Uber goes all in with grocery delivery

With many companies suffering a financial blow during the novel coronavirus pandemic, food delivery apps have seen an increase in usage. Uber took advantage of the moment and announced on Tuesday that its app will be expanded to include food delivery in several cities in America.

The hail shipping company is introducing this new service in cooperation with the Chile-based startup Cornershop for food deliveries, the Uber bought a majority stake last October. The acquisition in Chile is still pending.

“Our vision is to offer all of our customers everything from a single source for food events,” said Raj Beri, Uber’s global food manager, at a press conference. “We want to make sure we can get food to customers as conveniently and quickly as possible.”

With shelter-in-place orders during the Corona virus In a pandemic, many people are increasingly relying on restaurants and grocery delivery apps to get their food. Startups like Instacart, DoorDash and Grubhub have seen their businesses explode in the past few months.

While it is The ride has slumpedUber said its restaurant delivery service, Uber Eats, had seen orders increase more than 100% since the same period last year. In more than 30 countries where Uber experimented with food delivery, there has been a 176% increase in food orders since February. Cornershop said it now makes more than 1 million orders a month.

However, the delivery of food on demand is a competitive environment. Caviar, Grubhub, Seamless and DoorDash deliver in the restaurant. And Instacart and Amazon Fresh offer grocery deliveries. Uber announced on Monday that it was Purchase of the Postmates appthat announces itself as the “whatever you can imagine” delivery app.

Uber’s grocery delivery service will be available in Tuesday in 19 cities in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Canada. It will be released later this month in the US in Miami and Dallas. Uber said the plan is to make the service available worldwide at some point.

When users in these cities open the Uber app, the food delivery icon is displayed. As soon as you click on it, you can choose from different supermarkets. From there you can choose which items you want to put in your virtual shopping cart. You can also choose a time window for the delivery of your groceries.

“When we founded the company almost five years ago today, we really saw Uber as a benchmark,” said Oskar Hjertonsson, founder and CEO of Cornershop, at the press conference. “We have decided to do something similar.”

The technology behind Uber’s grocery delivery is provided through Cornershop. And the couriers who do the grocery delivery work more for Cornershop than for Uber. If an Uber driver wants to make grocery deliveries using the app, he must register via Cornershop.

During integration with Uber, Cornershop’s native app remains accessible to users in the cities in Latin America and Canada where it is currently available.