Being an entrepreneur, it’s always interesting to analyze how an established startup diversifies. Let’s delve into it.

What Pain is UberEATS addressing?

People eat food. And eating the same food from the same restaurants around your office or home— some of dubious quality (yeah, you know which ones I’m talking about) — isn’t much of a great experience. If you’re lucky you have a couple good options around. If not, you’ll either eat unsatisfying food or loose precious time in the process of getting it from further away.

If you’re an entrepreneur or you’ve ever attended one of my workshops (lucky you), you already realized that there is an additional customer for this project. Indeed, the “other side of the Pain” lies within the restaurateurs: people tend to all eat at the same time — say, lunch — creating off-peak times for restaurants. UberEATS enables the restaurateurs to leverage those underused hours to prepare and package additional food. The dishes are then transferred to Uber, who takes care of the rest.

For people this means getting additional options for lunch that they can get delivered straight to their doorstep. Restaurateurs get additional business and can leverage off-peak times. Uber gets $€¥. WIN-WIN-WIN.

Is this a new service?

Yes and no. UberEATS already exists in 9 cities around the world, almost exclusively in the US. Launching a food-oriented service in France is in itself a challenge. Obviously theUberEATS Paris team spent a lot of time learning from the existing UberEATS experiments. But as each market is different and there’s only Barcelona as a European city reference, they’ll still have to learn a lot along the way.

It’s interesting to note that several companies & startups are already working in the food delivery business. Just to name a few, in France we have AlloResto, Deliveroo, TakeEatEasy. For those companies, fighting against Uber and its half million users (just in France) that just got the UberEATS update in their Uber app will be a challenge.

What’s the product?

Starting today UberEATS will be open during lunchtime and will deliver edible goodies straight to your doorstep. Not all of Paris is covered — yet — but as the service develops you can rest assured that the delivery zone will expand.
A dish will cost you 8–12€. The UberEATS team dedicated a lot of attention to how great your culinary experience will be. If everything is on par to with what I’ve sampled, this pricing is fairly reasonable (I made sure to test some samples twice — you know, for scientific purposes). Delivery costs an additional 2,5€, but Uber will waive that during the first few weeks.
Now, one of UberEats’ greatest challenges lies within this promise: once you’ve ordered you’ll be delivered within 10 minutes. For those who participated in one of the Lean Prototyping workshops you probably remember Wineez, the fake startup we prototype within a few hours. Delivery — and keeping track of delivery times to make good on your promise — is critical.

I’m looking forward to seeing if they’re up to the challenge.

It’s worth mentioning that at least one of the restaurants is gluten-free. Kudos to La Guinguette d’Angele and Uber for this. If you have the opportunity to do so you should definitely try her gluten-free cheesecake. My money’s on that baby.

How are logistics handled?

UberEATS works with a selection of restaurants (different ones everyday). Restaurants prepare and package the food in advance, leveraging hours that would otherwise have a lesser ROI. The food is then picked up by Ubers drivers: most of them are dedicated to food delivery, while some will also welcome passengers when they’re not delivering food. It’s interesting to note that many cars will be electric vehicles.

Some restaurateurs — like Angèle — are already deeply invested into being “UberEATS friendly”: 10mn before pickup time everything is already prepared (I’ve even been told that this is not good enough for Angele, whose quality standards are much higher). Some other restaurateurs are still discovering what it means to work with a delivery startup: getting familiar with logistics, having the orders on time, etc. To be kept in the UberEATS restaurant pool, they’ll have to learn how to keep up.

And there’s a lot of other cool stuff: how to keep the food warm, deciding what dishes to include or not (hint: French fries are a no go as they turn out to be soggy after some time), etc. Uber wishes these small pieces of info to not be disclosed at the moment (fair enough), I just hope they’ll disclose this feedback to the startup community at some point.

Will I be able to eat in my Uber?

This is probably one of the best questions I heard during the Q&A! Indeed, many people happen to be in a Uber during lunchtime. How about those hAngry tummies?
Sadly, this won’t be possible — yet. Never say never.

Is this a big project within Uber Paris’?

You’d be surprised. The team is comprised of only 4 people. Vincent has been working in the project since last May, and others joined along the way.
Though Uber might seem like an established behemoth, they’re still cautious about their resources. The team has to prove their launch is going to be a success before unlocking additional resources.

Conclusion

The UberEATS Paris team has a fun challenge in front of them. They’ll face competition from established startups, but by leveraging their user base & brand they’ll be able to grow extremely fast. We’ll know more in a few months.

Oh, and if you have a solution for the French fries, please contact UberEATS. A burger without French fries is just too sad.

Let me know what you think about this article, about UberEATS and your experience with the service. Note that you’ll get a discount on your first delivery (-10€) with the code: ATABLE.

And finally, here’s a few selected links:

• The first part of my Lean Prototyping workshop (in French), that I regularly give at Le Wagon: http://www.lewagon.org/blog/tester-votre-idee-sans-coder
• The intrapreneurship program I’ve created with Niels Mayrargue: trigger-program.com
• Le Wagon, who hosted the event