Uber is doubling down on UberEats, its four-year-old restaurant meal-delivery service, and that’s a logical move for the popular ride-sharing business which has a “major advantage” in that area, says one analyst.
“Uber already has the advantage of their own delivery fleet as part of the rest of their business to rely upon, which most other food delivery businesses don’t have,” explains Natan Reddy, an analyst for CB Insights. “That’s a major advantage in my opinion, and it will be interesting to see how that shakes out against as competitors expand abroad.”
Rivals such as Grubhub (GRUB), DoorDash and Caviar must build out their own infrastructure of contracted drivers to pick up and deliver orders, but UberEats operates by employing the very same Uber drivers who give passengers a ride. That strategy of “piggybacking” upon Uber’s pre-existing network of drivers has apparently been a smart one.