Uber proved how serious it is about food delivery yesterday by spending $2.65 billion acquiring Postmates, but that's not the only new food project the company has been pursuing. From today, Uber is delivering groceries in Canada and Latin America, with the US to follow shortly.
As Reuters reports, customers in a number of Canadian and Latin American cities can now order groceries using the Uber Eats app. For now, the service is limited to Montreal and Toronto in Canada, but more widely available in Latin America including Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Bogota, Lima, and four Chilean cities.
In all cases, Uber has teamed up with other companies to source the groceries. In Canada, the groceries come from Walmart and Metro, where as Latin American customers receive groceries via Chilean company Cornerstone. Uber has also confirmed that a roll out of the service to the US will commence before the end of July, with locations served around Miami and Dallas first.
Once the acquisition of Postmates is completed, grocery deliveries should quickly spread across the entire US. Postmates already operates in 2,940 cities, so combined with Uber's existing network the only limit should be if enough grocery suppliers can be found to allow for a reliable service. With Walmart already a partner in Canada, it seems likely the same could happen when serving US customers.
Further Reading
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