The new moves of e-food after the unrest with the distributors

Of George Lampiris

Before. And then. In this way one could describe both what preceded and what followed the unrest created in the e-food circles in our country, after the announcement of the company’s intention to convert the indefinite contracts into a certain one, making the specific self-employed distributors, which caused a wave of negative publicity for the company.

But let us look at the before or at the same time. This is found in the results of the third quarter, published by the Delivery Hero group, to which e-food belongs. And there is a clear report, based on which the development of the distributor network in Greece limited the profitability of the group in the European market in this quarter. As it is characteristically noted: “the profit margins of the group would be further increased in Europe during the third quarter, at levels higher than those of the first quarter of the year”. The point at which the group stands in its reports is related to the employment model of the distributors employed by e-food itself. In addition, however, the e-food umbrella also includes stores, which employ their own distributors, completing the dipole of the company’s activity in Greece in the field of food delivery. Examining the size of Delivery Hero, its turnover increased by 89% to 1.8 billion. euros in the third quarter, serving 791 million orders, a number increased by 52% compared to the same period last year.

The employment status of “riders”

Based on the above, one can substantiate one of the reasons why the company moved in the direction of requesting the conversion of the original contracts it had with the distributors, making the freelancers something that it eventually withdrew.

Let us now go to the aftermath of the events of last September that occupied the entire Greek territory with the name of e-food receiving a significant percentage of negative visibility from its customers and potential customers. Speaking to e-food distributors, capital.gr reported that the company withdrew its move, something that is known. According to them, those distributors who were employed before the enactment of the Hatzidakis law, were hired employees with three-month contracts through Manpower, in e-food. Following the events of September, these distributors signed contracts of indefinite duration. Now, e-food continues to strengthen its potential exclusively with freelancers either with a title deed or as freelancers starting a business.

With regard to permanent employees, they are divided into hourly wage workers with six-hour employment and wage workers with eight-hour employment. Their earnings are above the collective bargaining agreement, with the payment of bonuses in case of exceptional weather conditions, such as heavy rain or heat.

Freelancers are paid by order (as has always been the case), with amounts that depend on the day and time. For example, weekends are paid for example with 3.2 or 2.5 euros gross per order depending on the hour. In fact, in order for a freelancer to be able to effectively cover his needs and expenses, he should serve as many orders per hour as possible. The compensation for the petrol from the first kilometer that will receive the order until the receipt from the store is at 0.10 euros in the straight as it is not compensated for example a circular route of five kilometers, but the imaginary straight of the route that can be in this case 3 km.

Asked what else changed after the events of September, distributors said that while receiving messages of encouragement from the company during their work, something was interrupted.

Over 4,000 distributors in 15,000 locations and in over 90 cities

Currently, the number of distributors is constantly increasing – more than 4,000 people – in combination with the number of serviced stores estimated at more than 15,000 points in 90 cities in Greece. Within an hour it is estimated that they can deliver an average of three orders.

Finally, the distribution of distributors was stopped recently, based on an algorithm with a scale from 1 to 5, where the employee was rated negative even when he was absent on leave as the system saw that he was not delivering orders. Now the rating is based on the indicators “1” and “2”, where in this case it does not affect the evaluation of the performance of each employee. Practically at “1” the bonus one receives is greater than the one scored “2”. This is a policy that also changed after the events of September.