Motoboy youtuber goes from ‘stone in the shoe’ to iFood vice president interviewer

He has already been sued by iFood, has tried to invade a meeting he was not invited to and has dozens of videos on his YouTube channel criticizing the delivery app.

In December 2022, however, two days before Christmas, delivery man Ralf Elisário sat in a studio set up at the headquarters of Movile (owner of the app), in the city of São Paulo and, for two hours, interviewed Diego Barreto, vice president of iFood Finance and Strategy.

The conversation born from over 20 questions prepared by the delivery man began to be published this Monday (9) on his channel on the video platform, Ralf MT. There will be a total of seven videos, which will air daily during the week.

Ralf, who is known for the exalted tone he uses in many of his videos, says he was surprised by the interview. “The amazing thing is that he didn’t try to evade any answers. I’ve talked to several people from iFood over the last few years and he was the only one who didn’t try to string me along.”

Barreto’s only hesitation, in evaluating the courier, was when asked if he would accept working without a formal contract for a logistics operator, the OLs, as companies that provide couriers to the application are called.

According to iFood, these service providers account for 25% of couriers with active profiles on the platform. The rest are called “cloud”. The performance of these companies is a sore point in the often tense relationship between the app and the couriers.

Workers say that, in these companies, they are obliged to work hours, have bosses, goals and are not free to define how much and when they work, distorting the principles of autonomy that this type of activity should guarantee.

Barreto, in one of the moments of the interview, agrees with Ralf’s statement that “absurdities happen within the OLs”. In the first of seven videos with the entire interview, iFood’s vice president of strategy says that the type of relationship the app has with these companies will change.

According to Barreto, one of the changes, which he called the “OL franchise”, includes strategies to improve the role that these services play in the iFood ecosystem. The platform’s vice president of strategy says he understands that it is not up to the company to supervise the functioning of the OLs.

“Still, I oversee and create tools [para denúncias]. It is not enough and it has to improve “, she says, in the interview.

Ralf has been posting videos for a few months on the subject. According to him, large operators that serve iFood have already started to register only couriers who have an active MEI (individual micro-entrepreneur) and promise a minimum remuneration per route and per kilometer traveled (similar to the cloud model).

At the end of 2022, a company announced that it would close its activities, forcing iFood to take over payments (which would previously be made to the service provider) of couriers, in addition to integrating them into the cloud system.

On Friday (6), Diego Barreto wrote on his Instagram that “growth comes with dialogue and not with polarization”, when publishing the interview. “It was a great pleasure to chat for two hours with one of the main leaders of Brazilian couriers.”

Ralf Elisário says that negotiations for the interview began in June, when he showed up, uninvited, to a meeting held by iFood with couriers in Rio, where he lives and works. Called Voice of the Deliveryman, the meeting was held in several states, as part of the application’s approach strategy to different leaders.

“They didn’t let me in, nor follow the conversations, but I was waiting in a small room, when the talk of doing an interview came up. I agreed, but I wanted Fabrício Bloisi [CEO do iFood]”, says the delivery man. Bloisi couldn’t serve him, but Barreto could, and months later the meeting took place.

In the list of questions that, according to the delivery influencer, were answered by Barreto, there were questions such as the possible regulation of the activity by the new government, the minimum values ​​for deliveries and the request for the creation of a type of “race back home”. , in which the delivery route would bring the worker closer to his “end point”.