Uber Eats Broadens Scope with Big Lots Retail Partnership

Uber Eats is advancing its business model beyond food service by announcing a partnership with Big Lots. As of Tuesday, November 21, the partnership has brought 1,200 Big Lots locations to Uber’s marketplace to offer an array of items from groceries to holiday decorations and pet care products. 

This move is part of Uber’s strategy to expand its non-restaurant delivery service. Last month, Uber launched a multi-store ordering feature that allows consumers to add products from various retailers to their food orders. 

Delivery platforms like Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub are innovatively expanding their services beyond restaurant deliveries. DoorDash, for instance, has branched out into alcohol delivery, while Grubhub is venturing into the hospitality sector. 

Despite these strategic moves, DoorDash remains the leading delivery platform with 77% platform users as customers as of June according to the Connected Dining series. Uber Eats took second place with 49% and Grubhub had 35% of users. The trend shows increasing growth for DoorDash and a slight decline for Uber Eats and Grubhub.

The aim of these expansions is to increase usage and make delivery services more essential in consumers’ daily lives, as only 5% of restaurant customers placed their last order via a delivery platform, according to a PYMNTS survey for the “Connected Dining” series.

DoorDash’s goal is to stimulate engagement with its entire platform, driving the growth of overall users at a double-digit rate, as confirmed by CFO Ravi Inukonda.

“We are not trying to drive the order frequency of just restaurants or new verticals. The way we think about it is, how do we bring more users back, which is helping us drive overall users at a double-digit rate. How do we get them to use the product more, which is what’s being reflected in the overall order frequency going up.”

Ravi Inukonda, Uber Eats CFO, via PYMNTS