- Gopuff has let go about 100 employees on its warehouse and operations team, three people said.
- The company has also paused several plans to open more warehouses in the US, two of the people said.
- Gopuff may be controlling costs ahead of a possible IPO later this year.
Gopuff has cut about 100 jobs across the company’s operations and warehouse teams, three people familiar with the matter said.
The company has also paused several plans to open more warehouses across the US, two of the people said. The moves may help the ultrafast-delivery startup control costs and prepare for a possible IPO later this year.
Gopuff mostly eliminated the district-manager position across the company. Many of these managers were let go with little notice, told by their superiors to leave work that day, and await details about severance, the people said. Other managers were offered different roles within the company, they added, while asking to not be identified while discussing sensitive topics.
District managers at Gopuff oversee multiple warehouses and serve as a layer between the managers who run individual warehouses and regional managers who oversee larger swaths of territory, such as the South or parts of New England.
Other parts of the company’s warehouse operations also cut jobs, including teams that trained managers and warehouse workers, teams that set up new warehouse operations, and human-resources groups.
Gopuff says it currently employs about 10,000 people and is continuing to hire. The company added that it continually reevalutes its warehouse locations to maximize for demand. Gopuff added more warehouse square footage in 2021 than the previous 36 months combined, according to the company.
The moves reorient the company’s warehouse operations away from a management-heavy retail model toward one that’s perhaps closer to a tech-driven Amazon approach. Gopuff has hired heavily from Amazon in the past year. Tim Collins, its VP of operations, spent more than 15 years at the tech giant. The company’s founders have long admired Amazon and internally discussed their ambitions to build a company at that scale.
Gopuff had been aggressively expanding over the past few years, opening hundreds of distribution and delivery warehouses across the country. It also acquired traditional retailers, such as BevMo and Liquor Barn.
Warehouses managers previously described the operations as chaotic, with an oversupply of goods piling up outside facilities and not enough staff. It’s unclear whether the recent changes will improve the situation at the warehouses or make them worse. Warehouse managers frequently complained that they weren’t getting enough support from Gopuff’s facilities teams or upper management.
Still, cutting costs may be higher on the agenda for the company, which was valued at $15 billion last year. One of the questions lingering over Gopuff’s possible IPO this year is how receptive the markets will be to a money-losing company. Last year, Gopuff lost around $500 million, before interest, taxes, and other costs, Axios reported.
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