Fast Food/Takeaways and Restaurants

Rather than closing down Menulog, has Just Eat Takeaway considered selling off the business? Remember Menulog was founded here in Australia nearly 20 years ago.

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Not sure who would want to buy it. The market seems pretty firmly cornered by Uber Eats nowadays.

There are also Chinese owned takeaway platforms like HungryPanda, EASI and Meituan.

Uber and Door Dash will hold the market now. Door Dash has been ramping up its profile with its Velocity deal.

Menulog seemed to have high marketing costs on what is a wafer thin margin operation.

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I think marketing was ultimately controlled and spent by the parent company, as identical versions of ads and branding was made for Just Eat in the UK, Skip the Dishes in Canada, and Takeaway.com in some other European countries.

Whilst it probably won’t affect as many delivery drivers/riders as one may think (several log onto multiple platforms), being a rider/driver probably isn’t that financially rewarding (trust me several parcel delivery contractors came and went being promised the world and delivered a Temu quality GPS).

The boss of Domino’s has doubled down on turning the struggling business around as it looks to move away from cheap options and shift towards “a focus on profitability, not sales volume”. Addressing shareholders at its annual general meeting, chairman Jack Cowin highlighted how just a 70 cents increase in the price of pizzas can raise profits of franchisees as the company vows to turn its back on its cheapest deals.

Despite the company’s struggles after rapid global expansion, Cowin said he was “optimistic” about the future of the fast food giant as it embarks on a quest to “simplify” in what he described as “a fairly dramatic change in strategy”.

For Aussie consumers, it means they can get used to seeing far fewer Domino’s vouchers for cheap pizzas in the mail.

The 83-year-old, who became the interim chief executive of Domino’s earlier this year, said the company was going to get rid of the cheapest deals it has previously offered.

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Mumbrella reports Menulog also has a New Zealand operation, but its future remains uncertain following the decision to close Australian operations.

And that’s why ads featuring the likes of Katy Perry and Christina Aguilera promoting Menulog were shown on Australian TV.

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I think Head Office might have loosened their marketing grip slightly. A local (AI-assisted) ad campaign starring Aussie rappers Bliss n Eso debuted a couple of months ago. It’s even nominated in next week’s ARIAs. God, it’d be funny if they won the award one week before the thing they won the award for shuts down!

They also localised those adds even further. I saw it the other day mentioning “Wollongong” and showing images of some local restaurants.

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I just got a text from my brother saying that The Coffee Club in Green Hills Shopping Centre has closed down. That would now leave that chain without any presence in the Hunter as the Wickham outlet shut down some time ago

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A lot of stores have closed recently the one at Burwood in particular

Despite Snoop and Katy, Menulog’s collapse was inevitable

A company spending 10% of its $245 million annual revenue on advertising wouldn’t normally raise concern—plenty of healthy brands maintain a 10:1 advertising to sales ratio comfortably. But Menulog wasn’t healthy. Dig past revenue and the company was hemorrhaging between $2 and $4 million every month. At best, it broke even before advertising spend pushed it decisively and repeatedly into red. The platform wasn’t just losing market share. It was losing money on every order, every courier, and every dollar spent trying to remain competitive.

The reason can be traced to a single decision: Menulog formally employed its delivery drivers rather than treating them as independent “gig” contractors.

The end of Menulog isn’t just the end of a tech company, it’s the end of an era for how Australians think about digital convenience, competition, and the future of work. And it’s another example of how the structure of Australian competition is changing. That’s something worth chewing over—not just for marketers, but anyone with an appetite for tough business lessons.

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In the sticks, we don’t have any of those delivery services. It’s ’Bungendore-dash’ for me, which involves getting in the car and picking it up :smile:

And Bungendore only has an IGA and is probably not open past 10pm.

Saw one of these take away shops in Marrickville and I thought the colour scheme was quite hideous and repelled me from going anywhere near it. :rofl:

On the way home from work this evening i decided to call into McDonald’s at Hexham for dinner. Interesting through their speakers they had Smooth FM playing. Would have to be streaming it since there isnt a terrestrial signal of it here in Newcastle

There is, but not strong enough for indoor reception… it’s patchy in the car on the highway through Hexham.