Uber has merged its main Uber app with Uber Eats in a move for cross-promotion, which might act in favor of Uber and help them have an edge over its competitors.
In late April, Uber had supposedly begun rolling out a pilot of the merged app without much pomp and show. Back in May, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi had hinted that Eats and Ride businesses could be merged and that they are currently experimenting.
Now, with the help of a Boston tipster, TechCrunch has discovered that Uber has begun making a web view of Uber Eats available on the main Uber app, following which Uber confirms it’s plans of incorporating a fully-functional web version of Uber Eats into the main ride-hailing Uber app. However, this does not mean that the Uber Eats app wouldn’t be available as a standalone app.
We’re rolling out a new way to order Eats directly in the Uber app on Android (we’ve already been experimenting on iOS)…This cross-promotion gives riders who are new to Eats a seamless way to order a meal via a webview instead of opening up the App Store for download. – Uber spokesperson
This move of merging Eats and Ride could help Uber attract more customers and give them an upper hand on competing with single-product competitors like DoorDash and Lyft, and on keeping up with multi-product competitors like Bolt and Careem.
We believe our platform model allows us to acquire, engage and retain customers with the cost, as well as efficiency and effectiveness advantage over our rivals, typically monoline competitors… – Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber
Most of all, this move would help Uber be at par with its biggest competitor Didi which recently added food delivery in its services in Mexico.
The Uber CEO has talked about the significance of Uber’s loyalty and subscription programs in its cross-promotion. Uber Rewards earns users points for both rides and food orders, and the user has a chance to receive free deliveries on Eats if their rewards tiers score is high enough. Moreover, the Uber Eats Pass subscription of $9.99 offers unlimited free Eats deliveries.
According to Khosrowshahi, “What we found is that with Rides and Eats . . . we are seeing early signal where essentially you can have very little if any cannibalization of a Ride and throw a significant amount of potential demand onto the Eats side.”
In case of customers who don’t use any one of the two apps, combining functionality would attract customers from both Uber Ride and Uber Eats to try out the other app.
Khosrowshahi also mentioned their goals of increasing the percentage of their MAPCs (monthly active platform consumers) that use both Uber Rides and Uber Eats services, and how this engagement with individual products would help Uber.
The merged app is now available on iOS in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City, where Uber does not offer bikes and scooters service. The Android version is slowly rolling out in Uber Eat’s 500 other markets.
