Foundation, and held the position of Vice President of Marketing for Office Depot in both North America and Europe where he led teams through organisational change, international integration and brand evolvement. 

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(upbeat music)

- [Kevin] Hello, I'm Kevin Edwards,

the CEO of Skip TheDishes.

- [Karim] Kevin, thank you so much for joining me

this morning.

- [Kevin] Thank you for having me.

Pleasure to be here.

- [Karim] Awesome.

So let's start off with this question

we've all banned for over a year now

in some form of a pandemic lockdown across the globe.

I'm really curious about the lessons

that you and the folks over at Skip TheDishes

have learned throughout the pandemic

whether it is about your business, your consumers

or even people's food habits

during the pandemic onboarding,

what sort of lessons you've learned throughout this time?

- [Kevin] I mean, goodness, there's a lot of lessons.

I'm not sure we could cover all of those lessons today

but let me just focus on a few things.

Look, it is remarkable what a remarkable year

it has been.

Certainly, so much tragedy

and obviously people's lives have been affected

and have been taken by the virus,

but the effect it's had on small business

and in particular restaurants,

independent restaurants in particular

is what I'm thinking of.

When we originally, so it's been about a year.

So, it kind of rolled along

and the first part of the year

and everyone kind of acknowledged there was a degree of risk

but then when it, the wave of closures

and restrictions and lockdowns that happen so quickly.

Back then, I said back then,

back in March of last year

we had about 200 employees,

already employed in Winnipeg, some in Calvary,

some in Toronto.

We sent everybody home and had everybody functioning

and working from home at 72 hours.

And so, in order, we knew that,

we had a two, so on the Friday

that we had this discussion with our leadership team

and well, what are we going to do?

Not only what are we going to do?

What we needed to do was very obvious

but how are we going to manage?

And, some of the things that we did very, very well

where we got our leadership team together very quickly

to size the problem.

And I mean, an extended leadership team

everyone who was responsible for key aspects of the business

we got everyone together

and we sized the problem.

We sort of parsed out the things

that needed to be prioritized first, but,

within 72 hours, we were

we had our entire team working from home.

So, all of those team members,

and then, more importantly

we were able to continue on,

like we were managing our shift from home on that,

our shift, but we're managing all of our operations shift

that night.

On Friday night.

So, one of the key lessons for me was that

the immediacy and getting folks together

and problem solving as an entire group

was something we did very, very well.

We realized early on though, that

we haven't, we have two things would happen.

One is that we didn't know

whether delivery would even be allowed to exist.

Food delivery would be allowed to exist

in the early going, if you'll recall,

thinking about sending a courier

from a restaurant to someone's home was

it was kind of unknown

and it might've been counter-intuitive at the time

but the fact is

very quickly municipalities mayors.

In fact, in this case,

Mayor Tory was one of the first to say

"Everyone stay at home, order your food in".

And the way that we

led was we introduced contact less delivery

nobody needed to come in contact with anyone.

We, so early on as I say,

we were uncertain, but we were still managing

we're still managing,

like we were going to be a viable important to business

and that's really what got us through

and then thinking about the impact there were

that was going to happen for restaurants

and how do we support restaurants?

And we immediately introduced that,

restaurant support package.

Getting out in front of what we felt were,

sort of this impending doom

that was going to occur within the restaurant business

and we've been,

we're proud to say we're leaders of that.

It was a difficult conversation at the beginning

when all of a sudden you may put yourself in a position

of being unprofitable for a long period of time.

We didn't know how long this was going to last

and so, I mean, there's lots of lessons there.

There's lots of lessons

and I think we as a leadership team

did a good job of navigating where

there was really no map at the time.

- [Karim] That is so true.

I want to flip to a different discussion

around global market differences

Skip TheDishes, Canadian brand

part of a larger organization of food delivery globally.

I'm really interested if we're seeing,

if you know of any cultural differences

as it pertains to food delivery across the globe

and how it might be different in North America

versus Europe, versus Asia.

- [Kevin] Yeah, a great question.

There are fundamental differences.

So, there are two delivery,

food delivery exists in two ways.

There is what we call marketplace.

So there are the,

there are restaurants that traditionally self deliver.

In particular, if you think about North America

in a market like New York restaurants deliver,

they deliver in a very,

sort of tight radius around their around their location,

but they deliver.

So, marketplaces when you have,

brands locally independence, restaurants on a platform

and you are essentially, marketing on behalf

of you're promoting your brand as a destination

for people to come and select from restaurants

and then sending them the orders

and they execute delivery.

Then there is logistics, the logistics side of the business

which is what Skip is engaged in.

I mean, we also provide orders.

We provide marketplace in Canada, but it,

the segment in Canada's very small

but in Europe, marketplace was, I mean

we're our parent company is Just Eat

and now Takeaway,

and marketplace was the vast majority of business in Europe

and, for a long time in London as well.

Now of course, logistics is becoming more

and more important, and it will soon ultimately

become the predominant part of the business.

So, there are fundamental differences

and just in two ways of executing an order,

we are as I say, we are a logistics business

who also was able to facilitate what takeout

and self delivery but predominantly

we are a logistics business.

So, our job is to handle everything from

bringing people to the app

to select from independent restaurants.

So chains, national brands and taking payment

featuring their products, managing the process,

taking the payments, sending the order,

sending the courier

and ensuring that ultimately delivery occurs

in satisfaction is gained.

- [Karim] I was going to save this question for last,

but, I'm last, but I'm going to ask this now.

You talk about Skip TheDishes being a logistics business.

So I'm really curious

what's next for Skip, public facing

we all see it as a food delivery app.

I'm really curious whether there's more for Skip

based on the logistics work that you guys do

based on the transportation

and the technology that is underlying all of this,

what the future for Skip is.

- [Karim] So to be clear,

we're a logistics business,

but as we're a technology enabled logistics business

at the core of what we do is I mean

we are a brand, right?

We are attracting customers to our platform,

both through our marketing

and our assortment

and the quality of our service

when taking an order, executing it

and ensuring that, satisfactory delivery occurs.

But we are also an on demand delivery service.

So we, we're not looking to pivot

and begin to, deliver all products across all categories

and verticals.

We are, if the business

or the opportunity is around on demand

that then very naturally, we could play a role

in providing service to those categories

for instance, convenience 7-Eleven is one of our partners,

we're through the pandemic we've become

a very important part of their business

and so convenience, specialty grocery, alcohol,

there are places that we as a brand can look to

and where an on-demand delivery service

would make sense and be viable.

- [Karim] And one thinks here in Canada

of technology companies and where they're based

I don't know whether Winnipeg would be in the top five

or even in the top 10,

but Skip TheDishes is a tech company based in Winnipeg.

I'm interested in the approach

that Skip has taken in attracting talent

and with everybody working from home

is there going to be a shift

post pandemic in terms of people

being close to and around the Winnipeg area?

- [Kevin] Yeah, good.

Another good question.

Look, all our team is working from home and has worked

from home for the past year, but that's not ideal.

I will be perfectly honest with you.

We have a brand new head office

that we built in the,

in Winnipeg we have an office in Toronto,

we have an office in Calgary.

What keeps me up at night

and many of our leaders is

what is not happening?

What are we missing?

As people spend their days on video calls

and have conversations over the phone

because look innovation, creativity

occurs face-to-face, it's biblical to have

a water cooler conversation,

or, let's go over it lunch.

Can I go get you a coffee?

Let's walk down the hall, let me drop by your desk

you can't do that in video.

So, and I say, what keeps me up at night is

we don't know what we're not creating

we don't know what's not being

innovative there or what innovation is not occurring.

You just don't know, right?

You don't know what you don't know,

but it's safe to say

like our business would not have been created over video

and so at some point we've got to bring people together

and there will be a high degree of flexibility that

I mean, we can't go from zero to 60 overnight,

but there will, there'll be,

there will be a degree of flexibility.

Also location is become, a conversation

but we have, we have more than 3000 employees in Winnipeg

we have an operations team that is all

in sourced in Winnipeg, our marketing, our engineers

for the vast majority of our team.

They are located in Winnipeg.

Three years ago Winnipeg was not a destination,

but I can tell you in the last three years,

as Skip has emerged as a brand and tech,

other tech businesses have been built in Winnipeg,

it is not off the radar anymore.

It is a fabulous city the talent that is there is remarkable

and dedicated and loyal.

Skip wouldn't be where it is today if we,

I believe if we were built any place else

there's just a degree of sticktuitiveness

and head down and passion

that we found in the talent

that we've brought on board and Winnipeg.

Now, there was a point at which Winnipeg

is a city of less than 800,000 people.

There's a point at which you need to look beyond Winnipeg

when you're at 3,200 3,300 employees

we may be getting to the point where,

and we are getting to the point

willing to look beyond when it paid

but not at the risk of shifting

the core teams out of Winnipeg

and look, if you were to say to somebody

three years ago, do you want to move to Winnipeg

and work for this brand?

Maybe not three years, maybe four years ago

and work and worked for a Skip TheDishes

most people would say, first of all, no

and secondly what's Skip TheDishes?

We have definitely emerged

and we're very proud of the fact that we've emerged

as a prominent brand in Canada.

We're number one in our category we are a roughly 50% share

of the Canadian food delivery business

and we've become a destination for people.

They want to come work for us

they obviously see our, the,

our efforts around marketing

and in brand but also the opportunities that it creates

because we have a fantastic platform

and a group of incredibly talented engineers.

- [Karim] Perfect Kevin, thank you so much

for joining us this morning

I really appreciated this conversation.

- [Kevin] You're you're very welcome, thank you.

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