Uber has undeniably been one of the bigger breakthroughs in terms of leveraging technology to offer a service to the end user, but it’s also had its ups and downs over the past year or so. Controversy is never too far behind an Uber, and while it’s somewhat unavoidable – people will be people, after all – Uber perhaps has some cleaning up to do. Regardless, the brand has become well-known and well-established at this point, and spinoffs like UberEats are leveraging the pool of drivers to meet new goals. In this case, UberEats was designed to help get those on a tight lunch break something decent to eat without having to spend that time actually getting the food, as UberEats would bring it to them. For some New Yorkers however, it’s bad news, as UberEats is shutting down its instant delivery service.
Uber said that as of April 18th “we’ll no longer be offering a daily Instant Delivery lunch menu” which is perhaps going to be a blow to a lot of people, but we have to wonder why Uber is able to simply walk away from such a service in the first place. How much could the service have been making if they can simply shut it down like this? The idea behind the daily menu was a set of different items sourced from different restaurants that people could pick from and have delivered to their home or place of work in or around 10 minutes. This was down to a central holding center in Manhattan, and the food was only ever left on the sidewalk, rather than delivered to the door or the exact floor. This doesn’t mean that UberEats is shutting down in New York City entirely, just that those in a hurry won’t be able to get their eat on quite as quickly as they could have done before.
Uber is a service that’s clearly willing to experiment with things, which makes a lot of sense for a business in the business of disrupting old industries. During Valentine’s Day this year they partnered with New York firm Master & Dynamic to deliver earphones direct to people’s doors, for instance. The future of UberEats however, might not be as tasty as people first thought.