DeliveryX caught with up Matthew Price, regional general manager, Uber Eats, UKI & Northern Europe, following his presentation at this year’s Deliver Europe conference, where he highlighted that ecommerce shoppers aren’t just looking for fast and reliable delivery – they now demand it.
Uber Direct has partnered with a number of UK supermarkets and convenience stores for fast delivery – how easy is it to scale this up into pharmacy, or fashion?
Let me start by summarising what Uber Direct is. It is our white-label, last-mile delivery product, where orders made via a retailer’s own website or app are fulfilled by couriers who use the Uber Eats app to earn. It enables retailers to add on-demand delivery to their own ecommerce platform.
With Uber Direct, we bring the reliability and convenience of Uber Eats to all retailers, including real-time tracking and live customer support.
Globally, Direct is available in 18 countries and over 640 cities. In the UK, it is live with three of the big supermarkets – Sainsbury’s, Asda and Tesco, as well as McDonalds and a number of other partners.
Across the world, Uber Direct is already live with a number of large pharmacy and fashion merchants. Our goal is to ensure our partners get exactly what they need, designing Direct to be as flexible as possible. One example of this is proof of delivery, something we know retailers really care about – we offer a range of options for our partners, giving them the peace of mind when delivering high-value or age-restricted items.
For both pharmacy and fashion, as with a number of other sectors, the consumer appetite for on-demand delivery already exists. From a retailer’s perspective, offering same-day or one-hour delivery can really help them grow their businesses – leading to higher basket sizes, increased cart conversion and lower returns. I truly believe that same-day is the new next-day!
Has there been any objections or push backs from retailers? If so, what are their main concerns?
We have had some great feedback from our partners about Direct. I strongly believe that we have the best tech, the best customer proposition, and the best team.
One thing that we have seen with Direct is that many merchants are in the progress of upgrading their order management systems. This is key to ensure a smooth integration with Uber Direct. One of the things that I think sets Uber apart is our approach to partnership, where our teams are focussed on listening and building solutions that work for you and help you achieve your goals.
For those retailers who still have stock in warehouses, or an online only offering, how can Uber work with these companies?
If retailers have bricks-and-mortar stores, enabling ship-from-store is the most obvious option. This often requires them to upgrade their order management system and fulfilment processes which can take time, but gives the added benefit of enabling them to have all of their inventory available online, as opposed to just what is in their warehouse.
Alternatively, we are working to partner with micro-fulfilment providers to be able to offer different solutions that enable retailers to keep inventory closer to consumers. These can be helpful for merchants who want to try same-day delivery as a pilot or for use for specific product launches.
Uber is constantly building more integrations with providers within the delivery ecosystem, including delivery management platforms and order management systems to make launching Uber Direct as easy as possible!
