Tech

Watch the Moment that CEO of Delivery Startup Enjoy Fires Hundreds of People

The unceremonious Zoom meeting bookends a company that recently said it had 'hope' it could pay employees what they were owed.
Enjoy CEO
Image: Motherboard

On Thursday, Ron Johnson, CEO of delivery startup Enjoy and former pioneer of Apple’s retail stores, laid off hundreds of Enjoy workers in a Zoom meeting, according to a video of the meeting obtained by Motherboard. Johnson said the company was letting go of everyone in the United Kingdom and Canada.

The video was an unceremonious end to a week of uncertainty at the company, and comes after Motherboard reported that the company told employees it had “hope” it could pay them the money they were owed. Some workers told Motherboard they were paid in the end, but Enjoy is on its last legs. Bloomberg Law reported Thursday morning that Enjoy has filed for bankruptcy and is exploring a sale.

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In the video, Johnson says that the outcome of a consultation process “has resulted in redundancies for all UK employees. Regrettably, I am informing you that Enjoy’s board is serving all UK employees with notice of redundancy today.”

“I understand that this is not the outcome that any of us wanted. For the past four years, we have worked together to build a profitable business in the UK. But it’s been challenging, as we all know, to get the unit economics right.”

The moment CEO Ron Johnson laid off employees in the UK and Canada. The pitch of the audio in this video has been slightly altered by Motherboard to protect a source.

Enjoy is a half-delivery-startup half-tech-support company. Johnson’s vision was to bring the retail store into consumer’s homes, where they could try out different products and an expert could help them decide what to buy. Enjoy was focused on telecommunications and electronics such as partnering with phone companies, but had ambitions to push into other sectors like fashion too. 

Johnson said Enjoy will also close its “Canadian operations as of today,” adding that the company does not “see a profitable path forward in Canada as well.”

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The company plans to continue to operate in the U.S., Johnson added, but with the possibility of a sale.

After Motherboard reported on the leaked Slack chats and other material that showed that Enjoy had ‘hope’ it could pay its UK workers, Enjoy severed access to Slack to multiple employees, according to additional screenshots obtained by Motherboard. Since then, multiple people who worked at Enjoy told Motherboard that the company repeatedly rescheduled planned meetings in which employees anticipated they would receive more information about the future of their jobs and pay. Finally, that meeting took place on Thursday,

A now former Enjoy worker told Motherboard that it was “the failings of the business managers that have led us up to this point, burnt through investors' money with bad decisions and mismanagement.” 

Enjoy did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent on Thursday and has not replied to any earlier emails about the ‘hope’ to pay its employees.

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