"The opportunity is to equip brick and mortar stores to compete with Amazon and Alibaba — and be better than them.”<p>This is fantastic. It makes sense -- get the convenience of ordering online, but with the tremendously better quality of buying from a local and known source, while also supporting your local economy and peers. I try everything I can to avoid Amazon, as there is just so much garbage, counterfeit, scammed reviews, and just sheer anti-competitive crap that it's a real sore in our world.
I am amazed that against all common advice people still venture out into heavily competitive segments with strong incumbents. I am impressed and at the same time wonder how exactly they managed to convince investors. Would love to see their pitch deck.
They are competing here in Berlin, against DeliveryHero (which bought foodora and other smaller deliveries).
They are both the same, except the restaurant coverage. From that I can assume they have a better b2b model.
Wolt prices are higher, even though DeliveryHero prices are already higher, including the distance extra payment for me it makes it stupid to order.
I understand that the drivers get paid more and it is obvious, but as a consumer to pay 30% more for a delivery, is insane.
Back in the day you would get FREE delivery from restaurants and even extras.
Being corona lockdown I prefer to walk and get my food.<p>This is not a judgement against Wolt, but against this whole delivery system.
Wolt has been the only delivery service that hasn’t let me down throughout 2020.<p>Time estimation is still the best, couriers are paid fairly well and I have not had a bad experience with one, support uses canned responses but solving is fast and without excuses.
A comment from the CEO Miki Kuusi (translated from Swedish):<p>This financing was about to make sure that we have the capacity to do long-term investments i all our countries, including Sweden, without having to do an IPO (go to the stock market).<p>Source: <a href="https://digital.di.se/artikel/finska-wolt-tar-in-4-miljarder-kronor-i-ny-runda-eqt-gar-in-med-mer-kapital" rel="nofollow">https://digital.di.se/artikel/finska-wolt-tar-in-4-miljarder...</a>
Cool, excited how the market will grow in Germany/Berlin. I really prefer Wolt over Lieferando in Germany. The user experience is way nicer, you have pictures of the meals which you want to order. The only thing which I miss is that you can't filter directly for vegan/vegetarian meals.
I walk to the restaurant and get the food myself. I refuse to take part in this gig economy with modern exploited day laborers, and big international companies dipping in to the already small margins of local businesses.
Around here (Tel Aviv), Wolt is pretty much a monopoly on food deliveries, to the point restaurants pled for the government regulator to declare them as such.<p>Obviously it happens because their product and UX is fantastic.<p>Going around town during lock down seems like a scene from Mad Max where the only life that survived are Wolt couriers.
In Oslo, Norway, I prefer Foodora to Wolt. Foodora's workers unionized and went on strike about a year ago in order to have sick leave. Meanwhile, Wolt hires their cyclists as independent consultants, circumventing the Norwegian labor laws.
Here in Denmark, Wolt started taking off recently, and these days you see Wolt couriers delivering food constantly. Over the last 10 years, I've several hundred orders on Just-Eat, but due to the improved UX of the Wolt app, I've now switched to it completely.
Parallel with amazon is interesting. Last mile in Europe is either non-existent or severely lacking. Wolt has successfully been bringin up this first. In that parallel, it can be considered a contender to amazon with a bottom-up approach. I've personally already seen it through wolt, with using their partners shops/storage. I was considering buying a bike for a toddler either through amazon (too long of a wait, but great choices), visiting shops locally (ain't nobody got time for that) or Wolt - we chose a model and within an hour (including assembly) toddler was already sprinting.
I've been using Wolt in Finland 3-4 times a week, their credit card integration with lunch benefits makes them a winner. They also have free deliveries sometimes.
I can't help but think that companies like this that are planning on the disruption in consumption habits due to Covid continuing into the subsequent years are going to get burned badly when everyone abruptly starts going out again. I think a lot of people have realized that dining and even going to the grocery store is a lot more about the social aspect than they originally believed.
Interesting, good luck to them.<p>In my country at least (Croatia) Wolt seems to stand out from the rest by competing on quality of service and delivery instead of price, and slowly during this year they have won me over.<p>I'll gladly pay something extra to support a business model I trust and which just works better.
"But Wolt won’t be putting Amazon out of business just yet. It needs to crack grocery delivery first."<p>Ha! Son - fly little slow. You are standing on a thin crust provided by your investors. Have a quick call with Instacart to get a check on reality.
One thing to note about courier wages/payments. In Finland wolt started initally with more generous payments to the couriers and then gradually started to bring them down.