Saturday, September 25, 2021

Criticism of working conditions
Gorilla Boss: “We don’t exploit anyone”

A year and a half ago, food supplier Gorilla started in Berlin. After initial enthusiasm about the delivery of electricity, there is increasing criticism of working conditions. However, boss Seymour does not want his company to exploit employees.

Kagan Sumner, the founder of the delivery service “Gorilla”, defends himself against criticism of his company’s working conditions. “We are not exploiting anyone,” said Sumner of “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung”. Drivers are permanently employed at Gorilla, including Social Security. “That’s how we intentionally set ourselves apart from the competition.”

The food supplier has been criticized for weeks and was at times on strike in Berlin by its own drivers. They ask for open-ended contracts, more money and less weight on their backs. In Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, according to “FAS”, drivers are switching from bikes to cargo bikes.

Born in Turkey, Sumer founded the online service that delivers groceries to your home in under ten minutes a year and a half ago in Berlin. According to the report, it now employs thousands of people in nine countries.

The newspaper’s Sumner said, with rapid growth there are “anomalies”. When it came to customer requests, Sumner had to learn something new. “We hoped that we would primarily appeal to the younger urban population who order local beer and vegetarian chips,” he told the newspaper. “But most customers order fresh fruits and vegetables. And many big people order from us as well.”

There are many delivery services in Germany, but many services are currently available only in major cities. In particular, very fast delivery services that bring purchases to the front door in ten minutes operate from a tight network of centrally located warehouses that only exist in the inner cities of major cities.