Uber Eats gears up for Christmas
In the run up to Christmas last year a bottle of Baileys was ordered via Uber Eats every 20 seconds. Even more astonishingly, on Christmas Day more than three tonnes of turkey was searched for by Uber Eats customers for whom, due to reasons we can only really guess at, the entire festive dinner was about to go up in smoke. Perhaps literally.
These and other startling numbers were revealed at a recent Uber Eats Christmas breakfast event attended by Retail Insider which also featured Zapp founder Navid Hadzaad and Co-op’s quick-commerce director Chris Conway who both highlighted how they are using the Uber Eats tech to boost sales.
Uber Eats is expecting a bumper festive season in 2025, after recording a spike of nearly 20% across total grocery orders on Christmas Eve last year. However, it also sees major growth potential in offering gift supplies based on a doubling of gift orders last December and has launched an on-demand hub featuring goods from retail partners such as Boots, John Lewis and Apple to capitalise on retail’s golden quarter.
The hub will also allow users to send gifts direct to the recipient, ideal for those who are really very late, who will receive a text message with all the details and a message from the sender.
Hadzaad says he thought consumer behaviour had fundamentally and permanently changed towards on-demand ordering with many more moments for this appearing despite the perception that it would fizzle out post-Covid-19. He adds that the customer only really wants certainty and simplicity noting that the idea of substitution does not exist in the Zapp business model and that Uber Eats tech is the best out there allowing the real-time synching of inventory across the chain of warehouses Zapp runs in London.
For the Co-op the benefits of working with Uber Eats are also based on the real-time synching because in big stores orders become less and less accurate and problematic to fulfil for the pickers because of the delay and in-store customer shopping.
Hadzaad explains that the on-demand trend is towards non-food and it can be difficult to attract luxury brands to the sector as they wouldn’t normally put their products on platforms in this way, in fact he revealed that he initially approached Apple as a gimmick but is now seriously stocking these products for immediate delivery as the brands see the opportunity.
Conway has a balance to maintain between making sure the in-store customers have what they need in terms of top-up items while bearing in mind that the on-demand basket is approximately two and a half times bigger than those in-store. The range in many stores is now also informed by on-demand shoppers leading to SKUs being stocked that the in-store customers are not buying but the on-demand shoppers are. He cited his own favourite chocolate chip panettone as a product that will be available in many more stores due to its on-demand popularity.
Another successful Uber Eats tie in has been the ability to sign up for Co-op membership through the app thereby giving customers access to better prices and perks such as advance ticket sales of events at the Co-Op Live Stadium in Manchester. The big uptake of membership via the platform (especially in University towns) has led the average age of a Co-op member to reduce by two years while Conway also disclosed that 65% of new members are under the age of 35 – essential to ensure the Co-op’s relevance and longevity.
Although there is much experimentation by Uber Eats in the non-grocery categories and gifts the most ordered item throughout December last year was…spuds. Followed by carrots. It seems that Airpods and other such products still have some catching up to do.
Glynn Davis, editor, Retail Insider