Twelve cities across the world share one thing that your city probably doesn’t – the release of the UberEats App.
Bringing users their favorite food from top restaurants, UberEats turns the convenience of Uber into yummy food on your doorstop. Uber has kept some of the signature elements from their highly successful (though sometimes contested) app like cashless payments with an app that makes drivers less taxi-service and more pizza delivery person. Hard to say if this is a step up or a step down in the gig economy offerings. Drivers are paid an average of $12 per hour plus $2 for each delivery they make.
Not to be confused with an open-ended delivery system that will bring you whatever you want from wherever you want, the UberEats app curates daily menus from local joints for users within a certain delivery range to choose from. Menus are published the week ahead of time and even come with a convenient “Remind Me” button so no person is at risk of forgetting that Uber can deliver a yummy sandwich or dessert on a particular day. It is conceptually both fun and interesting, though the choices are limited as the app continues roll out. The Uber drivers have a stash of the daily offerings in their car and pull up to deliver curbside when you order – the closest driver gets the delivery just the closest driver gets the Uber pick-up.
UberEats comes into a field with some competition from apps like Postmates, which has a lot more choice both in restaurant and menu and still employs the fun tracking feature that allows someone to watch the driver head to the restaurant and then get on the road to the delivery location. Postmates even uses icons to signify whether your delivery person is on a bike, scooter or in a car. It doesn’t currently look like UberEats is going to disrupt the food delivery market like they did the taxi-service industry, but what is clear is they are spreading their wings and testing more ways to efficiently get people and items from one place to another. We can expect this test to continue maybe even with courier services, and the like.
As Uber expands, taking care of their people is one of their main concerns. UberEats is designed to get drivers on the road from 11 to 2, which is normally a crash in the Uber taxi service.
Slowly fading is the world where restaurants worry about delivery drivers all their own. Towns are full of people who want to make more money using their various modes of transportation. UberEats is just another example. I would tell you all about it, but it isn’t in my town. Dallas, Paris and Toronto can give it a try and let us know all about it!
