Amber Food suspends partnership with food delivery platforms in Lithuania

Amber Food's chief executive officer said the platforms' decision was driven by emotions.

Liis Ristal, Wolt's general manager for the Baltic states, has told BNS in a statement that we have taken steps to suspend our partnership with all restaurants and retail outlets controlled or supported by the Russian government or state.

She asked all our trading partners in the Baltic countries to remove products that are made in or supplied Russia or are directly linked to the Russian government from the Wolt app.

Justinas Bambalas, the head of Bolt Food in Lithuania, confirmed on Wednesday that the platform was suspending its partnership with Amber Food.

He said we have been watching the situation regarding this restaurant group for a long time. The cooperation has been suspended because of the fact that there are no fundamental changes in this situation. The move by foreign-owned platforms was driven by emotions, according to the minority shareholder and CEO of Amber Food Group, Gediminas Balnis.

I take a negative view on such emotional decisions, he told BNS. McDonald's, Burger King and KFC directly pay taxes in Russia, but nobody in our country is protesting against them and food delivery platforms continue to cooperate with them in Lithuania. The share of restaurant sales through food delivery platforms has declined since the lifting of the restrictions, according to the CEO, as it accounted for about 15 percent of the group's revenue during the pandemic.

Amber Food is owned by Balnis and, indirectly, by Kaunas Mayor Visvaldas Matijosaitis, who holds a 50 percent stake in Viciunu Grupe Viciunai Group, one of Lithuania's largest food production groups.

Viciunu Grupe said that it was suspending production at its factory in Sovetsk, a town in the Kaliningrad region after the Kremlin invasion of Ukraine and the mass exodus of Western businesses from Russia.

After coming under criticism, the group said it would continue production until it ran out of raw materials and would sell the business within a few months. Its products are still sold in Russia and other Eastern markets.

Dainius Matijosaitis, a member of Viciunu Groupe's management board, told BNS in an interview that a hasty exit from Russia would ruin the group as creditors and suppliers wouldn't consider it a reliable partner.