The secret skill set behind Menulog boss’s success

He’s made headlines as the local Menulog chief, but what is less known about Morten Belling is how putting a successful sporting career on hold led him to the business world.

He’s well known in the local fast food technology business as the managing director of Menulog, the Australasian arm of one of the world’s largest online takeaway food platforms, Just Eat Takeaway.

Morten Belling has made headlines over the past year in his ambitions to improve the safety, pay and conditions of contractors working in the local food delivery industry.

He’s challenged the controversial independent contractor model favoured by Menulog’s gig economy rivals and has started employing his couriers as full time workers.

He’s also been the face of the company that has brought to the Australian market a global collaboration with the famous singer Katy Perry in a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign. The Perry tie-up followed a similar campaign two years ago with American rapper Snoop Dogg.

But what is less known about Morten Belling, who was raised in a tiny town in Denmark called Fuglebjerg, is that the various attributes and values he holds in business today go back to skills he honed from sport.

“I don’t have any regrets, that was my life. Soccer is still a passion of mine,” says Morten Belling.

“My parents were of the view when I was young that you engage yourself in sports or you will end up on a street corner smoking and drinking,” he says with typical Danish bluntness of the advice of his father and mother, Torben and Lis, who still live in Denmark.

For many years as a teenager, Belling was among the top ten table tennis players in Denmark, a country that has produced a number of legends in the Olympic sport.

But his real passion was soccer.

At the age of 16 he was playing first division for the competitive Slagelse B&I Football Club, the 5th oldest club in Denmark.

With the prospect of playing in the Danish Superliga and potentially making it to bigger clubs overseas, he maintained a rigorous training schedule and was disciplined with his health and fitness to retain his contract.

But at the age of 18, he was struck by a devastating ankle injury. He has never played at the same intensity or level since.

Many of his team mates from his early footballing career went on to play professionally in Denmark and overseas, yet Belling was forced to resign from the sport.

“I still have that question mark, it was a pity I didn’t try it out (to go abroad). But the injury was almost making the decision for me. That is when I took a step back and thought about getting an education and looking at a corporate career,” he says.

“I don’t have any regrets, that was my life. Soccer is still a passion of mine.

“I am still playing a bit if I can stay away from further injuries. I was raised by my parents to do sports. I am grateful for that, that created a path for me.”

His younger sister Stine also played soccer at a high level in Denmark.

Now on reflection, Belling believes his pursuit of a professional football career instilled in him a competitive, hard-working spirit which has driven him to raise the bar of his own and his team’s performance in business.

“I don’t think I would have made it as far as I have in my career without doing the sports. When I played it was about pushing myself, raising the bar, never giving up, always believing in myself and owning the mistakes. There is a lot of that I have taken to business,” he says.

“Soccer is a team sport, a lot of that is understanding your role in a team. As a leader, understanding your role in the team, working together in the same direction and the importance of teamwork is something I really push a lot.”

A family affair

Having achieved a Master’s degree in Economics and Business Administration from Copenhagen Business School, Belling played a role in the bumper sharemarket listing of Just Eats in London in 2014 before moving to Australia from Denmark seven years ago as Menulog’s finance director.

Menulog, which was founded in Australia in 2006, had just been sold to JustEat for a bumper price of $855 million.

Its value was written down by almost 40 per cent two years later, but the then-global CEO claimed the goodwill impairment reflected the extra investment required to launch delivery services rather than signalling a more pessimistic outlook for the business.

Belling acknowledges the integration was tough.

“It has been a very challenging task here. I am all about challenges. The starting point was landing in a company that was very different from where we are today,” he says.

“I have the deepest respect for the founders of Menulog. They did an amazing job building the business. But the way they were running it was very different to the way we are doing it now. Culturally between the legacy Menulog business and our business, there was a very big challenge.”

Menulog Australasia managing director Morten Belling with his parents, wife and children.

Belling also had the task of relocating to a new country with his wife Lea and their girls Laura and Rosa, who were aged just 7 and 2 years old at the time Neither of the children could speak a word of English.

“We got here in November 2015 and at the end of January we threw Laura into the local public school without her speaking English. My wife’s job was ensuring the kids were properly integrated,” he recalls after they settled in Sydney’s Inner West.

“I still have a small recording I made a few months later in March of Laura playing cards with my wife in English. Today she is more fluent that I am in English and smarter than me. It is quite scary moving countries for your family, but now I see it as a gift. My kids now have the language, they have learned how to swim which they couldn’t do in Denmark, and they are learning a lot about cultural differences.”

Laura turns 13 in November, Rosa is now 8 and their youngest daughter, Victoria, is 5. They all do athletics, not soccer, but their father is happy they have followed his lead in being physically active in their youth.

For the past three years, Belling has been the managing director of Menulog in Australasia during a significant growth period. During the Covid pandemic order volumes more than tripled and partners on the Menulog platform grew by more than 110 per cent.

Last year the business expanded into the on-demand grocery and convenience store delivery sector and has since enjoyed 229 per cent partner growth, with consumer demand up 62 per cent. It now sponsors the South Sydney National Rugby League Team.

“The business is now so much bigger post the pandemic. We have more than doubled the size of the team. We have also learned the importance of staying close to our communities,” he says.

“I don’t want us to be seen as a faceless tech business. We have moved a lot of our customer services teams back onshore so we are better connected with our restaurants.

“We have also engaged more with our courier communities, for example through our employment trial.”

The firm’s employed courier trial, which has been running for 12 months, followed a spate of deaths in the wider industry and criticism from unions and Federal Labor that the sector’s reliance on independently contracted workers was exploitative.

Menulog’s delivery riders who are classified as employees are now guaranteed the minimum wage and other benefits and the group remains engaged with the Fair Work Commission as it seeks a new modern award to better suit the unique needs of on-demand delivery drivers.

“We are very resilient on this point. For us it is a means to an end. The end game has to be improved standards across the industry. We believe the gold standard is employment,” Belling says.

“If we can’t get there with employment, we need to look at other avenues. We are having discussions with the Fair Work Commission and further industry and we feel there is a strong possibility we can achieve consensus.”

Separately the government is planning to expand the powers of the Fair Work Commission to set minimum pay and conditions for contractors in the sector, a move welcomed by Belling.

Growing pains

While Menulog is enjoying success in Australia, its parent company has been experiencing growing pains over the past two years.

In August Just Eat booked a €3bn loss on its US business Grubhub, bought for $US7.3b just two years ago. Its London-traded shares have been on a steady decline since trading at nearly €100 a couple of years back. They are currently below the € 20 mark.

Just Eat chairman Adriaan Nühn left the company in May, while global COO Jörg Gerbig also left the management board after being investigated for what was described by the firm as “possible personal misconduct”. He was cleared last month and looks set to rejoin the board next year.

The pain has been felt by local Just Eat investor, Caledonia Investments. The high-conviction investment shop’s flagship fund ended fiscal 2022 down 53 per cent, in part driven by the decline in the Just Eat share price.

But in its most recent note to clients Caledonia claimed its investment in Just Eat - along with its other big bets such as Formula 1, Flutter, Zillow and Warner Music – could grow its free cash flow per share at a more than 35 per cent compounded annual growth rate on average in the next three years.

Belling will not comment about the parent company issues and is focused on only what he can control in the local market.

He now wants to add more restaurants to the Menulog platform, consolidate its move into the grocery and convenience store sector and look at other opportunities.

“We have this huge workforce in the field doing deliveries. I see an opportunity to deliver more than we do today. I see a world where we can do more than just restaurants, grocery and food.”

Rival DoorDash recently teamed with three local online pharmacy marketplaces to start making over-the-counter and prescription medicines deliveries.

“One of the obvious ones for us would be pet foods. The margins are sizeable. Pet food is expensive. That could be one of the verticals we will test first. If we are working with a convenience store, I also wouldn’t rule out delivering other convenience items - if a courier is going in there already, why wouldn’t we offer that to the customers? But we will be very selective with it. We want to run a sustainable business,” Belling says.

Most importantly, he wants Menulog to be considered as an on-demand brand appealing to the entire population. To get there, he stresses, will require focus.

“We want to be really clear on the priorities to drive growth. If you are not focused on a common goal and working together to achieve that, you are going to get distracted. As in soccer. That is the key risk in our industry. We have so much data to leverage. You have to avoid the disruptions, zoom in on the 5-7 big ticket items that are going to make a difference. It is so similar to a soccer team,” he says.

While his parents still wonder what their son could have achieved as a professional footballer, one of their most important mantras will always stay with him.

“They were with me on the journey, trying to help fix my injury,” Belling says. “But they have always said to me it does not matter how good you are. It is about the effort you put in.”