After first launching in, of all places, Toronto, the standalone UberEATS app has finally arrived elsewhere in the US.
The standalone app has now officially launched in Chicago, Houston, and San Francisco, after it landed in Los Angeles earlier in March. Uber says it will be rolling out UberEATS in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Melbourne, New York, Paris, Seattle and Washington D.C. in the coming weeks. The company made the announcement with a blog post today. The standalone app works just like the Toronto version: You can opt to get regular delivery from a hundred or so restaurants in the area, with the full menu available for you to pick and choose from; UberEATS offers this service from morning until 10 p.m. everyday, and you can see how long it will take for Uber to get the food to your doorstep within the app (15-20 minutes, 20-30 minutes, etc).
Or, if you want food delivered to you faster—Uber says as fast as 10 minutes or so—you can choose Instant Delivery, which features three to five daily dishes in every city, all displayed in big, clean photos in the app. Instant Delivery is only offered between 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. during weekdays.
“We learned quickly that requesting a ride and ordering a meal are two very different experiences,” Chetan Narain, product manager of UberEATS, writes in the announcement post. “They each deserve their own home.”
As we explained when the app first launched in Canada, Uber had to make sure a few things were in order, logistically, for UberEATS to work. Drivers can’t arrive at a restaurant too early and waste precious time hanging around while the food is still being prepared; they also can’t arrive too late, and risk the food being served cold. Uber says its map-routing algorithms help so that drivers get to the restaurant at the right time, hitting the sweet spot.
There’s also a separate driver base handling UberEATS deliveries, which doesn’t overlap with the group of regular Uber drivers picking up people in their cars. (Drivers can choose to switch between modes freely, by logging into and out of the app.) According to Uber, the partnerships with Instant Delivery restaurants require special arrangements, including a scheduled pickup at the restaurant before 11 a.m. hits. Meanwhile, regular UberEATS delivery is done more ad hoc: orders come through the app, and drivers drive to the restaurants to pick up the food, then bring them to the customer. Uber declined to provide details on how it and participating restaurants split the revenue they bring in, but one can imagine how agreeing to be listed on Uber's app wins these restaurants some high-tech local advertising.
Update at 2PM ET 03/15/16: This story has been updated to clarify that UberEATS officially launched in several US cities today, after first coming to LA earlier in March.
