Welcome back, fellow logistics enthusiasts!
Two months ago, we ran a deep dive on the shareholder revolt at Delivery Hero and closed with an open question: would the company end up leaner, broken up, or under new leadership? May delivered two big answers, and one of them includes a takeover approach from Uber. We're breaking that down, plus Uber Eats' Finland launch and Wolt defending its home turf while pushing deeper into retail.
Other than that, this month’s edition is a little shorter than usual since we're busy rolling out our courier network platform NOW.delivery in Hamburg. If you want to partner with us in Hamburg, either as a merchant with or without your own fleet, or as a courier partner, please reach out to us!
And as always, you'll find the latest MotionTools release notes at the bottom.
📢 What the industry was up to
Delivery Hero Update: Uber wants the whole thing
Following a Bloomberg report, Delivery Hero confirmed on May 23 that it had received a takeover approach from Uber at €33 per share, valuing the company at around €9 billion. The offer sits slightly below the recent share price, suggesting an opening move rather than a final number. Uber has also grown its stake from roughly 7% to about 19.5% since we last wrote, making it the largest single shareholder ahead of Prosus. If completed, it would be one of the largest delivery deals in Europe to date and reshape the competitive map across four continents.
The other piece of news came eleven days earlier. On May 12, Delivery Hero announced that Co-Founder and CEO Niklas Östberg will hand over the role by 31 March 2027, fifteen years after co-founding the company in Berlin. The Supervisory Board has launched the search for a successor and aims to wrap it up by year end 2026. Östberg stays on through the transition and continues to lead the Strategic Review and related M&A processes, including, presumably, whatever happens next with Uber.
Uber Eats also keeps stacking up
Speaking of Uber: Uber Eats officially launched in Finland on May 6, starting in Helsinki with around 200 restaurants and expanding to Espoo and Tampere over the rest of the month. It's the second of the seven European launches planned for 2026, after Denmark in April, with Norway up next. As we covered in March, Foodora exited Finland after ten years, just days before Uber Eats confirmed its entry.
K Group joined the Finnish launch on the grocery side, with Kesko piloting under-30-minute grocery delivery from six Helsinki stores. According to Hanna Heinänen, Director of K Group's online grocery business, the pilot will expand to additional cities as Uber Eats opens new service areas. Online grocery grew 7.9% at K Group last year, with 90,000 weekly deliveries.
In the U.S., Ahold Delhaize USA expanded its Uber Eats partnership to nearly 2,000 stores across Food Lion, Giant Food, The Giant Co., Hannaford, and Stop & Shop. Customers in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic can now shop the brands directly in the Uber Eats app with on-demand and scheduled delivery. The deal builds on an existing Uber Direct partnership powering first-party delivery for the same brands.
Wolt is defending its home turf and expands
While Uber Eats is moving into Wolt's home market, Wolt is busy widening its lead on retail and grocery across Europe. The day before Uber Eats launched in Helsinki, a giant Wolt ad promised up to 40% off restaurant orders and 14 days of free delivery, a clear signal that Wolt isn't planning to cede ground without a fight.
In Norway, Wolt teamed up with electronics chain Power to launch quick delivery of small electronics. The pilot kicked off from six Power stores in Oslo, with selected products delivered in around 30 minutes. Power has 130 stores across Norway, many in cities where Wolt already operates quick delivery, so there's room to scale if the pilot performs. According to Anahita Aaneland, Head of Retail Partnerships at Wolt Norway, the vision is for Wolt to become "a shopping mall in your pocket."
In Germany, Wolt Market opened its 15th store, this time in Nuremberg, its first location in Franconia. The digital supermarket carries over 5,000 products, including local brands. Average delivery time: around 40 minutes. We covered Wolt Market's full relaunch as an online supermarket back in March, so this is another step in that direction.
🦾 Shipping better technology for a world in Motion
Feature highlight: Tour compensation
We're introducing tour compensation: a single, structured view of everything a driver earns for a tour. It pulls base pay, bonuses, and tips into one total that adds up automatically. Operators can set a base rate and up to five bonuses per tour.
Drivers see the full breakdown right in their app through two new labels and on the past Tour Details screen. In the Dashboard, a new Compensation tab on the Tour Details page lets you edit everything in one place. And for integrations, a dedicated API exposes each part of the total, with a new webhook that fires whenever something changes.
The feature is already live in the API and Dashboard, with driver apps rolling out over the coming weeks.
Quick view of other updates:
- Automatic tip distribution onto tour compensation
- New webhook for workforce busyness signal
Upcoming deprecations:
- Depreciation of the legacy tour earnings attribute
- Removal of the Fleet management feature
