Will UberEats Revolutionize Your Lunch Hour?

Our world has changed tremendously over the last five years. I know platitudes can be annoying, but this one still rings true. Everyday technology alters the way we live, transforms our expectations, and creates new opportunities to access resources. 

Recently a few titans disrupted three major industries with the power of digital. AirBnB disrupted the hotel industry and doesn’t even own real estate. Amazon disrupted the retail industry without a brick-and-mortar location. And Uber is now the world’s largest taxi company without owning a vehicle. 

Uber now threatens to disrupt yet another industry. UberEATS may upend the restaurant industry and irrevocably change how we order and deliver food.

Uber Is in a Category All Its Own

Uber’s success is credited to its understanding of customer desires. At the onset they identified that users just wanted to pick up their smartphones and push a button to hail a cab with the added safety of tracking. They provided comfort, ease, and confidence in a simple and instantaneous way. 

UberEATS promises to do much the same thing to one of the most basic of human needs: the need to eat. This approach to business is so effective that it now has a name all its own, Uberization. It might make us cringe but Uber’s rapid expansion is due to their ability to home in on simple tasks and then make them even easier to carry out. 

UberEATS as a Norm

You may have witnessed this scene already. 

Your colleague pulls out their smartphone to order lunch. When the food arrives, you realize it’s from the other side of town. They gloat about how easy it was to order the food and track its preparation. The delivery was easy and quick. It only took 30 minutes. They received their food with just enough to time to fully enjoy their break while you lament your options and bemoan the limitations of proximity. 

This scene is playing out less and less now that UberEATS is available in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, and Toronto. It just arrived in New York City this week and has already proven to be a massive hit. Anyone below 100th Street in Manhattan can liven up their lunch hour by ordering from over 100 restaurants with over 1,500 couriers waiting to rush over your order. 

What’s more, there is no delivery fee in New York at the moment (usually around $5), and the absence of tipping makes this a no-brainer for anyone who wants to give the service a try.

How Will this Affect the Restaurant Industry?

There is no denying that UberEATS poses a threat to the entire restaurant industry. Consider how this might affect Seamless, Caviar, and Postmates, for example. They paved the way with online order technology, but UberEATS covers that and adds the delivery service, which virtually eliminates the need for in-house delivery people. 

In one fell swoop UberEATS has undercut online delivery services and possibly reduced restaurant overhead costs. Restaurants are always looking at how they can increase the average spend of their customers to maximize their profits. If online ordering allowed them to reach a greater number of customers, then online ordering paired with delivery will exponentially increase that number. Restaurants are quick to adopt this technology because they realize the benefits.

As a user, the anxiety of waiting and the demands of patience are eliminated entirely. The trackability and ease of communication keeps you in control and informed. Just think about how many sticky situations will be eased by this technology. And especially in cities where lunchtime is precious because busy schedules limit our leisure time, the tranquility and ease of UberEATS is guaranteed to increase restaurant profits.

In fact, I used UberEATS today. It was simple and relieving. I ordered food from a restaurant 20 blocks away in New York City at 1:05 PM, got a message that it was on its way at 1:09 PM and received the food at 1:14 pm. I could track the courier like one can on a normal Uber app so met him at the reception downstairs just in time. Here is a collage I put together to highlight the app’s efficiency.

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