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When ordering from a food delivery service, you usually don’t have a specific place in mind but more a general concept of what type of foodstuff you wish to consume. You have a craving for buffalo wings on a cold day. Maybe you need pizza, but not the worst pizza on the planet. Perhaps you woke up at 11 a.m. after a long night of “sleeping” and need someone else to make breakfast. Uber Eats sorts out that type of craving perfectly.
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The convenience of delivery services is in how they line up every eatery within spitting distance and let you browse their menus. You care about the food, not the building/truck/garage the food comes from. While the variety is great for you, it’s not great for the drivers since they have to bop around town carrying small orders from every place imaginable. Uber is hoping to lighten the load on their drivers just a bit by introducing a featuring inspired by their taxi business. This is the Uber Eats’ Carpool.
Here’s how it’ll work. Instead of sending multiple drivers to the same location for multiple orders, one driver will pick them all out and then hit multiple houses. It sounds sensible, but the roadblock comes in convincing customers to make those orders appear in the same place. So, if Uber’s system detects that a solo order is preparing at a nearby establishment while you’re browsing, you might get a $2 discount coupon for ordering there.
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It’s seemingly a win-win for everyone. Especially the restaurants, who’ll pay big money to be put in these promotional spots to gain more customers. This new initiative is all a part of adding new revenue potential to Uber’s apps before their public offerings of stock in 2019.
The only people who won’t win are the ones freaked out by the fact that Uber’s network is intelligent enough to set up these types of situations on the fly. Alas, that’s just the tech world we all live in nowadays. Might as well get a discount on your next bag of cheeseburgers for your trouble.
