Brussels, (Brussels Morning)- The lawsuit against the bankrupt Brussels home delivery service for restaurant meals Take Eat Easy and former CEO Adrien Roose will start in Paris. They have to answer for undeclared work before the criminal court. More than a hundred meal deliverers filed complaints about undeclared and illegal work, reported BRUZZ.
Take Eat Easy was founded in 2013 in Brussels. The start-up focused on the then promising activity of home deliveries of restaurant meals by bicycle couriers. The platform brought together restaurants, customers and couriers through digital technologies. The company let customers pay for the deliveries and collected a commission on every order.
Take Eat Easy quickly expanded to other cities: first to Paris in October 2014, then to Berlin, London and Madrid in the summer of 2015. To support the growth, Take Eat Easy raised 6 million euros in 2015, followed by again 10 million euros a few months later.
But on July 26, 2016, the Brussels home delivery service applied for a judicial organisation. At that time, Take Eat Easy was active in 20 cities, had passed one million orders and had 350,000 customers. But the company failed to raise fresh capital again, which was crucial to the company’s survival. Competition had also become fierce in the sector, with British Deliveroo, German Foodora and American UberEats.
Freelance couriers
Like companies like Deliveroo or Uber, Take Eat Easy worked with bicycle couriers who worked as freelancers. In France, the “self-employed” couriers were not paid for their last month of work, which led to much discontent .
In Belgium, payments were made via the Smart freelance cooperative and the couriers were paid in full. In 2018, a hundred former bicycle couriers filed complaints in Paris for undeclared and illegal work. At the same time, a procedure was started to be recognized as salaried workers and not as self-employed. They also won that procedure, says lawyer Kevin Mention.
The lawyer hopes that the bankrupt company and the former CEO will be convicted of undeclared work against all former couriers, not just those who were interrogated in the case.
In a similar case in September, a French court convicted Deliveroo for undeclared work. Deliveroo, which is still active, had to pay 9.7 million euros because it had not paid social security contributions.
The bankruptcy did not stop the former CEO from continuing his business. Roose co-founded the Cowboy e-bike brand with Tanguy Goreti and Karim Slaoui .
