Uber Eats couriers will soon pick items from store shelves and deliver orders, the company announced today.
The launch of the ‘Courier Pick & Pack’ service, hailed as a first in Europe for a delivery platform, follows its rollout by Uber in the US, Japan and Australia.
“If you’re a retailer, setting up and supporting e-commerce can be quite challenging,” Susan Anderson, Uber VP of grocery and retail, tells The Grocer. “Demand can be peaky, but it can be difficult to find resources for it.”
The carrier choice option was not only intended to serve “smaller merchants and independents” who want to offer fast trading, but there was also “a lot of demand from larger merchants,” Anderson said.
“They might do a lot of pick and pack themselves and in quieter periods that’s a great way for them to maximize the use of their workforce, which is more efficient for them, but when there are peaks they want to be able to lean on that flexible staff to be able to do that work,” she added.
Couriers are given an estimated time to collect the order – and once collected, they queue at a manned or self-service checkout just like any other customer in the store. The couriers also pay for the order and get a refund later, or use the credit on Uber’s ‘Plus’ card to make the payment.
A range of new features in the courier-focused Uber Eats app will guide them through their search, ensure they’ve chosen the right product and offer tips on choosing the freshest produce.
Couriers are told where to find each product in the store (an aisle and shelf number) and then scan the barcode with their phone to verify they’ve made the right choice. If they have picked and scanned incorrectly, machine learning algorithms in the background will notify them of the likely error – for example the wrong pack size or variant. The app will also suggest replacements if an item is out of stock.
Couriers must weigh fresh produce to choose an item closest to the customer’s request.
Retailers can turn the courier pick option on and off, for example during the busiest shopping periods. Retailers will pay for the privilege of having Uber couriers pick up the order — the operation of which “depends on the commercial arrangements,” Anderson said.
The new feature means stores can use the Uber Eats app and start delivering “extremely quickly,” Anderson said. “They can enable rapid trading virtually overnight,” she said.
On the customer-facing side of its app, Uber today announced the launch of “Active Order Adjustments,” which will allow shoppers to add or subtract items from their order as it is being picked. The feature is only available for orders where a courier picks items from shelves. The new features will also allow couriers to communicate with customers while shopping, for example if they are “not sure how ripe they want their items to be”.
The first retailer to use Courier Pick & Pack is expected to be announced soon. The feature will be rolled out elsewhere in Europe in the coming months.
Globally, 14% of Uber Eats orders are for groceries – a percentage that is higher in Great Britain. The company said that in the past two years the number of people who placed grocery orders through Uber Eats in Britain had almost doubled.
“It is very clear that grocery shopping trends have fundamentally changed… We have become a global leader in this space and that is why we are launching new products, such as Courier Pick & Pack, which we believe will change the way how people shop will change. ” said Anderson.
Having couriers enter stores, pick up orders and then deliver them is not a new concept – and was developed by Instacart in the US. A similar model was introduced in Britain by Buymie, which was acquired by Irish supermarket chain Dunnes Stores in 2023.
Asked whether it was likely that one of Uber’s rivals such as Deliveroo or Just Eat would introduce a similar feature, Anderson said: “This is new to Britain, but we use Courier Pick & Pack all over the world, it’s very well proven. we have years of experience now and the technology is quite advanced, so even if they brought it to market quite quickly they would still have a lot of work to do to catch up to where we are today.