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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Uber Eats

Panera’s Hybrid Approach to Delivery Could Be a New Standard for Restaurants

Panera is one of those increasingly rare restaurant chains that’s not a pizza company and has still managed to successfully keep its delivery program an entirely in-house operation — until now, that is. Yesterday, the St. Louis, MO-based bakery and sandwich chain announced its first-ever partnerships with third-party delivery services.

Customers will now be able to order Panera goods from DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats along with the company’s own website and apps. However, these third-party delivery service partnerships are for online ordering only; Panera will still use its own fleet of drivers to handle the actual delivering of the food from restaurant to doorstep.

Panera has dubbed this the “bring your own courier” model, and the approach appears to be about maintaining quality and brand integrity throughout the whole of the delivery process — an issue more and more restaurants, large chains in particular, are now addressing.

Setting aside the ongoing concerns around commission fees a moment, one of the biggest benefits of working with third-party delivery services is that restaurants get easy access to a highly streamlined online ordering platform. Developing an in-house system that holds menus, processes orders and payments, and gives users status updates on their orders is an expensive, time-consuming undertaking. Third-party delivery services handle this work for the restaurant, and also offer the increasingly popular option of direct-to-POS integration with restaurant systems, where an order from, say, Grubhub, goes directly to the main POS system.

But restaurants get little in the way of branding when they’re listed on Grubhub et al. or, for that matter, where they show up in terms of users’ searches. And they get pretty much zero control over the quality of food and customer service once a meal leaves the restaurant in the hands of a third-party driver. For example, they can’t control that one out of four drivers apparently sample your food en route to your home. Sure, the risk of that or of an order being late/cold/incorrect doesn’t disappear when you bring delivery in house, but at least Panera has more control over who to hold accountable in those situations.

Continuing to use its own drivers as well as maintain an in-house ordering program also lets Panera exercise more control over branding and customer service while still giving the company access to a wider user base via Grubhub, Uber Eats, and DoorDash.

The nature of this new partnership also makes Panera an early adopter to what could become a major trend among national restaurant chains. Just yesterday, we looked at Toast’s “Restaurant Success in 2019” report, which suggests that having both a robust in-house online order system and a presence with all major third-party delivery platforms “could be a boon to your business” when it comes to major multi-unit chains.

Most brands, however, can’t or don’t want to incur the economic burden of maintaining a driver fleet, which is one reason we’re also seeing reverse versions of this hybrid strategy. Denver, CO fast-casual chain Teriyaki Madness is a good example: the company still works with third-party delivery services, using their drivers, but is trying to originate more orders through its own in-house app. A company called Shift-Pixy, meanwhile, acts as a middleman between restaurant and delivery service and provides its own drivers to drop the food.

Those approaches may help restaurants with brand credibility, but Panera’s approach is so far the only major one to both take advantage of the continued popularity of third-party delivery while still owning that last mile. “We believe this partnership model helps differentiate us from our competitors and will take our already successful delivery business to new heights,” Dan Wegiel, Panera’s EVP Chief Growth and Strategy Officer said in a statement.

This hybrid approach could indeed prove fruitful for Panera, though it would have to be yielding some pretty big returns to influence other chains to go as far as investing in their own drivers in order to adopt similar strategies.

Regardless of whether that happens, the industry will see plenty more of these hybrid approaches to delivery along with many more questions who should really own that last mile.

Uber Eats to Deliver Food From Lawson Convenience Stores in Tokyo

During The Spoon’s recent trip to Tokyo, we took Anthony Bourdain’s advice and discovered the magic that is dining at Japanese convenience stores. In fact, the only thing that could have made those egg salad sandwiches any better was not having to go out in 100 degree August heat to get them.

Good news for those in Tokyo who also wilt going outside in Summer! Lawson, Japan’s third largest convenience store chain, will start offering delivery via Uber Eats. As Reuters reports:

Lawson said it will start selling around 100 products including bento boxes, fried chicken and tissue paper through Uber Eats starting on Thursday, initially for users near its stores in Shinjuku and Shinagawa before a later expansion.

Uber’s main business, ride sharing, is banned in Japan, so its food delivery business plays an outsized role over there. According to a recent Bloomberg article, Uber has partnerships with 10,000 restaurants in Japan, across ten cities in the country. Uber also has 15,000 couriers in the country, including many elderly folks who make deliveries by foot.

It hasn’t been smooth sailing for Uber since the company went public this past May. In fact, the company reported losses of $5.2 billion in its second quarter. And despite its 140 percent year-over-year growth, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said he doesn’t expect Uber Eats to be profitable next year or the year after that.

This deal with Lawson won’t move the needle much on that rather grim scenario for Uber Eats, but it will make getting egg salad sandwiches a whole lot easier for those lucky people in Tokyo.

In-house? Third-party? Why Online Ordering Isn’t One or the Other for Restaurants in 2019

When it comes to online ordering, some restaurants will soon need to offer the functionality through their own apps as well as via third parties like Grubhub.

Restaurant-tech powerhouse Toast indicated that much in its recently released “Restaurant Success in 2019” report, which surveyed 1,253 restaurants and 1,030 guests across the U.S. In the report, online ordering plays a starring role, with both restaurants and guests calling it one of the most important technologies for today’s restaurant experience.

In and of itself, that’s not terribly surprising. Over half of restaurant spending will be off-premises by 2020 and will account for up to 80 percent of the restaurant industry’s growth over the next five years according investment group Cowen and Company. Unless every restaurant in America soon installs a chatbot to answer phones, online ordering via apps and websites will become a must for every eating establishment in the industry.

But according to the Toast report, what that looks like will vary from restaurant to restaurant, and businesses won’t necessarily have to sign their brands away to the DoorDash’s and Grubhub’s of the world to stay competitive. In fact, 51 percent of guests surveyed in the Toast report said they had placed an order via a restaurant website in the past month compared to 38 percent of guests who had ordered from third-party service.

That’s both good news and another challenge for restaurants. Customers ordering directly from a restaurant’s website can save the business some of the fees that stack up when customers order through a third-party service like Uber Eats. The flipside for restaurants is that if you don’t have your own delivery fleet, you still have to pay for drivers and, as the report rightly points out, developing an in-house online order system is expensive and probably not justifiable for independent businesses with only one or two locations. It’s a different story, though, for multi-unit chains, as the Toast report indicates:

Getting an app developed for your restaurant may not be viable for a small restaurant with one location, but if you franchise, it could be a boon to your business. The majority of diners are ordering online a couple times a month and looking for a variety of pickup and delivery options.

Even so, the Toast survey makes it clear that customers still want the option to order via third-party delivery services, with respondents having ordered most from Grubhub, Uber Eats, and DoorDash in the last year. (Postmates is completely absent from the list.) According to the report, it’s “extremely important for restaurants to be represented across multiple third-party delivery platforms.”

Despite the continued popularity of third-party delivery services, though, the litany of criticisms lobbed at them grows: commission fees, tipping policies, antitrust issues, and questionable profitability over the long-term. At the same time, companies like ShiftPixy and Olo are becoming more popular with technologies that actually make it easier for restaurants (chains, in particular) to develop and maintain in-house ordering capabilities.

Both those trends, coupled with the constant consumer demand for speed and convenience, will create a fine balance restaurants large and small must strike in the coming months.

The Proposed Cap on NYC Delivery Fees Could Ripple Across the Rest of the Country

The New York State Liquor Authority (NYSLA) has proposed adding a 10 percent cap on the commissions full-service restaurants pay to third-party delivery companies, according to Restaurant Business Online. While such a move would provide some relief for restaurants, whose struggles with these fees are well documented, it could also put up more road blocks for third-party delivery services as they struggle to reach actual profitability. And the fight probably wouldn’t stay put in NYC for very long.

The NYSLA’s advisory, as it’s called, urges that commissions paid by restaurants with liquor licenses be capped at 10 percent. The reason the NYSLA can make such a call is because third-party delivery services share in these restaurants’ profits, and are therefore by law subject to vetting by the authority.

Rather than prohibit delivery services from charging the current 12- to 30-percent commission fees, the law, if put into effect, would make it illegal for the restaurants themselves to pay more than 10 percent on those fees. Restaurants would then have to reject anything higher than 10 percent, making it virtually impossible for delivery services to charge more.

Grubhub, in particular, has criticized a draft of the proposal, saying it contains “internal inconsistencies, vague language and an apparent attempt by the SLA to go beyond their jurisdiction.” And while Grubhub didn’t explicitly say as much, the “vague language” could potentially open the door to third-party delivery companies sidestepping the 10 percent cap with other charges, like a convenience fee.

The NYSLA urged that the advisory be discussed during a meeting on August 20.

To be clear, the advisory would only impact restaurants with liquor licenses; the scores of food businesses in New York without licenses wouldn’t be able to reap any benefit, at least not now. Mark Gjonah, chairman of the Small Business Committee of the New York City Council, told RB that in regards to these restaurants that are left out, the committee “will continue its work to establish a comprehensive solution that levels the playing field for all of New York’s locally owned restaurants.”

Should these fee changes become law, it will create a scramble for third-party delivery companies to find ways manage profitability — rather a feat, considering these services aren’t actually profitable at the moment. And with DoorDash and Postmates both pursuing the IPO track, that struggle to gain profitability — and long-term investment and viability — is becoming more of a hot-button issue for delivery companies.

In NYC, meanwhile, commission fees are just one of the many griefs lobbed against these companies. Grubhub currently takes the lion’s share of the wrath here, since it still leads the NYC market. The company was not only the center of a June oversight hearing that called into question delivery services’ power, it’s also received accusations of cybersquatting and calls for an antitrust investigation.

The other major delivery players — Uber Eats, DoorDash, Postmates — may not be getting a constant barrage of bad press in the NYC market, but they’ll be subject to the same scrutiny as Grubhub if a law over fee changes were to be enacted.

And if that were to happen, there’s a high chance for a ripple effect to other cities, which could very likely play out the way the fight over the cashless business model has across the country. When NYC introduced legislation that would ban cashless businesses from the city, including restaurants, it was a matter of mere months before New Jersey, Philadelphia, and San Francisco did the same, essentially stifling Big Tech’s hold over local business.

If this week’s advisory advances further, it looks like third-party delivery services are well on their way to facing the same backlash — on an even grander scale.

DoorDash Heads to Montreal, Strikes National U.S. Deal With Applebee’s

It’s only the middle of the week and DoorDash has already made multiple announcements around its continued expansion up, down, and across North America.

Now that it’s service is available in all 50 U.S. states, DoorDash is heading north and expanding into its first-ever non-English-speaking territory. The third-party delivery service today announced its official launch into Montréal, a predominantly French-speaking market and DoorDash’s first in the Canadian province of Quebec.

The addition of Montreal makes DoorDash available in 78 Canadian cities, including Winnipeg, Halifax, and Saskatoon. In a press release, the company said it plans to be in more than 100 cities across Canada by the end of 2019.

DoorDash will compete in those markets with Uber Eats, which already has a strong presence in Canada. But the rideshare giant isn’t the only company DoorDash will contend with. Delivery service Just Eat has long served Canada, and its recent $10 billion merger with Netherlands-based Takeaway.com creates one of the world’s biggest online food delivery services.

Back in the States, DoorDash continued its U.S. takeover this week by striking a national partnership with Applebee’s. While Applebee’s franchisees have independently worked with the service for some time, this new partnership is an official deal between DoorDash and Applebee’s parent company, Dine Brands Global Inc.

More importantly, the partnership addresses a growing concern among restaurant chains: retaining customer data and preserving brand integrity. DoorDash will power Applebee’s delivery, but customers will be able to order directly through the restaurant’s website and mobile app.

The partnership is now active at 1,300 of Applebee’s 1,700 locations. It is not exclusive; franchisees will continue their relationships with other third-party delivery services.

DoorDash also added partnership this week with sandwich chain Potbelly, who operates across the U.S. and has a heavy concentration of locations in the Midwest.

All these moves come on the heels of DoorDash’s recent acquisition of delivery service Caviar, a deal that expands DoorDash’s already giant geographic footprint. And last week, reports surfaced that the company was in talks to secure a line of credit ahead of a possible IPO. While DoorDash hasn’t made that news officially public, should an IPO indeed happen, the company will face the same issues around profitability its already public competitors Grubhub and Uber Eats face.

Expanding to almost every Applebee’s in America probably won’t solve the profitability issue. But it is noteworthy that Applebee’s isn’t the first chain to pick DoorDash as a national partner based on its perceived long-term viability as a food delivery service. In June, Chili’s expressed similar sentiments when it inked an exclusive partnership with the service. Again, long-term viability and actual profitability are two different things, especially when you get to the public markets, but it’s certainly not going to hurt DoorDash to have as many major chains and regions in its back pocket should an IPO come to pass.

Report: DoorDash In Talks to Secure $400M Ahead of IPO

DoorDash is in talks with banks to open a line of credit for $400 million ahead of a possible IPO, according to an article published on Bloomberg late Thursday.

As the article notes, securing a line of credit from Wall Street is common before an IPO. Sources for the Bloomberg article, who were not identified because the news isn’t yet officially public, said JPMorgan Chase & Co. is leading the potential financing. DoorDash could go public as early as next year, according to those sources.

Should that happen, the company will join rival third-party delivery companies Grubhub and Uber Eats on the public market.

Just last week, San Francisco-based DoorDash acquired food delivery service Caviar from Square for $410 million, and in 2019 alone DoorDash has raised $1 billion and become the first third-party delivery service with a presence in all 50 U.S. states.

The successes don’t come without controversies, though. DoorDash has also been under fire for its controversial tipping practices for workers and recently had to change its policies around tipping in the wake of a storm of bad press.

Nor is DoorDash the only third-party delivery service to be steeped in controversy of late. Grubhub’s summer has been chock-a-block with criticism around its fees for restaurant structures as well as accusations of cybersquatting and calls for an antitrust investigation into the company.

Uber Eats hasn’t recently had so many ethical thorns in its side, but parent company Uber just posted $5.2 billion in losses for the second quarter, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said he didn’t expect Uber Eats “to be profitable in the next year or year after frankly.”

If DoorDash does move forward with an IPO next year, it will face the same struggles around profitability its rivals Uber Eats and Grubhub currently grapple with. Ultimately, that issue of profitability could have more sway over the long-term viability of these companies than any criticism over tipping policies or restaurant fee structures.

Uber Q3: Uber Eats Grew 140 Percent Year Over Year, Has 320,000 Restaurant Partners

Uber had a bummer of a Q2 earnings call, with the ride logistics company reporting $3.17 billion in revenues but $5.2 billion in losses for the quarter. While the overall health of Uber is something we keep tabs on, The Spoon is more interested in its Uber Eats division, which generated $3.9 billion in gross bookings.

While that figure missed analysts’ projections, there was some good news accompanying it. From Uber’s earnings release:

In Q2 2019, Uber Eats Monthly Active Platform Consumers (MAPCs) grew over 140% year-over-year. Over 40% of new Eats consumers had never used Uber’s platform before. Uber Eats restaurant selection continues to improve, reaching 320,000 restaurant partners at the end of Q2 2019. New delivery fees (service and small-basket fees) resulted in improved Adjusted Net Revenue take rates quarter-over-quarter.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi provided this good news/bad news quote to CNBC during the call:

“The Eats business is still a business that carries very significant growth going forward and that continues to attract a lot of capital. Not just in the US, but all over the world. With the eats business there’s a lot of capital chasing a lot of growth and we’re the leader on a global basis. So, I don’t expect that business to be profitable in the next year or year after frankly.”

Despite that somewhat dour note, Uber Eats has had a busy third quarter so far. While the food delivery business lost its exclusive partnership with McDonald’s, it went national with Starbucks delivery, is experimenting with a dine-in feature, testing out an uber subscription service, launched a restaurant accelerator program in London, and partnered with OpenTable for delivery.

Now we’ll have to see if any of these moves deliver better results for the company.

The White Castle-Uber Eats Deal Highlights the QSR Battleground for Delivery

Today White Castle announced a new delivery partnership with Uber Eats. The majority of the White Castle menu is now available via the Uber Eats app in over 330 of the fast-food chains’ locations.

Of course, if you’re of a certain generation, the name White Castle almost always brings to mind a certain cult classic film, and the launch of the Uber Eats program coincides with the 15-year anniversary of “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle.” To celebrate, White Castle is giving away up to 1 million of its Original sliders (sorry, Impossible fans) to customers who order via the Uber Eats app. If you’re so inclined, you can also order a Harold & Kumar meal via the app that offers “special 2004 pricing” — which basically means it’s a cheaper deal.

Of course, when the movie came out in 2004 it was a very different QSR landscape from the one we see today. Nowadays, no amount of gimmicky moves like the above will guarantee you customers if you don’t also have a robust delivery strategy in place. White Castle already delivers via Grubhub and DoorDash, which makes the deal with Uber Eats neither surprising nor earth-shattering.

However, it does highlight just how heated competition between third-party delivery services is bound to get in the QSR arena. In fast food or otherwise, consumers don’t demonstrate a particular loyalty to any one of these third-party delivery services. At the same time, the services themselves are making moves to try and capture more of that elusive customer loyalty, particularly via subscription services that offer — depending on what you order — better prices and some discounts. All of which suggests QSRs like White Castle, who work with multiple delivery partners, could become a mini-battleground of sorts as the novelty of digital ordering and delivery wears off and consumers align with whatever service will get the food to their door cheapest and fastest.

Uber, for its part, has been hard at work initiatives that actually go beyond faster cheaper food when it comes to building customer loyalty: the company offers a $25/month subscription to its overall service, which is an Amazon Prime-like membership that offers discounted rides and free bike usage in addition to deals on Uber Eats. It’s also offering Eats functionality from the main Uber app, subsidizing customers’ rides to restaurants, and drone-dropping haute burgers, all of which are in part geared towards keeping customers in the Uber ecosystem. (Ok, maybe not that last one but drones are still cool.)

While publicity gimmicks like Harold & Kumar-themed meals are amusing and even commonplace when restaurants announce delivery deals, realistically, customer loyalty is going to come from how well Uber or any other service can execute on the above while still keeping menu prices competitive.

The Food Tech Show: The Perilous Existence of Bike-Riding Food Delivery Drivers

It’s been a big week in restaurant tech news, so the Spoon gang got together to record a podcast.

In this episode of the Food Tech Show, we discuss:

  • Starbucks deal with Brightloom (formerly Eatsa) and what it means for the restaurant tech market
  • The New York Times piece about a day in the life of food delivery drivers
  • Uber’s all-in-one app for food, bikes and rideshares
  • Mike’s first-world coffee machine struggle with whether he should have waited for the Terra Kaffe, even as the Spinn nears a ship date

As always, you can hit play below or listen to the Food Tech Show podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Audio Player

OpenTable Launches Delivery Program With Uber Eats, Grubhub

Restaurant reservations platform OpenTable announced it has partnered with Caviar, Grubhub, and Uber Eats to give its users access to delivery options within the OpenTable app.

“Our goal is to make OpenTable the go-to app for all dining occasions. Adding delivery is an important next step.” Joseph Essas, OpenTable’s CTO, said in a statement.

Moving forward, delivery via the OpenTable app will be available at 8,000 restaurants in 90 metropolitan areas in the U.S. It applies only to those areas where OpenTable and delivery services via the aforementioned third parties overlap.

When users access the OpenTable app, they’ll see options under restaurants to order food for delivery instead of making a reservation at the actual restaurant. If the the restaurant only works with one of the services, say, Uber Eats, the user will be directed to that specific service to complete the transaction. If a restaurant works with multiple delivery services, users can take their pick.

Food delivery via third parties like Uber Eats and Grubhub is a game everyone wants in on these days. Even amid a swirl of controversies, these apps are still predicted to have 44 million users by 2020. It’s not surprising, then, that non-restaurant entities are now positioning themselves in the landscape, too.

And clearly OpenTable wants to be the one customers go through to access those dining choices, even if the app can’t yet keep users within its own ecosystem for the entire order-pay-track process. And that last point will change as OpenTable said in a blog post that features for estimated delivery time and cost are slated for the future.

Along with the delivery program, OpenTable also launched a newly redesigned app that promises more personalized meal recommendations based on favorites, past bookings, and other factors.

Starbucks and Uber Eats to Roll Out Delivery Nationwide

Lazy latte drinkers around the country can rejoice as Starbucks announced today that it is expanding its “preferred” delivery partnership with Uber Eats, which will be available throughout the U.S. by early 2020. Starbucks said the nationwide rollout comes following an eleven-market trial in cities like Miami, Seattle and New York proved successful.

It’s only Tuesday and already it has been a busy week for both Starbucks and Uber’s corporate communications departments. The news that has been both announced and broken have been chock-a-block with tidbits that point to potential futures of both companies.

Let’s start with Starbucks, and this little nugget from today’s press release:

Through the agreement, the companies will collaborate on innovation and technology integration. Starbucks and Uber Eats will continue to focus on delivery packaging, in-store operations, and a quick order-to-door delivery window. (emphasis ours)

This is the second technology integration announcement from the coffee giant in as many days. Yesterday, Starbucks announced that as part of its investment in Brightloom (formerly eatsa), Brightloom will integrate some aspects of Starbucks’ tech stack. As my colleague, Jenn Marston wrote:

Starbucks said it has granted Brightloom a software license that allows the latter to “select components of Starbucks proprietary digital flywheel software.” In other words, Brightloom will integrate features from Starbucks’ customer engagement platform like its mobile order and pay system, loyalty program, and personalization features. Basically all the stuff that makes Starbucks customers continue to use the mobile app.

Starbucks is becoming more like Amazon, which built up its own cloud infrastructure before spinning it off for others to use as Amazon Web Services. Will we see a similar Starbucks-as-a-Service? There are certainly enough retailers who would kill for a world-class mobile customer engagement platform, and if they could lease it like AWS, that could provide a whole new side biz for the ‘bucks.

But the week has also been interesting for Uber Eats. Yesterday, TechCrunch revealed that Uber is testing out a monthly subscription service in San Francisco and Chicago. For $24.99 a month, customers get a fixed discount on rides, free rentals of Jump bikes and scooters, and free delivery through Uber Eats.

It’s a smart play by Uber to keep people (and their data) on its platform. Why go to DoorDash when you can get discounted rides and free food delivery through Uber? Becoming the “preferred” delivery partner for Starbucks only sweetens that appeal. Especially for those lazy latte drinkers.

London: Uber Eats’ New Restaurant Accelerator Program Will Cover “Gaps” in Food Selection

Say you live in London and really want Malaysian food and really don’t want to get dressed, but you can’t find any spots near enough that they’ll deliver.

That’s exactly the problem that Uber Eats is hoping to solve with its new accelerator program. According to Quartz, the food delivery giant is partnering with London shared kitchen space rental company Karma Kitchen to create a program to help strategically-selected restaurants improve operations.

Uber Eats will sift through customer data to identify “selection gaps” — unmet consumer demand for certain cuisines, dishes, etc. — then will pick five to seven restaurants that fill those gaps to participate in the three-week accelerator. During the program restaurants will receive help from Uber Eats to improve a wide variety of operations — everything from branding to staffing to streamlining workflows to speed up delivery times. After they graduate, Uber Eats will ensure that the restaurants receive enough orders to meet basic costs for six weeks (though the article doesn’t outline how it will do so).

This seems to be separate from but related to Uber Eats’ existing virtual restaurant concept, which sets up delivery only restaurants-within-restaurants based off of foods that are rising in popularity. Instead of adding a new type of cuisine to existing restaurants, Uber Eats is finding restaurants that serve an unmet need and teaching them how to get better at delivery (or possibly start doing it in the first place.)

When I first read about Uber Eats’ new program, I immediately thought of Deliveroo’s Editions. Deliveroo Editions is a curated hub of delivery-only restaurants which operate out of shipping container clusters built and operated by the company. Deliveroo gathers data to figure out what cuisines consumers want but don’t have access to, then invites those restaurants to set up shop in one of their Editions parks. Restaurants get low overhead, Deliveroo gets to edge out other delivery services to serve customers exactly what they want.

While it shares the same end goal (closing selection gaps with exclusively signed restaurants), Uber Eats’ new program stops way short of Deliveroo’s offerings. Instead of doing all the work to build out and operate physical ghost kitchens, it simply puts targeted restaurants through an accelerator program. Since it’s partnering with Karma Kitchen, it doesn’t even have to provide space.

Deliveroo Editions.

It’s a no-brainer for restaurant delivery companies to use data to try and meet unmet consumer demand for certain food types. What’s less clear is if Uber’s strategy to do so through accelerating restaurants will have the desired result.

The program is only three weeks long, which is a pretty short amount of time to teach restaurants how to do everything from effectively staff to pass food hygiene inspections to use accounting software. Then again, these are presumably things that restaurants already know how to do — so maybe the abbreviated timespan is just meant for Uber Eats to help them do these things better?

I’m also curious if there is any sort of follow-up support involved, though it wasn’t noted in the Quartz article. Similarly there was no mention of financial investment. Most importantly, there was clarity on whether or not Uber Eats will have exclusive delivery privileges for participating restaurants post-program, though it would be odd for the company to go to the trouble of creating an entire accelerator if that wasn’t the case. [We’ve reached out to Uber Eats and will update the post if we hear back.]

Deliveroo’s Editions program has a more clear payoff — it gets exclusive delivery privileges for all restaurants in the Editions parks. However, it also has to put in a larger investment. The delivery company has to actually build out physical kitchen spaces, and also manage all operations cost (electricity, gas, etc.). With Editions, Deliveroo also takes on the risk that not all their selected restaurants will do well (though presumably if they don’t Deliveroo can cut them from the Editions lineup).

News of Uber Eats’ accelerator comes as competition in the U.K. delivery space heats up. Now that Amazon Restaurants is out of the game, the biggest remaining players are Uber Eats, Deliveroo, and Just Eat. Uber Eats is, well, Uber Eats, and has all the massive name recognition, data, and funding that comes along with that. It’s also currently piloting ghost kitchens in Paris. But Deliveroo is no slouch: it recently got a hefty investment of from Amazon (though it’s under scrutiny now), and just last week launched a procurement platform to supply its restaurants with discounted ingredients and supplies. For its part, Just Eat has been making acquisitions in corporate catering and restaurant tech, but recently its growth has slowed and earlier today news emerged the company just made a round of layoffs.

If successful, Uber Eats hopes to run the program several times per year. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see the third-party delivery company bring it to the U.S. After all, Uber Eats needs to use every possible weapon in its arsenal to compete against the likes of DoorDash, Grubhub, and Postmates — and, as Deliveroo Editions hasn’t made its way across the pond, filling selection gaps seems a smart way to stand out.