Meal delivery firm Foodora has announced plans to merge with the Finnish-owned delivery service Pizza Online at the end of January. Both companies are part of the Berlin-based multinational concern Delivery Hero.
Pizzas and meals will still be home delivered but under the Foodora brand, according to Foodora Finland's marketing chief Nora Särkä.
"We wanted to keep the brand familiar to consumers, so we considered which brand to use for quite a while. [In the end] we felt that Pizza Online is strongly associated with pizza, although [Foodora] offers a lot more. It was natural to choose Foodora as the brand," Särkkä explained.
Ordering home-delivered meals has never been easier for consumers since Foodora and its competitor Wolt opened for business. However, the services may not provide the best experiences for delivery workers in the sector.
Foodora currently serves seven cities in Finland, including the Helsinki region, Oulu, Turku and Jyväskylä. Pizza Online operates in nearly 20 cities and communities. Meanwhile, competitor Wolt is present in 17 cities and municipalities across the country. Following the merger, Foodora will become the largest food delivery service in Finland, according to 2018 figures.
Last summer an Yle investigation found that Pizza Online maintained its market position by preventing restaurants from using other services while taking up to 22 percent of the purchase price of each order.
Foodora and Wolt have also faced scrutiny from freelancing delivery workers over the firms' business practices. A group of workers from both firms created the group justice4couriers.fi, which aims to improve working conditions in the industry.
Some of the group's demands include abandoning planned pay cuts, improving the allocation of shifts and recognising delivery workers as contracted employees, among others.
16 January, 2020: Edited to reflect that the information on the size of Foodora is based on figures from 2018.
