A popular town centre cafe has been forced to close its doors.
Kopi Coffee was opened almost exactly a year ago by Marc Faulkner, after the previous coffee shop on the premises, Poco Coffee, closed down.
Marc spoke to the ECHO last month regarding the impact that a 'loophole' on food delivery service Just Eat, is having on the business.
READ MORE: Liverpool Just Eat rebels expand alliance to cities across UK after free food 'loophole' row
The 'loophole' involves customers fraudulently cancelling orders and receiving a refund, despite their order arriving in full.
Marc said: "I'm afraid the situation with Just Eat has pretty much led to the closure.
"Whilst the direct impact on Kopi wasn’t as severe as it has been on our other shops, mostly due to the fact Kopi was more traditional coffee shop, the deliveries were secondary to that.
"The financial repercussions on the wider business have meant we can no longer support Kopi financially as we have done over the past 12 months.
"So we were faced with a choice between an orderly wind down now, where we remain in control and can ensure that the staff and suppliers are all taken care of, whilst writing off our own investment, which runs to nearly 6 figures over the past year.
"Or the very real prospect of the whole group imploding in the future, putting a further 20 jobs at risk. We simply couldn’t do that.
"We’ve seen a slight decline from the “peak” a couple of weeks back, but it’s still running at hundreds of pounds a week in fraudulent or inaccurate refunds."
Almost 200 takeaways across Merseyside are taking action against Just Eat through boycotts, Marc and his other businesses are joining with this.
He told the ECHO: "We’re working with a group of close to 200 takeaways across the Liverpool City Region to try and spur Just Eat into action, through a series of boycotts, cancelling all of our paid marketing partnerships with them, removing all promotional material and signage, and also encouraging customers to use other platforms which work more fairly with both customer and restaurant partner."
A spokesperson for Just Eat last month said: "We're absolutely committed to supporting our restaurant partners and have recently put measures in place to ensure an even fairer refunds process. This includes increasing the time for restaurants to raise any disputes.
"While cases like these are rare, whenever we're made aware of any activity relating to non-genuine orders, we will always take steps to ensure our partners are fairly compensated. We are continually reviewing our policies and processes in this space to support both customers and restaurants."
