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Uber CEO: We're Going After Groceries Next (yahoo.com)
Uber is digging deeper into the business of food. From a report: Uber's restaurant delivery business "Eats" hit $6 billion in bookings earlier this year, growing over 200%, quickly becoming a crown jewel for the ride-sharing company. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said given the success in the delivery of food, the next logical step is to enter the grocery space. "We will move into grocery. That's fundamental. A lot more people will be eating at home. Right now we are busy with Eats, but you can see grocery as an adjacent business. We're thinking about Uber much more as a platform," he said at Vanity Fair's New Establishment Summit 2018 on Tuesday.
They'll partner with grocery stores who have employees shopping for you. The Uber drivers will get the employee picked groceries to your home. The employees shopping for customers is already a growing trend in grocery stores and so it's a natural progression for Uber to be the last mile carrier.
All so you don't have to go out in public and associate with real PEOPLE!!!
Supermarkets are big enough to run their own delivery operations.
It's common in New Zealand. They have people in the different sections of the supermarket picking the items for multiple orders.
You shop online and get told then that is likely in stock. If it isn't in stock when your order gets picked, they'll substitute it. If the substitute costs more, they don't charge you more, if it costs less, they'll refund you the difference. They're very generous on their weight based pricing for produce too. It's cheaper for them to give you more than fuss around trying to hit the exact value you paid for.
Your groceries then get delivered in a little refrigerated truck. No way in hell I'm having some random guy in their car deliver me frozen goods.
To top it all off, this only costs $13 for delivery. $9 if it's over $200. $118 for unlimited deliveries for 6 months - works out to only $4.5 a week.
How is Uber going to compete with that price? They'd need to provide trucks or coolers too, since they can't realistically offer delivery for anything that requires refrigeration