Sebastien launched Alloresto.fr in France all the way back in 1998 (back then called EatOnline.fr), and he is therefore the most senior person in the European online takeaway industry (maybe in the World?) – this is full 3 years before Just-Eat launched. Back then it was not really an industry, because there were hardly any players, and hardly any customers either. Alloresto has had to fight longer to prove the model works than anyone else, because Sebastien was out so early that even general e-commerce was looked at with suspicion.

Few people have the stamina to keep working on something that for the first many years is an uphill battle, but in the case of Alloresto the vision and energy eventually paid of handsomely for Sebastien and his colleagues. Especially the last 5 years he has build a big and very solid business in France. The deep insight into how things work in France plus clear leadership in the category was what made this partnership logical for us. And for Alloresto it is logical to get access to knowledge about how to quickly scale the business to the next level. Together we have spend a lot of time on a new, and very aggressive plan for how to make all of France as enthusiastic about Alloresto’s offering as the hundreds of thousands of existing customers and the 2,500 restaurant partners.

Alloresto will continue to operate under it’s current name (same model as when we partnered with RestauranteWeb in Brazil), and Sebastien will continue running the company and join Just-Eat’s Group Management Team.

At Just-Eat we are looking forward to working with Sebastian and our new French colleagues in the coming years. And visiting Paris from time to time will probably not be the worst part of my job going forward -;)

The official press release is here.

It is with great pleasure that John Hughes going forward will take an active lead of our board (official press release of John Hughes joining Just-Eat is here). It is a relief for me, that I have a wing-man of that calibre, who will take charge of a big chunk of the overall governance of the company, which frees most of my time up to focus on running the company together with the Just-Eat the team. And it is also a great support for me, that I can lean on John’s experience when handling some of the strategic issues we constantly are dealing with in our fast paced company.

Just-Eat is constantly growing, in only a few days we can e.g. say that we have partnered with the clear leader in a major European market. All this growth is exciting, but it also adds complexity, and as we add more and more investors/owners to our company, then what is called “corporate governance” with a fine word becomes important.

John not only knows from own experience how governance works, but he also adds a lot of hands-on executive/operational experience from running mid-sized as well as really big tech companies; and he also has a great strategic mindset.

John will be an important asset for our company going forward, and it’s going to be great to team up with him as we develop our company the coming years.

Welcome on board John!

• We grew our UK business to more than 10,000 active restaurants – and a looooot of orders.
• We pushed into new countries, where we are now market leaders: Brazil, India, Italy, Switzerland – and one more European country has been added via a partnership just before Christmas, details will be announced in January.
• We launched a couple of exciting new products, e.g. our mobile solution came in the beginning of 2011. It is still a fairly basic version, but it works and e.g. in the UK it is giving us more than 10% of our orders.
• We worked better than ever across countries and our ability to exchange ideas and move best practices back and forth is getting pretty good. We are really learning how to get the most out of acting local and still operating globally.
• We added a lot of good people to the company. We are now 500+ colleagues in the organisation, and many of those has arrived the last 12 months. As usual I am looking forward to saying hello to most of them at our annual World Party in May.

Of course it was not everything that went according to plan, and in some cases we even failed. For example we have to admit, that in some countries our service up time has not been good enough, e.g. our payment service providers in a couple of countries has not been living up to the standard our customers and restaurants expect from us. There has been other operational issues as well, and even though we are much better than last year, then we need to focus more on stability of all the services that makes up our tech platform.

But that was 2011, now we are ready to get the most out of the next 366 days (yep, 2012 is a leap year), and I am sure it will be exciting. I think we will run through all emotions possible, happiness, frustration, anger, joy, love, hate, etc. – but that is part of the ride when building a true, global success story. If you can’t handle that, then stay a long way away from start-up and high growth companies.

All at Just-Eat are wishing you the best in 2012, we hope to serve our customers and restaurants even better than last year.

NB: this is one of the heavier pages to download, sorry for that, but there is a good story here …

And the day after with tiny eyes, but the essential thing is, that he was there at 8.15 in the morning, ready to go:

Thanks to Camron for taking a 1,000 pictures!

This is pretty big news for all of us. Our investment into Brazil over the next couple of years will be one of the biggest investment so far in the history of Just-Eat, and with Restauranteweb as the foundation it will be full speed ahead. There are already 25-30 guys in the mainly Sao Paolo based team, and I am sure there will be plenty of challenges in the coming years, but that is the best part of it.

Just-Eat will operate under the Restauranteweb brand. If you have a look at the website, then we have changed the look and feel of the logo, so it is more aligned with Just-Eat’s logo, but Restauranteweb is the brand we will build in Brazil.

Thanks to all that made this partnership possible, e.g. Luiz, Marco, Rasmus, Camron, Aldo, Adolfo, Giorgio, Jeff plus plenty more. Paperwork is done, now focus on execution.

I recently came home from a Sao Paolo trip to check out our new company in Brazil. We have a great team in place now headed up by Emerson, Aldo and Adolfo. A strong team is also needed, because Brazil is a big opportunity for us, but also a very complex opportunity that will take many years and a lot of money to get right. Brazil will grow slower than e.g. the UK has done for us, but before 2020 Brazil will be one of the biggest countries in our Group.

One of the important things when I visit our local teams is to get a feel for their fighting spirit and team work, and my visit to Sao Paolo was also on that dimension a very positive experience. The team is more senior than the normal country teams we put together, but they still have a hunger for success, and at Just-Eat that is something we know is half of what is needed to get through all the hurdles the next many years.

Here a picture of most of the BR management team during lunch, and oh, there is a couple of other guys sitting there that are incognito for another week or so, stay tuned -;)

We have had people on the ground for half a year preparing all the thousands of details necessary to do things successfully and adapt our concept to Brazil. Pt. we have nearly 20 people in Sao Paolo, incl. Emerson who is the Managing Director heading up our team.

Personally, I am very excited about our long term opportunities in Brazil, and especially my 2014 visit will be a pleasure spiced up with a bit of World Cup football.

I also saw this one the other day just outside of Copenhagen, that is almost cute:

I have heard quite a few disrespectful remarks about my robot vision from dear colleagues, but I know who will have the latest laugh, check this one from the first pizza delivery robot ever, or check out what Google cars can do now a days – in my world view, these two video clips are scientific proof that I am right, robots anno 2020 will rule the delivery market …

2 month ago our UK operations moved their office to Elstree/Borehamwood, where they now have a big, and very nice office incl. massive rooms for the managers (i.e. 5 times what I got). In the kitchen, Jakub (our lead designer) made this unique painting with plenty of Just-Eat symbolism:

I looked a bit more into the picture, and then I noticed this bit on the right corner:

I can’t figure out whether they are taking the piss on me, or they are celebrating the idea. Anyway, the last laugh is on me … for sure!