It’s been a bit of an up and down week for meal delivery service Uber Eats. On the upside, Burger King just announced it was partnering with Uber Eats for nationwide meal delivery starting today. However, this comes on the heels of news yesterday that Uber Eats is laying off one percent of its workforce including workers on the Uber Eats team.
People hungry to eat an Impossible Whopper (or any BK sandwich) from the comfort of their home can now place an order within the Uber Eats app. As part of the promotion, the Uber Eats is offering free delivery on orders of $15 or more through October 27.
BK’s partnership with Uber Eats isn’t an exclusive one. If you go to Burger King’s site, the “BK Delivers” link actually takes you GrubHub. Though when we searched for Burger Kings in a few different cities, there were no results, so GrubHub’s partnership may not be implemented nationwide.
The addition of Burger King to its roster also comes after McDonald’s ended its exclusive delivery relationship with Uber Eats in July of this year. Bringing on BK helps bolster Uber Eats at a time when DoorDash (which also delivers for McDonald’s and Burger King) leads meal delivery space with 35 percent market share of consumer spend, followed by Uber Eats, which has 25 percent.
With so many players in the space, meal delivery has become a cutthroat business, and Uber Eats is in a bit of flux as it works to stave off the competition. Uber has been under pressure after a lackluster IPO and racking up financial losses. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that while there is a lot of growth ahead for Uber Eats, profitability for the division is still a ways off. To help stem the bleeding, Uber announced yesterday that it was laying off 350 people across the company, including Uber Eats. The company didn’t provide details on how many from Uber Eats were being let go.
We’re still early in the meal delivery game and Uber Eats isn’t on life support yet. The company has a “preferred” delivery partnership with Starbucks, and has been experimenting with drone delivery of burgers. Perhaps an Impossible Whopper by air isn’t that far off.
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