Uber’s venture into the hospitality industry, UberEATS officially launched in Sydney earlier in the week, putting Sydneysiders at odds with their recently rekindled love for walking around outside.
A seriously impressive gaggle of 100-odd restaurants of all types have partnered with the service including Fratelli Fresh, the sneaker/fried chicken collab Butter, and Thievery. Some ~fancy~ joints have also put their hand up including Saké and Three Blue Ducks.
The fight for dominant food delivery service is getting chaotic with DeliverHero, Deliveroo, Foodora, Menulog and Suppertime already battling it. This doesn’t seem to have deterred Uber who are sure that their recognisable interface that we’ve come to know and love will give them a leg up.
“As people have come to expect from our Uber services, it will be seamless, just the touch of a button,” says General manager of UberEATS Australia, Simon Rossi who implies that despite users needing to download a separate app, the services are interconnected. “In this day and age a lot of people are busy and to be able to get your food and taxi service in the one place is convenient. It’s a good market for it.”
It does seem to be a different vetting process for drivers who must be over the age of 19, with at least 1 year of driving experience and be able to carry 30lbs, or 13kg-ish.
To make the transition as smooth as possible, for the time being they’re keeping the delivery fee to $5 to match the aforementioned competition rates. But that may not be much help to us. Initially rumoured to service areas between “Bondi to Surry Hills, Pyrmont to Newtown, and everywhere in between” UberEATS, at present will go to the CBD, as far as Glebe in the west and down through to Bondi in the east, leaving a pretty solid chuck of the city in the no go zone.
The service has been available to our brothers and sisters south of the boarder since it launched in Melbourne back in April. Sydney will be the 6th city with access to the service outside of the US.
