Uber’s Food Delivery Option Stepping-Up

UberEATSs is just about to take on key players in on-demand food delivery sector including the ilk of  Munchery, Caviar, and DoorDash, all the while taking advantage of  GrubHub Seamlesss's slowing growth.

In its latest app update Uber “completely changes the way it looks, and puts a huge emphasis on food delivery.  UberEATS, Uber's food delivery function, used to be buried at the bottom of the app, alongside all of Uber's other services, like UberX, UberBLACK, and its courier service, UberRUSH but no longer.

Uber  has elected to highlight UberEATS  in its most serious effort since it launched UberEATS in Los Angeles and regular readers read about that  on this blog first.  Now Uber is expanding UberEATS to New York City, Toronto, Austin, Chicago, and Barcelona. Can you tell the test in Los Angles worked?

In each city, Uber partners with a couple restaurants a day to offer meals to its customers, which the company delivers via courier within just a few minutes. Recently Uber's job listings page indicated that the company is making moves to expand food delivery services into more metropolitan areas, including Miami, Nashville, San Diego, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Dallas, Seattle, and Houston. 

Just how successful does Uber think that UberEASTS can be? Well Uber is starting to emphasize food delivery just as much as its regular ride-hailing services. Now when you open Uber's app, you'll be shown two options at the top that you can toggle back and forth between: a car-hailing option, which encompasses UberT, UberX, UberBLACK, UberPool, and, interestingly, UberRush, along with a food delivery option. The  new interface is available in UberEats cities only.

The new app separates RIDES from EATS and creates a more seamless, intuitive experience across services.  When you”Click on the food delivery option if you're in one of Uber's markets where it serves food, and you'll be shown the day's menu. Uber's emphasis on food delivery not only marks food delivery as Uber's second major category, analysts at Cowen said in a note Monday, but it could also pose a huge challenge to food delivery stalwart GrubHub Seamless.

The up-side seems great for Uber for in Q4 2014, GrubHub's order growth was at 33 percent; by Q2 2015, this slowed to 25 percent. A Cowen's analysts say that UberEATS — along with a bunch of competitors in the food delivery startup space — could capture 50 percent of the food delivery industry's growth in the 2015 fiscal year. This year alone, food delivery startups (not counting Uber) have raised a collective $500 million.

Are you prepared to sell your food on UberEATS? We think you should be.  Success does leave clues and Uber is well funded and growing it’s footprint globally while edifying day-part sales with Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food. .