Welcome back, fellow logistics enthusiasts!
This has been a busy month, not only for the logistics world (especially the online grocery market) but also for our Team, between visiting conferences in London and Paris, stability improvements under the hood, and some fresh features you'll find in the Release Notes below.
This month's edition is shorter than usual, but no less spicy. We're covering big acquisition plans, power partnerships, and a few cautionary tales about the brutal economics of last-mile delivery.
📢 What the industry was up to
Last month, we covered how the online grocery market is exploding, and November proved we weren't exaggerating. More Expansions? Check. New Partnerships? Check. More robots delivering your oat milk? Also check.
But while some players are betting millions on growth, others are quietly folding their cards on their own delivery operations. This month had it all, so let’s unpack!
🌎 Betting big
Uber's eyeing a $1 billion deal to acquire Getir Food from Abu Dhabi's Mubadala fund. Once valued at $12B during the pandemic, Getir collapsed internationally and is now being sold off piece by piece as Mubadala exits the Turkish market entirely.
Wolt landed in four more German cities, bringing its 35-minute delivery promise to 60+ locations nationwide. Beyond restaurants, they're pushing hard on grocery partnerships with Edeka and Tegut, plus "Wolt for Work" to feed office teams with company-subsidized orders.
Picnic's also expanding in Germany with €430 million in fresh funding from investors like Edeka and the Gates Foundation. The Dutch grocery delivery startup just opened its 13th German distribution center in Leipzig and is eyeing Dresden, Halle, and cities across Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.
🤝 Power couples of the month
The grocery giant Kroger doubled down on delivery with a major deal. Uber Eats is bringing full-store inventory from 2,600+ Kroger locations online by early 2026, after DoorDash has already been delivering from almost all locations since September.
Across the pond, Tesco tapped Just Eat Go to power its Whoosh rapid delivery service, while Superdrug joined the platform to deliver 8,000 beauty and health products in 30 minutes or less, just in time for Christmas panic shopping.
Meanwhile, Grubhub's getting groceries: Through a new Instacart partnership, the restaurant delivery app now lets its 20M customers order from grocery stores and pharmacies without leaving the app.
🤖 Even more robots
Rewe is expanding its autonomous delivery endeavors and is running a six-month pilot with a VW ID. Buzz that drives itself (Level 4 autonomy, for the nerds) around Bochum, Germany. There's still a human on board, but the van handles the route solo.
DoorDash and Coco Robotics are rolling their partnership down from LA and Chicago to Miami, where Coco's bots will now deliver from DashMart, DoorDash's own grocery hubs. First time Coco's hauled goods for national retailers through DoorDash's network.
Uber Eats is teaming up with Starship Technologies to unleash delivery bots in the UK this December, promising sub-30-minute drops within a 3.2 km radius. Starship's already clocked 9 million deliveries globally, so they know their way around a sidewalk. It's all part of Uber's grand vision for a future where your food arrives via adorable rolling cooler instead of a guy on a moped.
🚪 The exit crew
But not everyone is a winner in this growth-intensive delivery market. Just Eat takeaway shut down its Australian operations this November, citing "challenging circumstances" and a strategic pivot to focus on other markets.
In Europe, supermarket chains are also waving the white flag on their own delivery. Berlin's Bio Company pulled the plug on its freshly launched online shop just months after its debut, redirecting all sales through Wolt instead. Austrian supermarket giant Billa followed suit, shutting down its delivery service by January next year and shifting focus to click-and-collect plus Foodora partnerships. The company's Czech operation? Also closing, reportedly bleeding cash, driven largely by the online shop. Both retailers cited "changed customer behavior and rising last-mile costs" as the culprits.
The takeaway: Running your own logistics is brutally expensive. And instead of fighting it, outsourcing to platforms with existing infrastructure and courier networks is the smartest way forward. We already talked about how 3PLs are becoming the new MVPs in our last edition; it’s worth a read!
🦾 Shipping better technology for a world in Motion
Feature highlight: Sequential gradual rollout
Back in April we introduced our first ever gradual rollout feature – a new way to assign drivers to tours. For each tour, drivers are ranked based on how suitable they are. The dispatch engine then gradually offers the tour to drivers, starting with the top-ranked drivers.
This month we're rolling out the updated gradual rollout focusing on performance and better Tour ↔ Driver matches. Learn more about the feature in this Help Center article.
Quick view of other updates:
- Simplified org manager booking & tour visibility rule
- Dispatching bookings into tours as org managers
- Simplified filters on Operations page
- Performance and stability improvements
