Uber CEO: We're going after groceries next
Uber is digging deeper into the business of food.
Uber’s restaurant delivery business “Eats” hit $6 billion in bookings earlier this year, growing over 200%, quickly becoming a crown jewel for the ride-sharing company.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said given the success in the delivery of food, the next logical step is to enter the grocery space.
“With Eats, we’re getting into the business of moving food around. I think that this product of delivering great quality food to you at home in 30 minutes or less is magical and is going to move into grocery in a way that’s fundamental and a lot more people are going to be eating at home…you can absolutely see grocery as being an adjacency,” he said at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit 2018 on Tuesday.
Earlier this year, Uber had teamed up with Walmart (WMT) to test out grocery delivery. The initiative, originally billed as an ambitious move to take on Amazon, was quietly scrapped in May after a short three months.
It’s a saturated space, with startups like Instacart, Amazon Fresh and Postmates Fresh all formidable competitors.
“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, suggesting the intention to go at it alone this time around.
“Transportation is a $6 trillion business and we’re 1% of it,” he said, saying he plans to make a push into the freight business as well. Uber is on track to go public next year.
Melody Hahm is a senior writer at Yahoo Finance, covering entrepreneurship, technology and real estate. Follow her on Twitter @melodyhahm.
Read more:
The cities most at risk of a housing bubble
One-third of Americans believe the middle class will disappear entirely