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Uber Wants to Deliver Your Groceries Next

Brendan Dorsey
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Brendan Dorsey is an Associate News Editor at TPG who covers nearly everything for TPG including aviation, credit cards, points, miles, ride-hailing services and more. He previously worked for TIME.
Oct. 11, 2018
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2 min read
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Uber Wants to Deliver Your Groceries Next
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Uber's on a fast-paced march to enter all areas of transportation and the on-demand economy. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says he now wants the ridesharing giant to expand into the grocery delivery business.

“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,” Khosrowshahi said at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit 2018 on Tuesday.

Uber is entering a crowded field with major competitors like Instacart, Amazon Fresh and Google Express but has the advantage of having tens of millions of users already on its app.

This won't be Uber's first foray into delivering food — the company announced in May that it's booked $6 billion worth of deliveries through its UberEats service that transports prepared food from restaurants to consumers around the world. UberEats is the fastest growing food delivery service, even eclipsing delivery powerhouse Grubhub.

Earlier this year Uber partnered with Walmart to launch a grocery delivery service but the trial ended after only three months for unknown reasons.

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“Eating is something you do three times a day. So these are habits that go very, very deep. And someone needs to be the orchestration layer for people moving around cities, and I think that can be us. It’s an enormous opportunity. The real challenge for us is where do we focus and where do we partner,” Khosrowshahi said.

The Platinum Card® from American Express up to $200 Uber credit works on UberEats orders in addition to rides, so it could be that the credit will apply to Uber's future grocery delivery service.

It's also possible charges will code as "groceries" when using the platform, which would be great for American Express® Gold Card holders who earn 4x points on US supermarket purchases up to $25,000 per year; then 1x. At the very least, the Chase Sapphire Reserve (3x) and Chase Sapphire Preferred Card (2x) travel or dining categories could apply to purchases with the transportation company.

H/T: Yahoo Finance

Featured image by (Photo courtesy of Uber)