Wolt

Wolt Enterprises Oy, trading as Wolt, is a Finnish food delivery company known for its delivery platform for food and merchandise. On Wolt's apps (iOS and Android) or website, customers can order food and household goods from the platform's restaurant and merchant partners, and either pick up their order or have it delivered by the platform's courier partners. Wolt also runs its own chain of grocery stores called Wolt Market. Wolt is headquartered in Helsinki.

In May 2022, Wolt was acquired by the American food delivery company DoorDash. DoorDash operates in 29 countries today, 25 of which are with the Wolt product and brand.

History
Wolt was founded in 2014 by 6 founders, including Miki Kuusi, the former CEO of Slush and CEO of Wolt. Kuusi has been responsible for DoorDash's business outside the US since May 2022, when DoorDash acquired Wolt. As of May 2023, Wolt operates in 25 countries and over 300 cities, including Helsinki, Tokyo, and Berlin. Wolt has over 70,000 merchant partners, 150,000 courier partners and 20 million registered customers. Wolt has over 7,000 employees across its offices in 25 countries.

In November 2021, it was announced that Wolt was being merged into DoorDash through an exchange of shares, giving Wolt shareholders a minority of shares in DoorDash for a deal worth US $8.1 billion. On 31 May 2022, the acquisition was completed.

Before the DoorDash acquisition, Wolt raised $856M in funding from investors including ICONIQ Capital, Highland Europe, 83North, EQT Ventures, Tiger Global, DST Global, Prosus, KKR, Coatue, Inventure, Lifeline Ventures, Supercell founder & CEO Ilkka Paananen and Nokia Chairman Risto Siilasmaa, among others.

Wolt was ranked second in the 2020 edition of the FT:1000 Europe's Fastest Growing Companies 2020 published by the Financial Times.

Timeline

 * 2014: Wolt was founded in Helsinki, Finland.
 * 2015: Wolt first launched in Helsinki as pick-up only.
 * 2016: Wolt added delivery to the platform and expanded to Sweden and Estonia. Wolt did some experimenting with self-driving delivery robots in Tallinn in cooperation with Starship Technologies.
 * 2017: Wolt launched in Denmark, Latvia and Lithuania.
 * 2018: Wolt launched in Croatia, Czech Republic, Norway, Hungary, Georgia, Israel and Poland.
 * 2019: Wolt launched in Serbia, Greece, Azerbaijan, Slovakia, Slovenia and Kazakhstan.
 * 2020: Wolt launched in Japan, Cyprus, Malta and Germany. Wolt’s own chain of grocery stores, Wolt Market, was launched in Helsinki.
 * 2022: The transaction closed and Wolt was acquired by DoorDash.
 * 2023: Wolt launched in Austria and Iceland.
 * 2024: Wolt launched in Luxembourg and in Albania.

Drivers
Wolt delivery drivers do not work for the company (except in Germany) but are self-employed and can decide when, where and how much they work. As self-employed, couriers must pay all the incidental costs of their work, such as pension contributions, social security and tooling costs, out of the salary they receive. Their pension and sickness cover in Finland is typically provided through the YEL insurance (Entrepreneur's Pension Insurance), possible after 4 months, and obligatory by Finnish law after 6 months, if yearly YEL income is at least EUR 8,575.45. For example, when using a car, petrol, insurance and other costs are borne by the entrepreneur. As self-employed persons, couriers do not receive paid holidays. According to Wolt, about a third of the couriers are full-time. About a quarter are students. There is a significant proportion of immigrants in Helsinki, for example.

Critical aspects
At least in Germany, the German Hotel and Restaurant Association Dehoga recommends, that restaurants should not participate in delivery services which, like Wolt, "intervent in the restaurants' own pricing policy", "taking a provision of 30%", a self-organized delivery would be the better option, if possible. Also they see the danger, that through gaining all delivery data, the services may build up competing kitchens, serving the most-wanted dishes, letting the restaurants go away empty-handed, on the long run, like some services already do.

With the riders who are responsible for the delivery, including expenses for their needed material and anything else, a regular employer would have to burden, not being employed by Wolt directly, they often are at the mercy of other dubious employers.