Uber is aiming to eat into London’s meal-delivery market

By Trevor Mogg June 16, 2016

ubereats global expansion london

Hungry office workers in central London have for years been spoiled for choice when it comes to grabbing lunch or dinner, with a vast array of eateries never more than a short walk away. In recent years, meal delivery services like Deliveroo have started to spring up, too, though competition in that particular sector looks like it’s about to get a whole lot more intense.

Why? Because on Thursday Uber launched its own meal-delivery service in central London.

The company will use a network of motorbike and bicycle couriers for its new UberEats service in the city, delivering ready-to-eat dishes from around 150 local restaurants.

Customers can order from the standalone UberEats app between 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. and there’s no minimum order.

In a bid to draw people away from competing services, or simply to persuade new users to place their first order, Uber is starting off by charging the princely sum of nothing for delivery, and promises to get your food to you within 30 minutes. And if it fails? You’ll be offered up to £20 off your next order.

The app is a breeze to use: Simply open it, choose from the list of available restaurants (determined by your location), explore the menu, select a dish, and place your order.

UberEats started out two years ago in Santa Monica (as UberFresh) before rolling into San Francisco, New York, LA, Chicago, and Austin. Further expansion has taken the service to cities such as Atlanta and Houston, and, outside of the U.S., Toronto, Melbourne, Paris, and now London. The standalone UberEats app for iOS and Android landed in March 2016.

The San Francisco company will be hoping UberEats London enjoys a smoother ride than its more famous car-booking service, which since its launch there in 2012 has faced repeated protests by drivers of the city’s iconic black cabs.

Just like taxi drivers in a number of other countries around the world, London’s cabbies see Uber as a threat to their industry and believe the service should be subject to the same rules and regulations.

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Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

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Uber Eats is close to delivering your dinner using a drone

uber eats redesigned app lets you track your order with cute graphics

Along with announcing Uber Cash Monday, Uber shared a few more details about its plans to bring drone delivery to Uber Eats.
Uber unveiled the design for the drones at the Forbes 30 under 30 summit. The drones will have rotating wings with six rotors and will be able to take off and land vertically, Techcrunch reports.
While you might think the drones would be used for long-distance travel, instead they’ll likely be used for more local deliveries, at least for the time being. The drones are expected to have a maximum travel time of eight minutes, including takeoff and landing, and will have a range of 18 miles. For round-trip deliveries, the drones will likely travel 12 miles.
In previous conversations about the project, Uber has suggested that it doesn’t plan to use the drones for an entire restaurant to door delivery and instead plans to use the drones for more of a "last mile” approach. For instance, a restaurant might load up several drones for a delivery area and then those drones will all be launched from a central location to their final stops.
In another scenario, the drones will be deployed from restaurants to parked Uber vehicles that will then be responsible for delivering the food that final mile to its destination.
In July, Uber was conducting tests of the delivery drone in San Diego. Those tests were done from a McDonald’s in the area and were done using an Air Robot AR200 octocopter with a custom-built box for holding the food.
In July, Uber talked about building its own drones for food delivery and said that they could eventually reach speeds of 70mph. It had hoped to have its commercial service set up by this summer, which clearly didn’t pan out.
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In the case of Wing, customers have to opt into receiving deliveries via drone should they want to try the technology out.