On 26 November 2025, an app that millions of Australians had used for takeaway stopped working. Menulog, which began in Sydney in 2006, closed its Australian operations. Its customers, restaurants and couriers were handed to Uber Eats.
The end is the part most people remember. The beginning is quieter. Dan Katz, Leon Kamenev and Kevin Sherman started the business in Sydney, and little about their early lives is on the public record. That matters, because in this story the company is the character that shows its hand.
For a company founded less than a decade earlier in Sydney, it was one of the larger exits in Australian internet history.
The early years were methodical. Menulog opened Brisbane, Canberra and Melbourne in 2007, then Adelaide and Perth in 2008. An iPhone app followed in 2009 and an Android app in 2011. In 2012 it crossed the Tasman to New Zealand. By July 2014 it had handled over 22 million meal orders.
Then came the deal that made it famous. In early 2015 it agreed to merge with rival EatNow, with Menulog holders taking 70 per cent. Months later, Britain's Just Eat bought the merged group, paying with new shares valued at about A$855 million. For a company founded less than a decade earlier in Sydney, it was one of the larger exits in Australian internet history.
Selling to a global parent meant the founders' story ended and the platform's story passed to others. In 2016 Menulog lost a Victorian tribunal case brought by a pizza shop, Pizza Fellas, over use of its brand name in Google Ads, a small reminder that marketplaces fight over their restaurants' names. In 2016 it reached ten million orders in a year. Then the pandemic pushed demand up, and the company halved its pickup commission.
But the market had changed. Just Eat merged with Takeaway.com in 2020. In May 2024 Menulog left New Zealand. Eighteen months later the Australian business closed, with the parent saying it wanted to focus on other markets.
In the end Menulog shows two things about platforms. A marketplace built on local restaurants can be copied by anyone with money and couriers, and a founder who sells at the peak gives up the vote on what comes next. It also shows that a 2006 idea, executed city by city, could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars before the market got crowded.