More Layoffs At Waitr As Company Announces Plans To ‘Refocus’ In Lafayette

Waitr has announced it will be "refocusing its operations in Lafayette."

A report from the Daily Advertiser details the company's announcement to retain 150 positions that were going to be outsourced to Mexico. The food delivery app also says it plans to consolidate all their Lafayette operations inside their headquarters before mid-2020.

Waitr CEO Carl Grimstad says this move is being made for the "elevation of the entire customer experience."

One of our key strategic initiatives is the elevation of the entire customer experience. We believe that one way to achieve that is to retain, as well as add to, our customer service and dispatch teams here in Lafayette, the heart of Waitr’s business. This will ensure the highest levels of service for our customers, drivers and restaurant partners. As we focus on providing a world-class customer experience, we will also continue to identify opportunities to ensure the proper alignment of employee expertise with our strategic initiatives.

As they made the public announcement, Waitr also quietly laid off an "undisclosed number of employees" on Monday morning.

One employee who was laid off as part of the "refocus" reached out to our team to let us know that she was amongst a group of other people who were let go "without any severance" and informed that their "medical insurance would end on January 31." She also pointed out to our news team that the 150 positions that Waitr is retaining were already allegedly outsourced to Mexico and that the company is cutting the agreement to save their own money.

In her opinion, the announcement was an attempted "PR spin" before news began to leak from her and other employees who were laid off this morning.

It is no secret that Waitr did not have the best year in 2019. Toward the end of the year, Waitr saw the resignation of board members, a board president, their CFO and multiple CEOs including founder Chris Meaux. There was also local outrage as Lafayette restauranteurs showed their very public displeasure when Waitr made changes to contracts with participating restaurants.

As of now, Waitr has no further information available at this time but we will continue to update this developing story.