Revenues of leading online food delivery operators worldwide 2021

In 2021, Uber Eats generated approximately 8.3 billion U.S. dollars in global revenues, surpassing food delivery competitors Delivery Hero and Just Eat Takeaway.com, whose worldwide revenues amounted to about 5.1 billion U.S. dollars each.

Online food delivery boom

The tremendous popularity that online food delivery garnered among consumers during the pandemic made many eager to invest in the booming sector. In 2021, the value of online food delivery funding worldwide reached a record-breaking 19.1 billion U.S. dollars. That is nearly double the amount of funding the sector received in the previous year. As of January 2023, Delivery Hero had received the largest amount of funding among the leading food delivery companies at nearly ten billion dollars. In comparison, Just Eat Takeaway and DoorDash received 2.8 billion and 2.5 billion U.S. dollars in funding, respectively.

Recession fears

As global markets battled an impending recession in 2022, investment and growth in the online food delivery sector came to a grinding halt. In Europe, venture capital investment in food delivery experienced a dramatic decline: nearing seven billion U.S. dollars at the height of the pandemic in 2021, funding dropped to less than 2.5 billion in the following year. The food delivery sector’s recession woes also included several waves of mass layoffs that affected even the biggest players in the industry. As of January 2023, more than 2,300 Gopuff employees lost their jobs. DoorDash announced 1,250 layoffs in November 2022.