UberEATS

by azylman • 11 years ago

52 60 11 years ago

acconrad• 11 years ago

This was inevitable. I wonder what this means for a company like Instacart? Acquisition? Push them out?

fosk2• 11 years ago

I would be more worried if I was Postmates, Munchery or Doordash. Instacart provides a substantial different service: raw grocery delivery instead of pre-made food.

dzlobin• 11 years ago

Instacart delivers groceries that you buy through the app/web.

This is a service where couriers equipped with the dishes of the day ride around and deliver the pre-packed meals you order.

wehadfun• 11 years ago

Actually makes total since. Really they should do all local deliveries.

mayneack• 11 years ago

We've had this in LA for quite some time. It works pretty well. I haven't had any problems with food that seemed too old since they're driving around with it already in the car.

dulse• 11 years ago

I'm surprised to see this landing page was built with Squarespace. I would have figured a tech company as large as Uber would have an easy way to throw together an email collection page without using a 3rd party.

It shows how good these kinds of tools are getting that even for an Uber the best way to build an MVP website is to use a tool like Squarespace vs. spin it up using their existing expertise (and, excitingly, the same tool is equally available to everyone).

andreasklinger• 11 years ago

i think it has mainly to do with cross department allocation of resources

in many larger companies (not saying it's like this) cross department work just increases overhead unnecessary - compared to a project team that just throughs something together quickly

jasonbarone• 11 years ago

I've heard it directly from the people that work at these large companies. The reality is Squarespace (and other platforms like it) offer a user experience that's perfect for the non-technical people who actually manage these websites, and the entire infrastructure is effectively outsourced for $20/mo, which is insane.

robbiemitchell• 11 years ago

Exactly. Large tech companies hire people to build products, not spin up landing pages. If it's possible to outsource so marketing and launch teams can work independently, it's a good move.

matthew-wegner• 11 years ago

The "Don't see your city?" form is actually just Google Forms, too.

meerita• 11 years ago

They need to rollout fast. Any kind of landing page can be successful. Once this is enough proof they can tinker an in-house one.

tptacek8• 11 years ago

Even for engineers, it's good to be given explicit "permission" to use services like Squarespace rather than wasting time rolling your own crappy version of same. I have better things to do.

fosk2• 11 years ago

A bad day for Postmates, Munchery or Doordash. Uber really has a huge infrastructure and they could easily undercut them, push them out of the market, and then raise prices a-la Amazon Books.

serve_yay• 11 years ago

Postmates seems to feature bicycles in a weirdly prominent way, as if that is the best way to deliver a meal. But then they offer delivery from places that are so far away that cycling would be impractical from a delivery standpoint. Anyway, this space seems to still be up for grabs, but then I don't live in a place like NYC where Seamless owns it.

eric_h2• 11 years ago

From my own usage, Caviar Fastbite, Uber eats and Postmates have significantly reduced the amount of money I spend on seamless.

Seamless' extremely shitty launch of their website redesign (that still doesn't work properly) also didn't help.

Edit: I live and work in NYC

27182818284• 11 years ago

How old is this? I've already seen job posting with Uber for people to work with UberEATS, so I figured it was around or privately around maybe?

donjh• 11 years ago

I'm redirected to the UberEATS Chicago page, which has been around for some time. Did UberEATS launch in new locations today?

tswartz• 11 years ago

Not sure if these are new cities, but these are listed on the page:

Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Barcelona

bernardom2• 11 years ago

Favor has been doing pretty well here in Boston, though I believe they use multi-modal transportation (bike, scooter, motorbike, or car).

I wonder whether that's enough to make them operationally superior vs. uberx drivers?

Thriptic• 11 years ago

I'm in Boston (well, Cambridge to be precise) and am not familiar with Favor. How does it differ from Grubhub, Foodler et al?

bernardom2• 11 years ago

I don't understand the distinctions perfectly, but as far as I can tell, Favor is a service of people who will walk into a restaurant and order whatever you want.

Grubhub is, I think, more directly connected with the shop. I think they put the onus on the shop to do delivery. Favor is their own delivery service.

It all blends though- I think Caviar is basically Favor, and they're pretty close to TaskRabbit For Food Pickup...

toddmorey• 11 years ago

So it's interesting. These appear to be pre-made items (limited selection each day). As far as I can tell, it's only $3 per delivery, no matter how many items you order. And the listed prices look competitive, though I couldn't find a restaurant that had any of the Uber items on the actual menu. I'm assuming they are custom specials.

I've used and liked Favor, but once you add in a tip, and pay their percentage, it can get expensive quick ($5 per, plus 5% plus 20% or so for tip). So that can be $7.50 in delivery charges for a $10 sandwich. The upside is that anything can be ordered custom.

Does anyone know the logistics? For example, are the drivers stocked with inventory in their cars to avoid returning often to the restaurant? Do food delivery drivers ever also pick up passengers?

eric_h2• 11 years ago

In NYC, all the uber eats "drivers" are either on bikes or on foot. They usually have a hot storage bag and a cold storage one, and they're stocked with all the items available for the daily menu. Pretty good experience, generally, though I've found the caviar fast bite experience to be generally better (it's exactly the same idea as Uber eats, they partner with many of the same restaurants, same delivery model).

swozey• 11 years ago

The Austin menu is really strange. Gordoughs, our famous blow-your-gut Donut burger place has one item available and it's not even a burger. It's a tiny dessert item. I use Favor, Eat24, etc all the time. If the menu is this minimal I doubt I'll ever use uberEATS.

cyan_atrus2• 11 years ago

the difference is delivery times though -- uberEATS / caviar fastbite and friends deliver in < 10 minutes

mmanfrin• 11 years ago

Ike's Menage-a-trois is $12.21 on menu, which is actually $1.21 more than Uber (although comes with chips, so that evens out).

As far as logistics, I would bet dollars to dimes there are drivers with a large stock of all/many of the items; having them return to a restaurant ad hoc for each order would make this financially unworkable. Sprig, Bento, and Rocketspoon all work this way -- drivers are simply given a next destination to go to and dish out in-car inventory.

stillsut• 11 years ago

It's a good interview question. Here's how I would answer it:

At scale there would be drivers dedicated to filling up at only one restaurant, and then delivering to multiple customers before refilling. The more popular restaurants would have a multiple drivers, leaving every N orders. Less popular restaurants would be grouped geographically to "share" one driver who would alternate food-pickup between the two restaurants on schedule.

bkeroack• 11 years ago

Uber Eats is great. You can get delivery food in 5-10 min instead of 30-45 min (at least in LA). Its usually faster than walking down the street to the closest lunch place.

davexunit2• 11 years ago

Please do not use this service. Uber is a very unethical company that does not treat their drivers (the ones doing all of the work) well.

t0mbstone2• 11 years ago

I don't see how this is possibly true. Every single time I ride in an Uber or Uber X, I always ask the drivers how they like driving for Uber, and what their experience has been like, and every single one of them has responded positively (out of around 20 times I've asked).

If they don't like how they are treated, they can stop driving for Uber. It's not my moral responsibility to police Uber's business practices for the sake of their drivers.

derwiki• 11 years ago

Unless they need money to pay bills and have no other sources of income.

[edit] Also, try asking "how do you like being considered a contractor vs full time with health benefits" -- I've found that perfectly "happy" drivers will give you an earful about this.

myth_buster• 11 years ago

This has exactly been my experience while talking to drivers although most have been driving for less than 3 months. This has been quite different to what I see driver reviews [0] on the Glassdoor. The difference in reviews is quite stark when you compare the reviews between engineers/managers vs drivers.

[0] http://www.glassdoor.com/GD/Reviews/Uber-Reviews-E575263.htm...

ForrestN3• 11 years ago

This argument, that it's super easy to find any kind of work you want, is totally disconnected from the reality of these people's lives. Throughout history we've collectively decided that poor people can and should be protected from unfair labor practices. Just because plenty of children were willing to work doesn't mean we were wrong to keep them from doing so. It's our moral responsibility as a society to make sure that everyone within our society is treated fairly, especially in the United States since we fail so hard at providing the kind of safety nets that take care of the un- and under-employed.

hayksaakian2• 11 years ago

think logically for a second.

do you think the drivers with a bad experience would stick around at Uber? or would they probably leave?

There's little to no obligation to stay an uber driver, you can literally quit without notice any day.

lumberjack• 11 years ago

Maybe, they just stop working when they get crossed with Uber so you never get to meet anyone with a bad experience working for them?

devindotcom• 11 years ago

It's not my moral responsibility to police Uber's business practices for the sake of their drivers.

Actually, it is! You're not a neutral party just because you didn't make the policy. You tacitly support their policies by choosing their service. You can tacitly disapprove by choosing another service. This is the basis of things like boycotts, which actually can and do have effects on company policies.

Think about Chick Fil-A or something like that. You can choose to support a company that has policies that are bad news or you can choose not to.

teej• 11 years ago

[ citation needed ]

johndevor• 11 years ago

It would behoove you to suggest a practical alternative, instead of just condemning their existence.

aarongolliver• 11 years ago

A practical alternative? Get your own food.

Food delivery startups are huge right now, I get like 4 ads a day for different ones in Seattle. If anything, Uber is late to this game.

larzang• 11 years ago

Curb has the universal app convenience of Uber but partners with licensed taxi companies instead.

larrys• 11 years ago

Failing to see at $3 delivery charge how anyone can afford to do these deliveries with wear and tear on a car and so on.

devy• 11 years ago

It's actually $4 flat fee for delivery, tips included.

slayed0• 11 years ago

Oh good, more cars blocking traffic in SF with their hazards on for justification.

tptacek8• 11 years ago

If Uber's delivery fleet is taking advantage of cars already on the road serving passengers, then this is a net reduction in traffic: food delivery is already a thing whether or not Uber provides it.

Meanwhile: apparently a lot of these orders are delivered by bike messengers.

seliopou• 11 years ago

Shout out to CrunchButton[0] who have been doing curated, location-based food delivery since 2012-ish.

[0] https://crunchbutton.com/

UberEATS

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