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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Uber Eats

Postmates Lays Off ‘Dozens’ of Employees, Shutters Mexico City Office

Food-delivery company Postmates — generally seen as one of the big four alongside DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats — has laid off dozens of employees and closed down its Mexico City office, according to an article published on CNBC.

Postmates has not said exactly how many layoffs it is doing, noting only in a statement to CNBC that “the number was at least several dozen and included people in the San Francisco headquarters as well as in Los Angeles, Nashville, Tennessee, and other offices.” The layoffs started this week, according to one CNBC source. According to another source from the same article, the company is in talks to find a potential buyer.

The news paints a drastically different version of Postmates from the one we were staring at just a few months ago, when the San Francisco-based service raised another $225 million, bumping its valuation up to $2.4 billion. The company also filed paperwork for an IPO earlier in 2019.

Since then, however, the market for both IPOs and food delivery services has taken a left turn to some darker place than anticipated at this time last year.

On the IPO front, disappointing debuts from Uber and Lyft, not to mention the ongoing WeWork meltdown, have altered investor sentiment. In other words, investors aren’t necessarily rushing to back companies with questionable profitability models.

Food delivery services in particular are getting more and more questions around not just their profitability (which doesn’t exist) but also their sustainability over the long term. Getting a latté delivered to your door might be convenient, but the process is increasingly fraught with tensions over how these companies handle commission fees for restaurants and treat their workers. Suffice to say, those tensions have called into question the current model for restaurant food delivery.

Postmates hasn’t been center stage for much of these debates. Instead, the service has kept busy in 2019 doing high-profile partnerships with Major League Baseball teams and national restaurant chains. In fact, just this morning, Postmates announced a major deal to start delivering TGI Friday’s in the U.S.

Nonetheless, the company is feeling the effects of the War on Food Delivery, as this week’s news makes clear. “We made the difficult decision to end operations in Mexico City as we focus on our continued growth in the U.S.,” Postmates said in a statement to CNBC. “We continually review our business to ensure that staffing is aligned with current business needs and have made small adjustments as a result.”

McDonald’s and Uber Eats’ Latest Contest Is Another Play to Build More Brand Loyalty Online

If Thanksgiving leftovers aren’t your thing, consider entering McDonald’s latest contest, which gives Twitter users the chance to win free late-night food for an entire year from Uber Eats. 

The contest runs from today (November 27) through Cyber Monday (December 2), according to a McDonald’s press release. To enter it, fans must tweet two menu items they want delivered and include the following tags: #McDelivery, #Sweepstakes, @McDonalds and @UberEats. The grand prize is one year of free late-night delivery awarded as an Uber Eats promo code, along with a bundle of weird McDonald’s swag that includes, among many other items, a massage chair. An additional 50 winners will get a Late-Night Weekender Bag with a $20 Uber Eats promo code.

That’s a lot of burgers and fries, but in the bigger picture, this contest — like many other recent QSR promo efforts — isn’t about free swag or even free food. It’s about McDonald’s and Uber Eats finding new ways to brand themselves in a restaurant industry that’s increasingly moving online. Delivery and pickup orders placed via apps and websites are only going to increase over the next decade, particularly as a younger generation raised in a connected world comes of age. Sweepstakes like this one are as old as the QSR concept itself. McDonald’s and others are simply tweaking the concept to meet their audiences online, where they have the greatest chance of boosting brand loyalty.

More importantly, social media-based contests like these give QSRs more access to data on customer preferences. Having fans tweet the food items they want delivered late at night is, after all, a pretty clear-cut way to determine what people are ordering in the after hours. (Though AI does a pretty decent job of that, too.)

For Uber Eats, enticing more potential delivery customers is key, as the service’s longstanding exclusive contract with McDonald’s ended in July when the chain brought on DoorDash and Grubhub as additional delivery partners. And with customer loyalty to any one delivery platform not particularly loyal right now, these companies need every method they can get their hands on in order to keep existing customers firmly entrenched in their own ecosystems. I doubt contests basically giving away food and free massage chairs will be the strangest efforts we see as this trend continues to take hold.

As Restaurants Move Online, Is Weird E-commerce Merch the New Way to Customers’ Hearts?

Dunkin’-branded pajamas. Gravy-scented candles from KFC. McDonald’s playing cards. If silly merchandise bearing a QSR logo is your thing, you’re living in the right century, as a growing number of restaurant chains serve up branded swag via digital e-commerce channels.

Dunkin’ emphasized the point again recently when it announced its first-ever online pop-up holiday shop that will offer, according to a press release, “a selection of Dunkin’-ized holiday gifts that fans can’t find anywhere else.” Dunkin’ customers can purchase things like wrapping paper, pint glasses, and dog accessories at the limited-time shop.

While the holidays always bring their fair share of branded merch, the Dunkin’ news points to a larger trend happening among QSRs. More and more, restaurants seem to be using e-commerce stores and events to not just sell merchandise online but also create yet-another digital experience for customers that will potentially boost their loyalty to the brand.

KFC is another notable example. The chain has released, among other items, the aforementioned gravy-scented candle, a fire log that smells like fried chicken, and a Funko Pop figure of Colonel Sanders. Sound too dumb to work? Think again: the Funko Pop sold out in 11 minutes.

Meanwhile, McDonald’s takes its e-commerce efforts to the delivery realm each year with its McDelivery Night done in partnership with Uber Eats. The online event, the latest of which just happened in September, lets McDonald’s customers who order via Uber Eats add a free piece of swag to their cart on that night. This year, limited-edition merch included earbuds, scrunchies, and a snuggie-like garment I want someone to mail me right now.

White elephant gift ideas aside, obtaining these items means going into the QSR’s ecosystem, which presents chains with a potentially bigger audience — and much more customer data. Generation Z, in particular, is 20 percent more likely to order food from a fast-food restaurant and at the same time very willing to fork over personal data in exchange for food, experiences, and snuggies alike. 

Will we see more of this in 2020 and beyond? Yes. With more QSRs doubling down on digital ordering and loyalty programs, and with many of them now exploring off-premises models like ghost kitchens, the restaurant experience now has one foot firmly planted in the virtual realm. Tangible goods bought through e-commerce pop-up shops and delivery events will become a standard method for roping in more digital-only customers.

Report: Virtual Kitchen Co. Is Getting a $15M Investment for Its Growing Ghost Kitchen Network

Another day another new ghost kitchen popping up to help restaurants feed the population’s demand for delivery. A new startup called Virtual Kitchen Co. “plans to announce” a $15 million investment from VC firms Andreessen Horowitz, Base10 Partners and others, according to an article published today on Bloomberg. SF Bay Area-based Virtual Kitchen Co currently operates a handful of commissary kitchen facilities, which have no front of house and exist solely for the purpose of renting space to restaurants who need to fulfill more off-premises orders.

Already, there are a few aspects of Virtual Kitchen Co. that set it somewhat apart in the world of ghost kitchen facilities. First, it uses what’s called a hub-and-spoke model, where ingredients are prepped the day before then shuttled to a smaller facility to be cooked and assembled. Compartmentalizing the meal-prep process like this could potentially speed up the work in kitchens, which have fewer tasks to complete compared to, say, a regular restaurant kitchen. The model brings to mind the work of Zume, who pre-makes pizzas in a central facility before sending them to the company’s mobile kitchens for cooking and delivery.

Virtual Kitchen caters specifically to local chains and smaller restaurant businesses, according to Bloomberg. Right now, the company’s (rather bare-bones) website has customer stories from Bay Area restaurants Poki Time, Dosa, and Big Chef Tom’s Belly Burgers as restaurant partners.

Virtual Kitchen was also started by ex-Uber employees Ken Chong and Matt Sawchuk. The latter formerly oversaw Uber Eats, which means he knows a thing or two about restaurant food delivery. Uber itself was experimenting ghost kitchens in Paris earlier this year, but isn’t planning to continue that venture, according to Bloomberg. That doesn’t, however, put Eats out of the game completely when it comes to ghost kitchens. In September, the service partnered with Rachel Ray for a virtual restaurant based on the celebrity chef’s latest cookbook.

And Eats isn’t the only ex-Uber party Virtual Kitchen Co faces in terms of competition: former CEO Travis Kalanick’s CloudKitchens network of ghost kitchens and virtual restaurants reportedly got a $400 million investment from Saudi Arabia and also has the benefit of Kalanick’s net worth, which is more than $3 billion at this point. On top of the that competition is also DoorDash’s newly opened ghost kitchen facility in the Bay Area and Kitchen United’s ever-expanding network.

All of which is to say, Virtual Kitchen Co. faces a rather hot market right now in terms of competition, one that will see many more cooks in the kitchen — literally and figuratively — as ghost kitchens become the new norm for restaurants.

Newsletter: Third-party Food Delivery Keeps on Fighting, But Its Opponent Is Getting Stronger

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It’s getting to be that time when us journalists haul out the predictions for the coming year. You can be sure we here at The Spoon will have plenty of those in the coming weeks. And you can be sure some of them will center around the how the food delivery model could change in the wake of the many controversies its currently mired in. Exorbitant commissions for restaurants, antitrust accusations, paying workers a wage they can’t live on — all this and more (did I mention plummeting stock?) underscores the same point: the third-party food delivery model is unsustainable, far from profitable, and larger swaths of the entire food industry are starting to push back. Hard.

Another log went on that fire last week when online grocery fulfillment platform Instacart cut bonuses for its Shoppers — that is, the folks getting groceries off the shelf and delivering them to customers’ houses. Oh, and it just so happened that this cut, which can reportedly account for up to 40 percent of some Shoppers’ earnings per order, came just days after said Shoppers instituted a protest over previous changes to their pay.

Instacart says the new pay cut is “not a form of retaliation.” Whether that’s completely true or not seems irrelevant. It’s a bad look for Instacart, who, along with DoorDash and Postmates, already came under fire earlier this year for its worker-tipping policy.

Then there’s the fight over AB 5, California’s so-called “gig worker bill,” which was signed into law recently and reclassifies gig workers as actual employees. Instacart is not in on that fight, but DoorDash, Uber, and Lyft are, and they’ve vowed to spend $90 million in 2020 to get a ballot measure passed that would counteract AB 5. Talk about a bad look.

Plus, even if these companies overturn the protections laid out in AB 5, they will still face an endless series of new bills, laws, and regulations that will undercut their core business model and further put the question of profitability in question. Meanwhile, investors are getting antsy, and restaurants themselves are starting to take pieces of the delivery chain, from branding to retaining customer data, back in-house, further eroding the reach of third-party delivery.

Instacart, DoorDash, Uber, and others can fight all they want, but their opponents are getting undeniably stronger. Grab your (delivered) popcorn and sit back. The battle is far from over.

Food Delivery Services Pile On New Features
One fighting tactic for food delivery services is far simpler than pledging tens of millions of dollars to fight legislation: pile on the features in the hopes of attracting more customers and restaurant partners.

This week, Deliveroo announced a pickup feature that lets customers order food via the app then collect it themselves, bypassing the delivery fee on the way. The move could appeal to more cost-conscious folks. Customers ordering food might not want to pay a $5 delivery fee for a restaurant that’s a three-minute walk away. And some restaurants could find the option appealing as it would allow them to work with these off-premise order platforms but pay them slightly lower commission fees.

Uber Eats also recently announced some discounts for its restaurant parters — specifically those who use the Ordermark system, which funnels delivery orders from different third-party channels into the restaurant’s main POS system. Ordermark restaurant customers who sign up to use Uber Eats through the Ordermark platform will receive discounted rates.

Eats is also selling ad space inside its platform to restaurants. “If we have all the restaurants on the marketplace and we give them tools to help them grow, then this will be a very efficient marketplace,” Uber told TechCrunch.

The Robots Are Coming (For Your Food Order)
In another likely scenario for the future, we won’t need a gig economy because the robots will do it all.

At least, they’ll be able to do an awful lot of peddling restaurant and grocery deliveries to customers’ apartments and houses. With delivery robots roving around college campuses, some cities, and now Russia, it’s possible — nay, inevitable — that delivery services will render the debate over human workers pointless by replacing said humans with these six-wheeled bots.

So too will autonomous vehicles. Amid far more controversial statements this week, Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s said autonomous ride-hailing is probably five to ten years off, and that there will be some autonomous driving going in just three to five years for simple tasks and routes.

Writing about the Uber news, my colleague Chris Albrecht points out that “food delivery certainly seems like it could fit the bill when it comes to simple tasks and routes” and that autonomous vehicles nix the cost of human drivers. But he also rightly notes that “this displacement of human labor brings up its own societal issues.” Which means robots and autonomous vehicles could potentially resolve some of the fight around the gig economy, but they’ll open up a fresh can of worms when it comes to the ethics of the food delivery model.

Uber Eats Using Discounts and Ad Space to Entice More Restaurants

Uber Eats and Ordermark announced a partnership this week that will offer service discounts to Ordermark restaurant customers who also leverage the Eats platform for their delivery needs. According to a press release sent to The Spoon by Ordermark, the partnership will make it “easy for restaurants to participate and manage off-premise orders.” It could also help Uber Eats woo more restaurants into becoming more loyal and longtime partners.

Ordermark’s technology helps restaurants centralize incoming orders from the many different channels in which they originate nowadays — in-house, delivery, takeout, etc. The technology pushes orders placed via Uber Eats directly to the kitchen without restaurant staff having to use an extra device or manually input the orders into the main POS system.

According to the press release, restaurants that sign up with Ordermark and request to use Uber Eats as a delivery partner can get their initial setup fees waived by Ordermark and are also eligible to receive a discounted rate on Ordermark services (actual discount numbers were not disclosed). While not the most earth-shattering news of the week, it’s also not insignificant, given the ongoing battle between delivery services and restaurants over sky-high commission fees and the fact that we’re seeing more companies like Ordermark come to market with solutions that promise to simplify both operations and financials for restaurants when it comes to delivery.

In another bid to entice more restaurant partners, Uber Eats is also reportedly selling ad space inside the Eats platform to restaurants. TechCrunch reported a job listing for an Uber Eats Ad Lead, which was confirmed by Uber. “There’s a bunch of different ways we can work with restaurants over time. If we have all the restaurants on the marketplace and we give them tools to help them grow, then this will be a very efficient marketplace,” Uber told TechCrunch.

Both developments come on the heels of Uber’s most recent earnings stats which, while not quite as abysmal as the previous quarter’s numbers still show the company posting more than $1 billion in losses. Losses for the Eats business grew to $316 million, up from $198 million one year ago.

Like Grubhub, who just saw its sharpest one-day decline in its entire history as a publicly traded company, Uber Eats is struggling to show investors it can be a profitable business. Firmly entrenching more restaurants into its ecosystem with discounts and ads could help Eats. Unfortunately, it’s a wait-and-see scenario as to whether that will be enough.

We’ve Seen the Restaurant of the Future. It Doesn’t Look Like a Restaurant

What will the typical American restaurant look like in 2030? Ask the National Restaurant Association, whose new report, “Restaurant Industry 2030” serves up some answers to that question.

Many answers, actually. The 80-page report gives us an in-depth look at everything from how the restaurant workforce will change to technologies that will become commonplace in daily operations, many of which we already see quite a bit of in 2019: self-order kiosks, dedicated areas for pickup orders, and digital drive-thru signage, for example.

Overall, restaurant sales are expected to reach $863 billion in 2019 and grow to $1.2 trillion in 2030, according to the report. The major driver of that growth will be off-premises ordering — delivery, takeout, drive-thru, and other mobile-centric experiences. That will, as the report states, change the definition of the word “restaurant”:

Some restaurants will morph into a hybrid model, offering counter service, full service, takeout and delivery, and meal kits. The delivery-only restaurant is on the rise through virtual restaurants and ‘ghost kitchens.’ New food halls feature retail and restaurant pairings to make it easy for people both to eat and to shop for food they can take home.

All of these things underscore the influence off-premises orders are having on restaurant business models. As the report states, “the shift affects everything from restaurant design to marketingtech investment, operations, and site selection.”

Take ghost kitchens as a prime example. Not so long ago, the idea of having a restaurant without a dining room for anything other than concession-type food was unheard of. Now, restaurants are not only using them to fulfill the influx of delivery orders, they are also testing out brand-new menus and, in the case of multi-brand companies, using the ghost kitchen concept to cross-promote and sell sister brands.

Third-party delivery companies, in particular, are capitalizing on the craze for ghost kitchens, with DoorDash opening its own facility in Northern California and Uber Eats and Grubhub teaming up with non-restaurant food brands to launch virtual concepts.

New business models aside, though, Grubhub et al. face a far more ominous prospect over the next decade: increased regulation of third-party delivery. The National Restaurant Association’s report notes that the restaurant of 2030 will see many a government mandate over the next decade around employees, the environment, and food service-related taxes. But the big one to stand out is the increased regulations for third-party delivery operators.

The debate over stricter regulations for third-party delivery is already in full swing. Earlier in 2019, Grubhub, Uber Eats, and indeed the entire sector came under fire when an oversight hearing was held in New York City that called into question the high commission fees these services charge restaurants. Since then, it’s been one headline after the next proclaiming antitrust issues, biased fee structures for restaurants, caps on delivery fees, ethically questionable tipping policies, and so much more.

The shift towards more regulations is already in place, most notably with California’s Assembly Bill 5, which reclassifies gig workers as employees and was signed into law in September. Third-party delivery companies are fighting AB 5, but even if they succeed, there will be virtually no end to new bills, laws, and other regulatory matters to fight over the next decade. Between that and the constant struggle for profitability for these companies, it’s safe to say the third-party delivery sector of 2030 will be markedly different from the one we know today. Which is to say, the very elements changing today’s food landscape will undergo there own change on the road to 2030.

Uber’s Latest Earnings Reports Underscore the Fragile State of Third-party Delivery

Uber beat estimates but still posted over $1 billion in losses in the most recent quarter, according to the company’s Q3 earnings call this week. While Uber’s Rides business shows signs of stabilizing, other business units, including Eats, are still losing enormous amounts of money.

Losses for the Uber Eats business grew to $316 million, or 67 percent, from $189 million one year ago. And while Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company aims to achieve profitability for 2021, he also in August said, “I don’t expect that business to be profitable in the next year or year after frankly.” Uber Eats team members were part of the layoffs Uber announced in October.

Over the last several months, Uber has unveiled several new features to its business aimed at cross-promoting its Rides and Eats services. Uber Vouchers, for example, is meant to drive more foot traffic to restaurants by subsidizing a user’s ride there. The company also said in September it would merge its Eats app with its main rideshare app.

“We can more quickly and efficiently attract and retain customers, as well as deepen their engagement by linking and cross promoting all of our offerings,” Khosrowshahi said on this week’s call.

But a good cross-promotion strategy won’t necessarily stem the bleeding when it comes to losses for the Eats business. And as Grubhub’s lackluster numbers for the last quarter suggest, the hype around the third-party food delivery services could be cooling down.

One reason for that may be that more restaurants are taking delivery, or at least pieces of it, back under their own control. As restaurant chains move to own more of their branding, credibility, and in some cases the last mile, many are turning to hybrid delivery strategies that only rely on third-party services like Uber Eats for part of the delivery process, which could result in restaurants paying lower fees to these companies.

Then there’s California’s AB 5, which was signed into law in September and classifies contract employees like Uber Eats and DoorDash drivers as employees. Despite Uber, DoorDash, and Lyft committing $90 million to fight the legislation, New York is considering a similar law right now, and others are bound to follow.

On this week’s call, Khosrowshahi reiterated Uber’s plans to defend its stance on AB 5 and similar laws. “So this is going to take dialog,” he said of the issue. “We’re up for that dialogue, and one way or the other we think that our model will thrive and grow.”

Colombian Food Tech Startup Muy Raises $15M to Build More Ghost Kitchens

Just in time for Halloween, Colombian food tech company Muy announced a $15 million Series B round today to expand its ghost kitchen operation to other parts of Latin America. The round was led by ALLVP with participation from previous investor Seaya and brings Muy’s total funding to $20.5 million.

Ghost kitchens — also called virtual kitchens, cloud kitchens, and other names — are shared commercial kitchens restaurants can rent out to fulfill more delivery orders and even try new concepts. The defining feature of a ghost kitchen is its complete lack of a front of house — that is, there’s no dining room, cashier, or servers, and often not even a pickup area. They’re also becoming practically mandatory for restaurants in this delivery-crazed era of food.

Muy, which also operates 20 dine-in restaurants around Colombia, uses what it calls a virtual kitchen and smart chef system to serve delivery guests, who can order and customize food bowls via the Muy mobile app. The company also says it uses AI to make internal operations at its restaurants more efficient and predict demand.

The fresh round of funding will see Muy expand the ghost kitchen portion of its concept to Mexico and Brazil to make delivery more efficient in high-density cities like São Paulo and Mexico City. This won’t be Muy founder José Calderón’s first dabble in food delivery. He co-founded Colombian company Domicilios.com, which Delivery Hero acquired in 2014.

Muy won’t be alone in trying to expand the ghost kitchen concept. In Latin America alone, Rappi, iFood, and Pedidos Ya all compete in the delivery sphere and are contending for would-be customers of ghost kitchens. Meanwhile, Uber Eats operates in dozens of cities in Latin America, and, given its recent efforts with ghost kitchens, could likely one day operate some in that region.

Elsewhere, we’ve seen plenty of news about ghost kitchens peeking out of the shadows. DoorDash announced its own facility earlier this month, Uber Eats has teamed up with Rachel Ray to offer a virtual restaurant where food is prepared in a ghost kitchen, and Fatburger is using its sister brands’ kitchens as places to fulfill more delivery orders.

All of which is to say, it looks ghost kitchen industry is about to see scary new levels of competition.

Uber Eats Reveals New Drone Design. Here’s How it Could Work With Uber Ghost Kitchens

Uber unveiled its new Uber Eats drone at the Forbes Under 30 Summit today. The company will use this design for actual food deliveries when it begins testing in San Diego next summer.

The new Uber Eats drone has six rotors that rotate, allowing the drone to take off vertically. Once the device is airborne, the rotors turn horizontally to enable faster flight. The drone can carry a payload of “dinner for two,” though it is not meant for direct dropoff at someone’s door. Since the drone only has a round trip range of 12 miles or 18 minutes of flight time, it will be used for the “middle mile” — transporting food from one facility to a staging area where a driver will pick up and make the final delivery.

Adding the driver may see like an extraneous step, but it actually makes more sense if you think about how Uber might use ghost kitchens. Ghost kitchens are shared commercial kitchen facilities that rent space to different restaurants wanting to expand their delivery operations. These virtual restaurants tend to be delivery only and only accessible to customers via app like Uber Eats.

Uber Eats reportedly opened up a ghost kitchen in Paris earlier this year, and just this month opened up a virtual restaurant with Food Network personality, Rachel Ray. It’s not hard to imagine Uber investing more in ghost kitchen spaces, using them to launch more exclusive restaurants that are only available via Uber, and literally topping the buildings off with some kind of drone launch facility on the roof. Centralizing a bunch of virtual restaurants in one launch hub would certainly make using the short haul drones more efficient.

Another advantage to creating a hub and spoke model for Uber drones would be limiting the complexity of dealing with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to create flight paths. Rather than having to chart different flight paths (and any accompanying obstacles or complications) on the fly for different homes, Uber could re-use a set number of flight paths to the same drop off points over and over.

Uber’s drone reveal comes after Google got FAA approval earlier this month to begin commercial drone delivery in Virginia. At the same time, Google’s Wing has partnered for deliveries for FedEx and Walgreens, and unlike Uber’s drones, Wing appears to be dropping off directly at a consumers house via a tether that lowers.

Regardless, there are still a ton of details that need to be worked out before drone delivery is an everyday thing. As I wrote about last week, when it comes to delivery, we are watching the world change in real time, and having to figure it out as we go.

Food Delivery Service Just Eat Looks to Be in a $6B Bidding War

Food delivery service Just Eat just found itself at the center of a what could become a massive bidding war for the company.

The service, which is based in London and has operations in multiple countries, confirmed in July a £9 billion ($11.6 billion USD) all-stock deal to merge with Dutch delivery company Takeaway.com, saying the two companies had reached a preliminary agreement. But this week, tech investment firm Prosus, a spinoff of tech conglomerate Naspers, showed up to the party as a seemingly unwelcome third guest. Or as the Financial Times put it, Naspers “has tried to gatecrash a merger of two of Europe’s biggest food delivery groups.”

According to FT and others, Prosus had been in talks with Just Eat previously. After failing to reach an agreement, the former went to directly to Just Eat shareholders with a counter offer of £4.9 billion (roughly $6.3 million USD), in what’s called a hostile bid.

Just Eat rejected the bid, saying in a statement that it “significantly undervalues Just Eat and its attractive assets and prospects both on a standalone basis and as part of the proposed recommended all-share combination with Takeaway.com.”

Prosus offered 710 pence per share in cash for Just Eat. In comparison, Takeaway.com’s original all-stock offer from July valued Just Eat at 731 pence per share, but thanks to Takeaway’s declining stock, that number has dropped all the way down to 595 per share in the last few months.

On the surface, that would make the Prosus offer more attractive — in the short term. But Just Eat has said its decision to stand by the Takeaway deal is based on “compelling strategic rationale.” As Just Eat noted in a press release from July, when it announced the merger, the combined group has “compelling strategic logic and represents an attractive opportunity for both companies to build on the strong individual platforms of Just Eat and Takeaway.com with the potential to deliver substantial benefits to respective shareholders, customers, employees and other stakeholders.”

In other words, combining two companies who already hold a massive global presence on their own in the food delivery sector would create an entity strong enough to stand up to competition. Deliveroo raised a £450 million (~$575M USD) round this year, a sizable chunk of which came from Amazon. Uber Eats also has a massive presence across every livable continent on the globe.

Even so, shareholders still have to approve the deal. According to FT, some have “voiced opposition” to it, including Aberdeen Standard Investments and Eminence Capital, who “dismissed” the deal as grossly undervaluing Just Eat. Shareholders will vote on December 4 whether or not to approve the deal.

Prosus has stakes in multiple food delivery companies, including Swiggy and Delivery Hero, but the company isn’t yet considered a heavyweight in the food delivery sector. Its deal, while financially attractive, would likely lack the synergy Just Eat seems to think is so vital to the Takeaway merger.

At the very least, Takeaway could very well have to raise its offer price in the wake of Prosus’ counter offer, igniting a bidding war that could have a ripple effect across the industry as competition among food delivery companies heats up.

Uber Eats Makes Pickup Feature Available Nationwide, Launches Food Guides

Today, Uber Eats announced that the Pickup feature on its on-demand restaurant food app is now available to customers nationwide. According to an article this morning in USA Today, the company has been testing the feature in San Diego, Phoenix, and Austin and has now made it available to all customers in the U.S.

Pickup is just as it sounds: Uber Eats customers order their food through the app as usual. Then, instead of paying a delivery fee and waiting for someone to drop the food at their door, they go to the restaurant and collect it themselves.

While hardly a new concept, having a pickup option for food seems a necessary step when it comes to appealing to certain parts of the population, particularly in dense urban areas where the restaurant of choice might be on the next block and the $5 delivery fee is not justifiable on such an order. Other major on-demand food competitors — Grubhub, DoorDash, and Postmates — already offer the pickup option to customers. Why Uber Eats has waited so long to unveil its own version of pickup remains a mystery, but with both off-premises orders and competition among third-party aggregators increasing, the service needs every tool it can possibly utilize to entice more diners.

Speaking of which: Simultaneous to the nationwide rollout of Pickup, Eats also launched its Uber Eats Pickup Guides Powered by JUMP. The guides, run by Uber’s JUMP electric bike and scooter program, trace the most efficient route between different local restaurants that offer Uber Eats. While definitely more of a gimmick than anything else, it’s at least a nicely designed one. If you’re visiting a city, it’s also a convenient way to scoot around exploring the different food options — all, of course, while staying well contained inside the Uber Ecosystem.

The Pickup Guides are available for Austin, Washington, DC, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, and Sacramento.

These new features come on the heels of news that Uber is laying off 1 percent of its workforce, including some Uber Eats staff. The company continues to struggle with financial losses, and Eats, in particular, isn’t likely to become a profitable business for some time. Alas, a pickup feature and a handy city guide aren’t likely to change those facts.