The founder and CEO of Deliveroo, Will Shu, is stepping down after more than a decade.
Shu will relinquish the role when the aggregator app’s £2.9bn acquisition by DoorDash completes, expected to be early October.
“Taking Deliveroo from being an idea to what it is today has been amazing,” Shu said. “Today the company’s growth and profitability are accelerating and we are delivering on our mission to transform the way people shop and eat, but after 13 years I want to contemplate my next challenge.”
The court hearing to sanction the DoorDash acquisition is expected to take place this month, with the deal expected to complete shortly afterwards.
“This is the start of a new chapter for the company and great things lie ahead,” Shu said.
“Our teams have always seen the business through the eyes of the consumer and that consumer obsession has given us focus, drive and resilience. I’m super proud of everything we have achieved. We pioneered and then redefined a new category,” he added.
Deliveroo’s non-executive directors – Claudia Arney, Peter Jackson, Karen Jones, Rick Medlock, Shobie Ramakrishnan, Tom Stafford and Dominique Reiniche – have also agreed to step down when DoorDash takes ownership.
The US food delivery giant announced it was to acquire Deliveroo for £2.9bn in May, after the boards of both companies reached agreement on the deal.
Deliveroo currently operates in nine countries, all of which are new for DoorDash. Once the deal is done, DoorDash will have a presence in more than 40 countries, serving approximately 50 million monthly active users. Last year, the two companies together generated a total gross order value of approximately $90bn.
In March, Shu quashed reports he could be stepping down from the role. “I’m not. You’re hearing it from me,” he told The Grocer. “I’m running this company. I’m excited about it. You’ve heard all the cool stuff we’re doing. That’s what’s ultimately motivating to me.”
Shu founded Deliveroo in 2013 with childhood friend Greg Orlowski.
“For the first year I was doing the deliveries,” he told The Grocer in 2023. “I would say ‘hey I’m Will, I founded the company’. No one ever cared. Because they just wanted their food, right? So they just shut the door in my face.”
Deliveroo’s first restaurant partner was The Stockpot on King’s Road, London. It happened to be below the flat where Shu was living at the time. “The owner was my landlord,” Shu says. “He told me ‘this is a very bad idea, but you live upstairs so, whatever, if I have a problem I’ll definitely find you’.”
Its first customers were his friends, who he “begged” to order through the platform.
“Initially… that was the only customer acquisition channel I had. And they used to think it was funny that I’d deliver the food, so that’s why they did it,” he said. “But when I stopped [doing the deliveries] they kept ordering. I knew then they actually liked the product, they didn’t just feel bad for me.”
Operations tentatively expanded to Brighton and Cambridge. Its success in those cities proved the platform wasn’t a London-centric phenomenon.
The company now has UK-wide reach, employs 2,000 people, manages some 150,000 riders and is partnered with 176,000 restaurants and grocers.
In 2021, it made its long-awaited debut on the London Stock Exchange in a £7.6bn float, followed by an immediate crashing of the share price in what was dubbed “the worst IPO in London’s history”.
The company achieved its first-ever annual profit in 2024, and backed up this performance in the first six months of 2025 by posting a profit of £31.8m. In the UK and Ireland, gross transaction value grew 10% while the international business was up 9%.
This year it also secured Tesco and Co-op as partners for its white-label delivery service Deliveroo Express, which will allow supermarkets to sell product through their own website and app, but leverage Deliveroo’s network of couriers for delivery.
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