Uber Takes Next Logical Step, Will Now Deliver Your Hungover Feed

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Published

April 18, 2016

Holy shitting meatballs, Uber‘s finally done it.

Starting today, Melbournians will be able to order gourmet food direct to their mouths courtesy of Uber’s new food-delivery platform UberEATS, and this isn’t a one-day gimmick, friends. Oh no. This is it.

UberEATS has chosen Melbourne as the start of their Australia-wide launch thanks to it’s hyper foodie culture, so never let it be said that eating grub and sinking piss doesn’t get you good things.

It’s just the third city to get UberEATS (after first Paris and then Toronto), marking the shift we all knew was coming: Uber’s eventual domination of the entire ‘ordering things on your phone’ market that our lazy / time-poor 2016 asses so desperately crave – but not, UberEATS General Manager Simon Rossi assures us, anytime soon.

“Overseas we do bits and pieces around [other types of delivery],” he told PEDESTRIAN.TV, “but at this stage, here in Australia, we’re very much focused on rolling out UberEATS into Melbourne and getting it very quickly to the rest of Australia.”

Uber has teamed up with over 80 venues in inner-city Melbourne for the first stage of the launch, including Gazi, Supernormal, Pidapipo, Serotonin, Vegie Bar, Uncommon, Jimmy Gants, Rice Queen, Pana Chocolate and Rockwell and Sons.

GET THIS DELIVERED TO YOUR HUNGOVER BED / DIRTY HOTEL SEX DEN:

AND THEN THIS SHIT FOR DESSERT, BECAUSE YOU CAN.

Rossi says the partners they’ve selected to work with range from “the best in Melbourne and celebrity chefs” to “local favourites and institutions that have been in business for 67 years”, as well as eateries that have built up a cult local following.

On the flipside of this delivery biz, UberEATS opens up further avenues for anyone looking to make a little moolah on the side. UberX drivers can choose to receive either a passenger request or delivery request only, or flip-flop between the two.

It also opens up the possibility of those with motorbikes to work for Uber (delivering food only), plus creates more peak times for drivers already on the road.

“The demands are a little different,” said Rossi. “Lunch isn’t a really busy time for people to be moving around their cities, but obviously lunch is a very busy time for food delivery, so it actually can start to fill in some of the gaps with busy periods for different types of services.”

UberEATS is available from 11am to 10pm, seven days a week. Delivery will usually be a flat $5 fee per order, but for now, Uber’s giving that shit away for free.

It’s not clear yet how Deliveroo and Foodora – both of which have upped their game in recent months, but only one of which is named after the neckbeard’s call sign – will react to this new and v. v. powerful player in the market.

But Rossi isn’t worried. (Like, why would you be. You are Uber.)

“We think Uber’s been very focused on hand-selecting our restaurant partners to make sure that we’ve got the best – our ultimate goal is to have the best selection to deliver anytime, anywhere, and to be the quickest.

“So I think that while there’s people loving experiencing the food market, there’s definitely room for more than one service.”

Soon, this cat will be all of us.