Deliveroo’s Will Shu – “we are still only getting started”: Deliveroo has unveiled plans for an initial public offering. Will Shu, founder and chief executive of Deliveroo, said: “I never set out to be a founder or a chief executive. I was never into start-ups, I didn’t read TechCrunch. I’m not one of those Silicon Valley types with a million ideas. I had one idea. One idea born out of personal frustration. An idea that I was fanatically obsessed with: I wanted to get great food delivered from amazing London restaurants. At the end of the day, I started the business because I wanted something better than what was available to me. At the core, I am a customer. And that is how I will always view the world: through the lens of our customers – our riders, our restaurant and grocery merchants and our end consumers. I was looking through my first ever pitch deck from 2013 for inspiration when writing this letter. Today, the business is so, so much bigger than I ever would have thought possible then. We are building delivery-only kitchens, delivering groceries, building tools for restaurants to take them into the digital age – things I would not have been able to contemplate back then. Yet we truly believe we are still getting started. Our ambitions have increased as we start to truly understand and execute on the opportunity in front of us in online food. But this is also the way I will always view the world: we are all about food. So a lot has changed, but two very important things haven’t. First, we are customer-obsessed. And second, we are all about food. And if there are two principles that govern us here, it’s these. Today we operate in 12 markets right across the world. 115,000 food merchants, over 100,000 riders, millions of consumers. Every single month, every single year, we focused on getting better – sometimes incrementally and sometimes by leaps and bounds – focusing on great food and being customer-obsessed. But the last 12 months were different. I was sad to see many of our partners struggle – restaurants owners I’ve known for years face closure and ruin – all due to some terrible virus. So we took action to help. We reached out, brought new technology to them, guided them through the new rules so we all stayed safe, provided more Editions kitchens, and made sure that they could get their food to their customers. Together, we delivered almost a million meals to frontline NHS staff. It made me realise how far we had come. All of us working together – restaurants, riders, consumers and Deliveroo – working as one community. Now we take the next big step in our journey by allowing everyone to have a share in our future. That’s why we are planning to take Deliveroo public here in London, the city where it all started – and we plan to offer our customers across the UK the chance to own a part of the business. We are proud to be enabling our customers to participate in a future float and have the chance to buy shares. Your loyalty and custom has helped build our business. I want you to have a chance to share in our future. I also want to say ‘thank you’ to those who have been with me on this journey, the riders, restaurants and grocers. We intend to create a fund to support thousands of our partner restaurants and grocers to rebuild their businesses after the pandemic and reach more customers, so they remain cornerstones of our neighbourhoods. And for our longest serving and hardest working riders – who have helped us to build this business – we intend to make individual payments of up to £10,000. Serving our restaurants, our grocery partners, our riders and of course our end consumers is what we’re all about. All working together in the service of great food. That will never change. But how we do it will change. Join us on the journey.” The company reported that 2020, saw Gross Transaction Value – the total amount of transactions it processes on its platform (GTV) – grew by 64.3% from £2.5 billion in 2019 to £4.1 billion. In the same period, its grew its underlying gross profit by 89.5% from £188.7 million to £357.5 million, growing underlying gross profit as a percentage of GTV from 7.6% to 8.8%. The company added: “In 2020, we generated underlying Adjusted Ebitda of £(9.6) million and an underlying loss for the year of £(223.7) million, compared to underlying Adjusted Ebitda of £(231.6) million and an underlying loss for the year of £(317.3) million in 2019.”

Hero Brands invests in Island Poke: Island Poke, the London-based, White Rabbit Fund-backed business, has secured a cash injection from hospitality investor Hero Brands to help accelerate its plans for rapid growth. According to the Press Association, the James Gould-Porter-founded business has more than doubled in size over the past year to 17 outlets and is targeting more openings as pandemic restrictions start to lift. It said it plans to use the “substantial” undisclosed investment to open at least five more sites by the end of 2021. Island Poke said it had opened four “dark kitchens” in the UK over the past year as it used an expansion in delivery to help keep growth plans on track despite the global health crisis. Funds will also go towards its plans to expand rapidly in France, with plans for a further 40 sites in the country in five years. Hero Brands, which operates the global master franchise for German Doner Kebab, said it plans to use its industry expertise and operational infrastructure to help the food-to-go specialist expand in the UK and globally. The growth strategy will be led by former Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group international executive Nick Schapira. Gould-Porter said: “We’re so excited to be bringing Hero Brands on board and the experience that they’ll bring to the table. We’ve been working closely together and feel that our businesses are a great fit for each other. We’ve seen what they’ve done with other concepts within their portfolio and look forward to growing together.” The investment will see Hero Brands join the board alongside early investor Chris Miller of White Rabbit Projects and Gould-Porter. Hero Brands chairman Athif Sarwar said: “Hero Brands is responding to emerging consumer trends and focused on growing the brands of the future. We look to partner with disruptive brands that have a USP and can be scaled and taken to global markets. Island Poke fits with our DNA and is a fantastic concept that is already proving to be a huge hit with consumers across London and France. We are now very much looking forward to working with James and the team to bring our expertise and embark on our ambitions to create a truly global brand.”

Domino’s Pizza Group disposes of Swedish operation: Domino’s Pizza Group has reached agreement to sell its entire shareholding in PPS Foods AB (“Domino’s Sweden”) to Eyja fjárfestingafélag, a wholly owned subsidiary of Eyja fjárfestingafélag EHF, a company controlled by Birgir Bieltvedt, who is an indirect owner of DP Norway AS. DPG will pay €2m (£1.8m) in cash to the purchaser as part of the transaction. The transaction is expected to complete on 2 May 2021. The company stated: “The disposal of Domino’s Sweden is part of DPG’s planned exit from all directly operated international markets, to allow management to focus on its core UK and Ireland operations, as announced by the company in October 2019, and follows the exit in 2020 from Domino’s Norway. Domino’s Sweden is the master franchisee of Domino’s Pizza in Sweden. At the date of this announcement, DPS operates 14 stores in Sweden. Domino’s Sweden’s underlying operating loss for the year ended 31 December 2019 was £4.0m and the value of its gross assets were £9.8m as at 30 June 2020. Following completion, funding previously allocated to Domino’s Sweden will be retained within DPG.”

Sector could be hit by “missing” overseas workers: Britain’s economic recovery from the pandemic risks being seriously damaged by thousands of “missing” overseas workers who have left the country and will not return, senior figures from across industry are warning Boris Johnson. Executives from hospitality, social care, construction and manufacturing all raised concerns that a lack of overseas workers after the pandemic will put a “handbrake on the recovery”. Some warned that the success of some of the government’s own flagship targets, such as an aim to build 300,000 homes a year, was being put at risk. The warnings come after the issue was raised by the Office for Budget Responsibility this week. It said that the future population may be “substantially smaller” than official estimates suggest as people leave Britain, causing a “scarring impact”. There is huge uncertainty about the degree to which overseas residents have returned home in the past year and whether the post-Brexit immigration rules will put them off coming back. One estimate has suggested that as many as 1.3 million could leave during the pandemic, though this is regarded as a worst-case scenario. Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality, said: “It is a problem and it’s going to be a disproportionate problem in certain parts of the country. And we simply don’t know the scale of it. We lost 660,000 people in hospitality last year, so there is a potential pool of available labour. But as we restart the economy, it’s going to be a race to get people.”

Reef Technology secures first deal in the UK: A company backed by SoftBank that transforms under-utilised car parks and shopping centres into urban farms, neighbourhood kitchens, fulfilment centres and e-scooter rental stations has agreed its first deal in Britain. Reef Technology, which was founded in Miami, has signed a deal with Capital & Regional, the London-listed landlord that owns seven shopping centres. Finding alternative uses for parts of Capital & Regional’s malls in Luton, Bedfordshire, and Wood Green, north London, heads the to-do list. Discussions are also under way to utilise space at the landlord’s centres in Walthamstow and Ilford.

Richard Caring – we are confident we will secure the future of Bill’s: Bill’s Stores, the parent company of Bill’s Restaurants, breached the terms of its overdraft facility with HSBC during 2020 but has since secured a waiver on covenants with the bank. The company warned that while owner Richard Caring has offered to inject more money if required, there were no binding commitments to provide additional support. Bill’s was founded in 2001 by greengrocer Bill Collison as a single site in Lewes, East Sussex. Bill’s said trading at its restaurants was strong throughout August, September and October after they were allowed to reopen after the first lockdown. Caring told the Daily Telegraph: “We have maintained the company over the past year which has been the most difficult in history for the hospitality industry. With the support of our landlords and bank, we are confident that we will secure the future of the restaurants and the 3,000 members of staff who have worked so very hard and put up with so much difficulty over the past 12 months.” The chancellor announced this month that pubs, restaurants and hotels severely affected by the pandemic in England could apply for new grants worth up to £18,000 per property. Almost 80,000 premises will be entitled to claim just under £1bn of new money, new research from property firm Altus Group showed. A total of 37,463 pubs will be entitled to £445m; 27,154 restaurants could get £324m, with 13,976 hotels and guesthouses receiving £165m. Although the government has not formally published full details of the scheme, it is understood the grants will be structured in a way that will mean firms with a business rates value of £15,000 or below get a payment of £8,000. Those with a rateable value over £15,000 but less than £51,000 are expected to get 50pc more, according to Altus.

PCA publishes strategy to provide tied tenants ‘the pubs code support they want’: The pubs code adjudicator (PCA) has published its strategy as it aims to provide tied tenants “the pubs code support they want”. The PCA said it would continue to progress its digital communications and its efforts to become the “central hub and go to place” for pubs code information. It said website improvements would underpin this, and this baseline approach would help the PCA to “talk the tenants’ language, so they understand when they need the code, and get the right type of information when they do”. The PCA said next steps would involve collaborating with tied tenants, and using expert input, to test and remodel existing pubs code information to make sure it is easier to find, understandable and useful for those it covers. It said work was already underway to look at ways to streamline enquiries from tenants and ensure they get clear and consistent responses. PCA Fiona Dickie said: “We have already made progress in communicating more effectively but more needs to be done. Targeting our efforts in this way will help the range of tenants get the pubs code support they need for them and their business. This will be even more important as covid-19 restrictions on pubs are lifted.”