SkipTheDishes and Just Eat cut 800 jobs in Canada amid restructure

TORONTO — About 800 Canadian employees are being laid off by SkipTheDishes and its parent company.

Roughly 100 Canada-based workers will depart SkipTheDishes, the food delivery service’s chief executive Paul Burns revealed on LinkedIn on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, some 700 staff members who work for its owner Just Eat Takeaway.com will also lose their jobs, he added.

“Decisions that impact people’s jobs are never simple or easy, however the measures we took are necessary to ensure we have the right resources and organizational structure in place to drive sustainable growth,” he said.

“A more focused approach will also ensure we continue to provide an enhanced offering to customers and exceptional service to all our stakeholders.”

The cuts come roughly a year after SkipTheDishes’ top job was handed to Burns, who ran Twitter Canada before the company was bought by eccentric billionaire Elon Musk who laid off a significant portion of the workforce.

The business Burns took over had spent the years prior navigating a new ownership structure along with a health crisis.

SkipTheDishes, which was long headquartered in Winnipeg and has been around since 2012, was acquired in December 2016 for $110 million by Just Eat, which merged with Takeaway.com in 2020, while the COVID-19 pandemic was raging.

Measures meant to quell the virus temporarily shut down many businesses and pushed people to spend increasing periods of time at home. The lack of venturing out was seen as a boon for food delivery services, which people increasingly turned to as a comfort and convenience during the crisis.

As pandemic measures lifted, however, inflation and then interest rates soared, weighing on consumers and forcing many to look for ways to reduce spending.

SkipTheDishes laid off about 350 workers based in Winnipeg who mostly worked in remote contact center roles in 2022.

The company said the decision spawned from a “comprehensive review of its global logistics workforce” that was designed to uncover changes that “best set the business and its partners up for sustainable growth.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 20, 2024.

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press