Uber Eats
Uber EatsBold text
Background
Uber Eats is a platform that allows users to have their food and drinks ordered from a restaurant delivered to them. Uber Eats acts as a platform both online and on your phone as an application. The goal of this platform is for users to efficiently receive their favorite food from local restaurants at the comfort of their home. Once you order your food and drink from your favorite restaurant, you will now alert another person on the application to act as your driver, who will pick up the food from the restaurant and deliver it to your desired location.
History
Uber Eats’ delivery platform was launched by its parent company Uber in 2014. It was founded by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp with its headquarters in San Francisco, California. It is currently served in 45 of the 50 states with over 6000 cities across the nation.
However, Uber Eats was not always as successful and extensive of an organization as it currently is. It used to be a much more limited experience. The food and drink options were not nearly as full as the menu you are served in restaurants or even as its other competitors in its primary stages. For example, a user only had seven choices during the lunch hour and it was only a feature among the Uber platform itself.
Over time, the parent company Uber released a product out onto its own standalone application. Its availability started off in Los Angeles, but soon reached the rest of the country very early in its development. The new application developed from a lunch service into efficient and effective all-day deliveries with full-menu options from numerous restaurants.
Uber Eats’ Management
Uber Eats was founded by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp in 2014, and its current CEO is Dara Khosrowshahi. The former CEO Jason Droege played a huge role in the beginnings of the company.
This 40-year-old protégé started off his college days cofounding a file-sharing startup at UCLA. He was always interested in the idea of ride-hailing and tried everything from diapers and deodorant to dry cleaning. He realized nothing worked except for the transport of food. Droege continued to experiment with different types of foods like delivering ice cream and BBQ on Independence Day. Uber’s first serious attempt was with Uber Fresh, where drivers would move around with coolers full of hot food ready for efficient delivery. When Uber Fresh launched in Los Angeles in August 2014, the team had over hundreds of meals in an hour and half, which is far more than the eight orders a day for deodorant.
This is when Droege realized that the food business for ride-hailing is indeed successful, but Uber Fresh could expand much further than just hot soups and sandwiches. This thought process soon led Droege to the idea that customers would wait for any meal they have wanted if it was around 30 minutes. Hence, Uber Fresh transformed into Uber Eats.
Uber Eats was actually started in Toronto in 2015 instead of big cities like New York where the competition for similar platforms are higher. Then, Uber Eats expanded into Miami and Houston. In 2017, business became profitable, which led Droege to believe that this company does indeed have the possibility of being prosperous.
While times seemed bright, the executive board were receiving severe reports of sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and other questionable business ethics. This eventually led to Kalanick being removed and Droege and his team untouched.
Over time, these allegations slowly dwindled, while the company’s success continued to prosper even more so than before those allegations. This helped Droege and current CEO Khosrowshahi to believe the Uber Eats is a truly significant business.
Uber and its Affiliation with Uber Eats
Uber Technologies Inc, commonly known as Uber, is a platform where users can connect with drivers who can deliver them to their desired location. Uber was founded in March 2009 in San Francisco, California. Users will utilize the mobile application or online website to request a ride, and a nearby driver accepts your request. The application will display the estimated time of arrival for your desired pickup location and allows users to reach their destination with a processing fee. The fee is calculated based on the specific driver rate, as well as the estimated time and distance the driver will have to travel the passenger. On top of that, to ensure safety, Uber drivers will have to encounter a specific record and criminal history check which is reviewed by Uber.
After its production and expansion, Uber has not only been top of its competitors for ride-hailing applications but also disrupted modern transportation as we know it and become the highest-valued private startup company in the world. Currently, Uber reported a net income of $1.1 billion, $3.9 billion in revenue and 1.5 billion trips on its platforms. Accompanied with Uber being one of the most explosive growing companies, Uber has completed some high-profile acquisitions like JUMP, Postmates, Drizly, and Lime. Along with its growth, Uber eventually released Uber Eats as its separate company in 2014, where delivering passengers changed into delivering food.
Functionality
There are three main steps to having the user retrieve their food at their doorstep. The first step is to browse through the restaurants, pick and order your food from the full menu, and track the delivery order.
Browse
Over time, the arsenal of restaurants that are available on Uber Eats has greatly increased. Uber Eats has hundreds of restaurants to choose from. Users can easily scroll through these various options and even achieve inspiration to find orders from local restaurants. When browsing through, the user will have the option to pick a specific cuisine for food or even a category of an item they would like to order. The cuisines include healthy, Indian, Mexican, Sandwich, Burger, Pizza, American, and many more. The categories of items users could choose from are groceries, alcohol, convenience, pharmacy, baby, specialty foods, retail, etc.
Order
After a cuisine has been selected, the application will allow you to select from restaurants around the local area that are originally filtered by rating. However, the user is able to filter by numerous different options, including most popular, rating, delivery time, etc. Once the vendor is chosen, users can pick the items from the restaurant that they would like to order from. Users can add items to an ongoing cart similar to numerous websites. When everything looks right, just tap the Place Order button. You are able to use various types of payment methods, including Uber Cash, Apple Pay, regular debit and credit cards, and voucher code.
Track
After you place your order, users can follow the order in the application. This includes preparing the food in the restaurant and the actual delivery person approaching the restaurant. The delivery person can come on a bike, scooter, or a car. When you are displaying the screen with the tracking information, the user will be able to see the driver’s name, photo, track their progress on the map, and estimate the time of arrival.
Competitors
GrubHub
Grubhub is another delivery marketplace, and one of the biggest competitors to Uber Eats. Grubhub is a part of Just Eat Takeaway.com and features more than 300,000 restaurants in over 4,000 U.S. cities. It was originally established in 2004 in Chicago, Illinois as a carryout menu website, but in 2014 it accelerated into a food delivery service similar to Uber Eats.
There are two factors that are causing a difference in the GrubHub and Uber Eats, which are cost transparency and delivery speed. Since determining full cost is a very big factor in the user experience, Uber Eats does a good job of listing the restaurant delivery right below the title, where Grubhub does not show the cost of delivery on restaurant listings. GrubHub will not show the delivery price until you have reached the checkout. Additionally, Uber Eats offers an itemized list of restaurants sorted by the cost of delivery, which helps users select which matches their budget.
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Ethical Limitations
Solutions
