Starting today hungry Columbusites can call on Uber drivers for food delivery from roughly 90 different local restaurants.
UberEATS, the latest venture for the ride-hailing app, Uber, announced its launch in Columbus last night at the Vue on Liberty Street in the Brewery District. Business owners from Phatt Taco, Bareburger, 6-1-Pho and others who’ve already established the app for their restaurants were there to celebrate the launch and showcase their menus.
Brittany Baum, owner of Brezel at the North Market, said the app is similar to other food delivery options like GrubHub and Postmates, but also allows them to extend their reach to customers who might not otherwise get their pretzels.
“It’s gonna help some brand awareness, increase knowledge about who we are in the area, and then I think it’s just giving people what they want, faster,” Baum said. “They don’t have to come to the North Market to get our pretzels now.”
UberEATS General Manager Paolo Lorenzoni said the app stands up to its competitors with its ability to quickly get a driver to the restaurant and the consumer’s ability to track the driver in real time. Already on the road, Uber drivers can decide if they want to pick up and deliver food from the restaurant nearby. This also means that the delivery range is broader for UberEATS drivers, so people can get food from restaurants they never would have ordered from before.
Baum said the app also offers a lot more flexibility by allowing them to edit their menus and add items daily.
“It’s very helpful for us,” Baum said. “We do usually have over 50 flavors of pretzels, so we don’t carry those every single day and we need the ability to select if it’s available or not available and let people know if we’ve come up with a new flavor.”
Brezel and more than 80 others are signed on as of today, but Lorenzoni said it’s just the beginning.
“That’s what we’re launching with, but over time we’ll certainly expand that,” he said. “We’ve done so very rapidly in the other markets we’re in.”
It’s true. The car-hailing business mogul now employs 160,000 drivers with 50,000 more coming on every month. Together they chauffeur Uber’s eight million users in 400 cities. Since Uber hit the streets, taxi companies have seen business plummet, resulting in lawsuits and protests. As UberEATS has rolled out in other cities, it’s had the well-established GrubHub for competition. But as people come to expect speed in every facet of life, they’re likely to opt for the food delivery app that can get their food to them in 30 minutes or less rather than an hour or more.
UberEATS is a separate app, but Uber users can get to it through the original. It uses the same card and account on file for Uber rides. For now, as a promotional offer, there is no delivery charge, but that will change.
For more information, visit ubereats.com/columbus/.