Uber is moving beyond just lunch and will launch a full-blown food delivery service.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the ride-hailing company will roll out a standalone food delivery app in 10 cities where it already offers UberEATS, including Seattle.
Up until now, UberEATS only offered lunch delivery in 10 cities, which first launched this past April. Now, though, it will expand to more hours and more restaurants — exact times and options will vary by city.
Uber tested the full food delivery service in Toronto this past December. The lunch service will continue in the 10 cities and be renamed as “Instant Delivery.”
The UberEATS app, Uber’s first since it launched its original ride-hailing app, will be available by the end of March, the Journal reported. There will be a $5 delivery fee that will vary by city — part of which will be shared with the driver — and Uber will charge restaurants a separate fee.
The Journal also noted that Uber’s food delivery drivers will get pinged when they are close to a restaurant that just prepared an order and have the option to accept or decline.
That differs from the existing UberEATS lunch service, which uses drivers that keep several prepared meals in heated or cooled bags inside their vehicles.
Uber, which has raised more than $8 billion, faces a flurry of competition in the food delivery market with startups and corporations alike utilizing technology to help get food, grocery items, and other products in the hands of consumers in the most efficient way possible. In Seattle, food delivery options include services like DoorDash, Peach, Lish, Munchery, Square-owned Caviar, Postmates, Bitesquad, Seamless, Gobble, GrubHub, Farmigo, Yelp-owned Eat 24, and many others.
Even big tech giants like Amazon — which also delivers groceries via AmazonFresh, a competitor to Instacart — are getting involved, with the Seattle company rolling out a new restaurant delivery service that GeekWire tested last year.