The right words to say goodbye

It’s over.
And the more I think about it the more I find myself stuck trying to find the right words.

The truth is, we have put so much love and effort into this adventure, giving everything we could for the past four years, it’s hard to find the right words to describe an ending that today still seems unreal.

Because it’s the end of a beautiful story, for the four co-founders, who have “learned by doing” every single trick there is to know about operating an on-demand food delivery business, but also for the full Take Eat Easy team.

In the past year, our team grew from 10 to 160 people, all of which were incredibly passionate about our core business. Whether it’d be the food, the marketing, the logistics, the tech or the product, every single individual who joined this tremendous journey has put their whole heart into it.

And it was one hell of a journey, like you wouldn’t believe.

Another thing that you might now find hard to believe, and also the main reason those words are getting stuck as I’m trying to lay them down onto this keyboard, is that we were truly good at what we were doing.

We didn’t know anything when we launched. Every single mistake we could have done, we did. And by doing so, we learned what mattered to our customers, what mattered to our partner restaurants and couriers, what we were doing wrong and should stop immediately, and what we were really good at, and should push even further.

Just writing this is in the past tense is killing me right now.

Tech, branding, logistics, sales, account management, operations, fund raising… we didn’t know any of it when we launched almost four years ago.

Yet we have managed in a few years to become the top restaurant delivery business in both France and Belgium, to pioneer bicycle food delivery in Europe, to be the most qualitative and preferred restaurant delivery brand in the cities we operate in and to deliver in record timings from the most wanted restaurants you can find across Brussels, Paris, Madrid, London and so many more cities… overall covering 20 cities in Europe.

Last week we reached a million deliveries.
And yet today we are filing for juridical restructuring.

In the past year, we have reached a 30% monthly growth, hit over a million delivery, scaled our restaurant partnerships from 450 to 3200 and our customer base from 30,000 to 350,000.

And yet today we are filing for juridical restructuring.

The reasons are that 1) our revenue doesn’t cover our costs yet, and that 2) we haven’t been able to raise a third round of funding. Adrien, our CEO, has explained this in details here.

We have launched Take Eat Easy because we felt there should be something more to the food delivery industry. We have launched Take Eat Easy out of a genuine belief that we could make your life more convenient, all the while making it taste better. We have launched Take Eat Easy out of passion, for on demand-technology, great food and even greater service.

We could never thank you enough.

Our customers, for your passion, support, and the millions of deliveries you have enabled us to make.
Our partner restaurants, for your trust, loyalty and hard work since the very first day.
Our couriers, for your energy, service and the special bond you helped us to create with our customers.
You guys are the best in the industry and from the day we started working with you, there was no doubt in our minds that you were the only way forward.

Sincerely,

Chloé Roose, co-founder