Europe's rapid delivery market has consolidated down to three companies: Getir, the largest player that operates in seven European countries, Flink, and Gopuff
Morgan Meaker / Wired : Tweets: @wired and @gergelyorosz Tweets: @wired : Rapid grocery delivery apps are leaving the continent, putting the Turkish startup, Getir on top. But, its reign is anything but stable. https://www.wired.com/... Gergely Orosz / @gergelyorosz : Gorillas, Getir and every grocery delivery startup struggling to turn a profit is a reminder on why supermarkets never implemented instant delivery, but have time slots, minimum orders & need to order X days ahead etc. They only do delivery if they turn a profit from day one.
Context & Ripple Effects
The three-horse race Wired describes is the endgame of the 2021 land grab, when investors poured $1.56B into 10-minute grocery apps on the bet that one player would own the category. The warning sign came earlier in New York, where six rivals had burned through $5.5B while averaging losses of $20+ per order.
By January 2023 the field has thinned to Getir (operating in seven European countries), Flink, and Gopuff. Flink enters this endgame as the last independent European player, coming off €400M in 2022 sales with a stated path to profitability in 2023 — the test case for whether any standalone rapid-delivery app can make the model work.
First-order effects
- Flink's position as one of the last independents standing comes at a collapsed price: its reported $100M round led by Prosus values it at $900M, down from a reported $5B in May 2022, marking down the entire sector rather than rewarding the survivor.
- Getir sits on top of the continent at seven countries, but the reporting frames its reign as unstable — and within months it moved from rival to acquirer, entering talks to buy Flink outright.
Second-order effects
- With subsidy wars over, competition shifts from speed to unit economics: Gergely Orosz's observation that supermarkets only deliver profitably via time slots, minimum orders, and advance planning becomes the benchmark the three survivors must converge toward.
- A Getir-Flink combination would leave Philadelphia-based Gopuff as the only non-Turkish scale player in Europe — a hard call for a company whose own valuation has already been cut from $15B in 2021 to $8.5B.
Third-order effects
- The arc's eventual shape is visible in hindsight: Getir ultimately shut its US, UK, and European operations to refocus on Turkey, cutting 6,000+ jobs — evidence that even the consolidation winner concluded the model does not travel across markets.
- If the pattern holds, instant grocery delivery survives only folded into retailers with existing inventory and margins, ending the standalone-app era that VCs funded in 2021 and returning delivery economics to the supermarkets' terms.
The trend: VC-funded rapid grocery delivery is consolidating from a subsidized land grab into a handful of survivors being forced toward supermarket-style unit economics — or out of the market entirely.