Uber prepares to launch UberEATS food app
Service will offer home delivery of restaurant meals
You still can’t get an Uber driver to pick you up in Metro Vancouver. But in a few weeks, you can at least get one to pick up your dinner.
Uber’s food delivery service, UberEATS, is preparing to launch in Vancouver, joining a crowded field of food delivery service apps that includes Just Eat, Foodora, Lazy Meal, Skip the Dishes and several others.
Vancouver loves its food delivery apps — likely because the alternative is going outside into the rain.
“UberEATS would bring a convenient and reliable way for people in Vancouver to get the food they love at Uber speed, open up new economic opportunities for delivery partners to use their vehicles or bikes to earn, and enable local businesses to connect with more customers,” said Dan Park, Canada’s UberEATS general manager.
It would also, of course, introduce more customers to Uber, not to mention recruit a fleet of drivers and allow the company to keep building and improving its mapping data, laying the groundwork for the inevitable launch of their ride-hailing app once the NDP government gives the green light.
Uber will be running sessions for prospective UberEATS drivers at the Hampton Inn & Suites on Robson Street all next week.
Potential drivers are required to provide a valid driver’s licence, proof of work eligibility, an owner’s certificate of insurance and vehicle licence, a driving record of the last three years and two pieces of identification for a criminal-background check. And one imagines they’ll be casually asked if they’re willing to eventually add passengers to their list of pickups.
The service will have to be excellent to gain a foothold in Vancouver’s food delivery market. Most of the locals already have an app for that, something Park acknowledged.
“The Vancouver food delivery market is very competitive with many app-based and traditional restaurant offerings,” he said in a statement.
One hopes that this time Uber is able to more consistently deliver. Locals will no doubt recall the Uber Ice Cream meltdown from this summer, which saw hundreds request ice cream from the Uber app, only to be left in the cold. When the promotion began, #ubericecream trended on Twitter. Four hours later, the trending hashtag had become #ubericecreamfail.
And if you think Vancouverites get upset about missing out on a free ice cream sandwich, just wait until they don’t get dinner.
But UberEATS isn’t another haphazard, short-term promotion.
The service, which launched globally in Toronto two years ago, is now available in more than 160 cities worldwide, including every major Canadian city in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta, and it’s still developing: an app update just two weeks ago introduced a fivestar restaurant rating system — a must for services of this type nowadays. Nobody wants to order unreviewed food.