It all started in Johannesburg in 2016 and five cities later, Uber Eats continues to deliver on its mission to making eating effortless at any time, for anyone.
Uber Eats have transformed food delivery from pizza on a Friday night to an increasingly important part of people’s everyday food consumption habits, and over the course of the last two years, Uber Eats has brought orders within a thumb’s reach, whilst improving the speed and reliability of deliveries to Eaters, with 45% of trips in the last year being completed under 30 mins.
Ailyssa Pretorius, General Manager for Uber Eats South Africa explains, “Our obsession with customer service and technology has helped us thrive in a highly competitive market, and has helped us become the number one app in the market over the last two years.”
This customer obsession has translated into an overwhelmingly positive response from local customers and restaurant partners, who have embraced the digital transformation of the food delivery sector. In fact, according to App Annie, in 12 months Uber Eats has gone from serving 500,000 people to more than a million today – a 100% increase.
Uber Eats has learned a lot along the way about everything from cuisine preferences to everyday food needs, such as the fact that 55% of people in South Africa celebrate something with an ice-cream or that 68% of South Africans prefer treating themselves to fast food over healthier options. These are just some of the results that emerged from Uber Eats’ nationwide quest to uncover the language of food.
Eaters are diverse and require access to a variety of restaurants able to cater to all kinds of preferences. Uber Eats has achieved this as they have managed to increase the offered selection to provide local residents’ access to more than 2000 restaurants, providing over 50 000 meal options that are currently available on the app. This means that in more popular geographical area such as Sandton, consumer can choose from more than 250 restaurants when they open the app.
Uber Eats is also providing local residents with a flexible way to earn some extra income, whether to bridge gaps in work or top up their existing income. During this year alone, Uber Eats has created more than 1500 flexible economic opportunities for delivery-partners.
Most importantly, delivery-partners have access to an improved safety feature: a mobile emergency app. This app is powered by Aura’s cutting-edge security technology. It works by simply connecting delivery-partners and drivers to the closest private response vehicles from a nationwide network of security or medial response partners. They are also provided with Partner Injury Protection, which will cover them from the moment they accept a delivery request while driving on the way to a restaurant, and until the trip ends. This is thanks to a partnership with Chubb Insurance South Africa Limited, an authorized Financial Services Provider (FSP: 27176). Both these offerings are at no cost to the delivery-partners.
“It has been an exciting two-years, demand from South African residents and businesses has been amazing, and our delivery-partners continue thrive. All this has made it possible for us to expand to five cities during this period,” adds Pretorius.
In addition, Uber Eats continues to localise their service offering through new features such as cash payments on delivery, which meets the specific needs of local residents and businesses. This pilot cash payment option will be rolled out in the coming months.
Uber Eats looks forward to expanding the choices of customers to meet all budgets, and providing people with smarter and more personalised meal recommendations along with even more convenient delivery options.
Edited by Daniëlle Kruger
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