From voice ordering to delivery robots, Just Eat Takeaway.com's Chief Technology Officer sets out a vision where technology disappears - and where the restaurant at the end of your street benefits as much as you do.
The most revealing moment in any technology announcement is what the company admits is broken. For Just Eat Takeaway.com's CTO Mert Öztekin, the inconvenient truth about convenience is this: ordering online still involves too much work. Scrolling through menus, second-guessing options, re-entering preferences — the friction has not gone away, it has just become familiar.
In January 2026, we launched our AI voice assistant on iOS and Android in the UK — the first deployment of its kind across its global markets; today, we launched to millions more customers across the Netherlands and Germany. They can now describe what they want in ordinary language and receive relevant recommendations without opening a menu.
The vision extends to anticipation. We envision a system that learns individual habits - a customer's usual Tuesday evening order, dietary needs, calorie targets - and surfaces it in a single tap before anyone has to ask. To further this vision, we announced in March that we are working with Amazon on an integration with Alexa+, soon to bring ordering to any Alexa-enabled device — relevant for the 38 per cent of UK households that already use smart speakers. In May, we became the first in Europe to offer WhatsApp food ordering, initially piloting in the Netherlands and Spain. Together, these moves point in one direction: Just Eat is no longer asking customers to come to it. We are going to them.
Convenience matters to our customers. Whether it's asking Alexa to order your regular to arrive at dinner-time or finding out what's on offer on your local high street — Alexa+ will unlock the very best of Just Eat for millions of customers.Mert Öztekin, CTO
Convenience does not lie simply in how you order, but how quickly your order reaches you. Delivery robots have attracted a great deal of attention because they are visible and novel. Our reasoning for using them is almost the inverse: they are most useful precisely when they are unnoticed, handling orders that when a human courier is not available — off-peak, quieter routes, areas where courier availability is lower.
In February, we launched robotics trials in Bristol and Milton Keynes with ten independent restaurant partners ahead of Valentine's Day weekend. Days later, a further pilot launched in Sunderland with Starship Technologies, reaching more than 11,000 households from twelve local partners. Starship's robots are autonomous, completing 99 per cent of journeys without human intervention.
Just Eat sees these robots as an "invisible engine" running in the background — a complement to our valued couriers, not a replacement. Couriers handle the last-mile moments that benefit a person; robots and drones fill the gaps when we have surges in demand that our couriers simply can't keep up with.
Our AI vision is rooted in a simple truth: technology should empower the restaurant as much as the customer. By working just as hard for the independent takeaway as for the hungry diner, we are creating a shared engine for growth.
Just Eat Takeaway.com's platform connects 337,000 restaurant and retail partners globally - from family-run takeaways to grocery chains, pharmacies, and electronics retailers across 15 markets. In the UK alone, research shows independent takeaways contribute an estimated £28 billion in annual gross value added to the economy, supporting close to 900,000 jobs. Many of those businesses are small independents for whom menu discoverability has always been partly opaque.
The latest expression of this partner commitment is ToqanClaw, developed with Prosus, which allows restaurant owners to build their own apps, dashboards, and automated workflows simply by describing what they need - no technical knowledge, no IT queue.
Early results among Dutch partners are instructive. One café chain cut financial reporting from weeks to 30 minutes. A Rotterdam burger restaurant increased deliveries by 25 per cent and saves €21,000 a month. A poke bowl chain reduced routine staff queries by 70 per cent using a WhatsApp assistant it built itself. These are independent businesses, not large chains with dedicated technology teams. That distinction is the point.
We are moving faster than ever to reshape the delivery landscape, transforming our platform from a simple menu application into a proactive, AI-powered partner for both diners and restaurants. By integrating the seamless convenience of our voice assistant, the behind-the-scenes efficiency of our autonomous "invisible engine," and deep, data-driven growth tools for our partners, we are fundamentally redefining on-demand delivery.
This is just the beginning; there is much more on the horizon as we continue to build a more responsive, personalized, and efficient future for all. Watch the video above to see this vision in action and stay tuned—the next chapter of convenience is coming soon.