Online food delivery service Deliveroo is to create 30 jobs in Limerick as part of its expansion into the city.
Deliveroo works with cafes and restaurants that do not traditionally deliver, making it possible for customers to order food from home via a mobile app. It is already available in Dublin, Cork, Galway and - most recently - Belfast - and the bulk of those working for it are contract staff who ferry the food from the restaurant's door to the user's.
Oliver Dewhurst, general manager of Deliveroo Ireland, said the company is going to start acquiring the new restaurants for the marketplace and will then recruit the riders. This follows a similar structure in its other locations and provides an opportunity to people looking for courier-like work. "A lot of our riders are students," Mr Dewhurst said. "I often think that if I was at university it would be a job that I would do straight away!"
Deliveroo's Limerick roll-out comes ahead of schedule and comes as the company is seeing growth of 25% each month. It is now working with 200 restaurants across the country, and Mr Dewhurst says it's a relatively simple process for them to take advantage of the system. "All they have to do is prepare the food as they would normally do for a customer in-house," he said. "Five minutes before the food is ready they click 'send for driver' on their tablet and one of the drivers will arrive to pick up the food for the customer. "So there's no extra work on their end."
In terms of how the system is paid for, Deliveroo charge a €2.50 delivery charge on top of the a la carte prices - as well as a commission charge to the cafes and restaurants. However Mr Dewhurst said those involved do not see it as an extra cost - as they're selling products without losing any table space in the process. With Limerick added into the mix, most of the country's main urban areas will soon be covered by Deliveroo - though there is still potential for growth in some other urban and sub-urban locations. "We're a hyper-local business - that means that we only ever deliver in a 2.6km radius so that we can guarantee the quality of the food", Mr Dewhurst said. "That means we can go very local... provided there is a good quality supply of restaurants and people willing to order from there, we're able to go there."
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MORNING BRIEFS - Paddy Power Betfair has said the integration of its businesses is on track following its 6 billion pound merger in early February. The two betting firms are in the process of combining global operations, which includes up to 300 job cuts in Ireland. In a trading update, Paddy Power Betfair said its revenue had rise by 16% in the first quarter to £339m, while operating profit was up 36% to £43m.
*** More than 80% of Irish employees are looking to change job within the next two years, according to a survey by recruitment firm Hays. Its 2016 Salary and Recruiting Trends Guide found that a slight majority of workers were unsatisfied with their salaries, but more than 60% expected to receive a pay rise in the next year.
That comes following a year of modest wage increases, with two thirds of firms saying that salaries had increased by less than two and a half percent on average. Workers in IT, construction and finance saw larger increases - however - with some higher skilled workers enjoying increases of 5-10% in the year. Amongst employers, almost 80% said they expected business activity to increase in the next 12 months - with an even higher percentage saying they planned to recruit staff during the period.
