Panel SA: Restaurants go on alert after bankruptcy of outsourced iFood

Restaurants that distribute their orders through iFood say they went on alert this Thursday (29) after receiving news of the bankruptcy of a company that intermediated motorcyclists for the platform.

According to Abrasel (an association that brings together bars and restaurants), the sector is afraid of being hit by a breakdown in deliveries, since the presence of iFood is very large in the service.

“We were caught by surprise with a problem that was not on our radar. It is important for us to know whether or not it is a systemic problem and the size of the risk. If the iFood system is heavily based on offering third-party services, the collapse of these companies could bring chaos to the sector, since iFood is responsible for more than 80% of orders on platforms”, said Paulo Solmucci, president of Abrasel.

This week, SIS Express went bankrupt and left all its riders without pay. The company is a OL (logistics operator), responsible for providing labor for delivery applications such as iFood.

In practice, these couriers were left in the dark, as the demands were passed on from the application to the company. The SIS operation corresponded to 1% of the total orders received on the platform daily, according to iFood.

In a note, iFood says that it did not register delivery problems in the cities in which OL operated and claims that it placed all the company’s motorcyclists in its separate registration model, allowing the return of these workers’ activities.

According to the company, 25% of the more than 200,000 couriers with an active profile in Brazil work for an OL. iFood claims that the rest are registered in the cloud (single) and work on their own.

iFood also says that it started transferring late wages to motorcyclists this Thursday, but did not disclose the amounts. The operation must be regularized by January 6.

Joana Cunha with Paulo Ricardo Martins and Diego Felix