Uber Eats couriers will soon pick items from store shelves as well as deliver orders, the company announced today.
The ‘Courier Pick & Pack’ service, which is a first in Europe for the delivery platform, follows its rollout by Uber in the US, Japan and Australia.
“If you’re a retailer, being able to set up and support e-commerce can be quite difficult,” Susan Anderson, Uber’s vice president of grocery, told The Grocer. “Demand can be fierce, resources can be difficult to obtain.”
In addition to being able to serve “smaller merchants and independents” who want to offer quick business, the courier pickup option “has also seen a lot of demand from larger merchants,” Anderson said.
“They can do a lot of picking and packing themselves, and in quieter periods it’s a great way for them to do that and maximize the use of their employee base, which is more efficient for them, but when there are peaks, they want to lean on. flexible workforce to come in and do the work,” she added.
Couriers are given an estimated time to pick up their order – and once they’ve picked it up, they queue at the manned or self-checkout counter like any other customer in the store. Couriers will also submit payment for the order and get reimbursed later, or use Uber “Plus” card credit to pay.
A number of new features in the Uber Eats delivery app will guide them through their search for items, ensure they’ve chosen the right product and offer tips on choosing the freshest produce.
Couriers will be told where in the store – aisle and shelf number – to find each product, then scan the barcode with their phone to verify they’ve made the right selection. If they’ve selected and scanned incorrectly, machine learning algorithms in the background will inform them of a likely error – such as the wrong size or packaging variant. The app will also suggest a replacement if the item is out of stock.
Couriers will need to weigh fresh produce to select the item closest to the customer’s request.
Retailers will be able to turn courier collection on and off, for example during peak trading periods. Retailers will pay for the privilege of having Uber couriers pick the order — the mechanics of which “depend on business arrangements,” Anderson said.
The new feature means stores can tap into the Uber Eats app and start making deliveries “extremely quickly,” Anderson said. “They can unlock a fast-paced business almost overnight,” she said.
On the customer-facing side of its app, Uber today announced the launch of “active order edits,” which allow shoppers to add or subtract items from their order as it’s being picked up. This function is only available for orders where the courier picks the goods from the shelves. The new features also allow couriers to communicate with the customer while they’re shopping – for example, if they’re “not sure how mature they want their goods”.
The first retailer using the Courier Pick & Pack service is expected to be announced soon. This feature will be rolled out elsewhere in Europe in the coming months.
Globally, 14% of orders made on Uber Eats are for food – this proportion is thought to be higher in the UK. The company said the number of people ordering food via Uber Eats in the UK has almost doubled over the past two years.
“It’s very clear that trends in grocery shopping have changed fundamentally… We’ve become a global leader in this area, which is why we’re launching new products like Courier Pick & Pack, which we believe will change the way people shop for food. Anderson said.
Having couriers enter stores, pick orders and then deliver them is not a new concept – and it was pioneered by Instacart in the US. In the UK, a similar model was introduced by Buymie, which was bought by the Irish grocery chain Dunnes Stores in 2023.
When asked if any of Uber’s competitors such as Deliveroo or Just Eat were likely to introduce a similar feature, Anderson said: “This is new to the UK but we use Courier Pick & Pack all over the world, it’s very well proven. we now have years of experience and the technology is quite sophisticated, so even if they were to introduce it quite quickly, they would have a lot of work to catch up to where we are.”