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Photo: Uber
Uber has already disrupted one New York institution — breaking the monopoly of the yellow cab — but now it’s adding another string to its bow. As of Wednesday Uber cars are transporting goods around NYC as well as people.
The new service, called UberRUSH, launched simultaneously in New York, San Francisco and Chicago. Essentially, when an Uber driver doesn’t have a customer he can choose to deliver goods instead.
The service is aimed at small retailers like takeout restaurants, florists and bookshops. Unlike rival delivery services like Postmates, the customers will not need to sign up for UberRUSH to receive a delivery. The sender of the goods simply orders an UberRUSH using the same interface on the regular Uber app and selects a destination delivery address. The recipient gets the goods the same way they would from an in-house delivery driver. In New York UberRUSH charges $5.50 for the first mile and an additional $2.50 per mile thereafter. Uber’s existing fleet of drivers will transport the goods, but UberRUSH will also use bicycle and foot delivery runners.
New Yorker’s have actually been receiving UberRUSH deliveries for awhile already. The service has been testing for select vendors like Blockheads Burritos and Indie Fresh since April. “I wanted to make sure I could hit every customer from one location, but I didn’t want to manage the delivery business”, said Indie Fresh CEO Shom Chowdury. in a statement “It allows you to do what you do and let UberRUSH do what it does best, which is delivering stuff."
The service has also been used by Fashion Boutique, Sam & Lex, tailor, Alterations Master and Florist, Ode A La Rose. “We used to wait 2 to 3 hours for a delivery to start. With UberRUSH, now it’s 5 or 10 minutes. Faster pickups means we can handle more orders. It’s all about scaling”, said Olivier Plusquellec, co-Founder of Ode A La Rose, in a statement.
Uber has also partnered with online retailers like Shopify, Clover, Delivery.com, Bigcommerce, 1800 Flowers.com and ChowNow. When users are at the checkout of these online stores they can select UberRUSH for same day delivery.
"Many restaurants doing delivery are missing out on results and revenue because of poorly-built infrastructures, lack of control, communication breakdowns, you name it,” said Chris Webb, CEO and co-founder of ChowNow in a statement. “It’s a brilliant opportunity for our clients."
Uber is betting that its existing delivery infrastructure and customer's familiarity with the Uber app and how it works will give it the edge in this market. No doubt more players will enter the fray and we're still waiting on Amazon’s delivery drones arriving at some unspecified far off future date.
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