Retail Channels
22 July 2022
Uber is doubling down on grocery delivery
Updates coming to Uber Eats this summer include after-hours ordering, tracking merchant features.

Uber Eats items. (Courtesy image)
Updates coming to Uber Eats this summer include after-hours ordering, tracking merchant features.
Uber Eats items. (Courtesy image)
Uber is upgrading its grocery delivery service.
While the company rose with ridesharing, its delivery business picked up in the pandemic as people were more likely to be home and advised against getting into cars with others. The company’s Uber Eats service initially launched grocery delivery two years ago as an addition to its then-restaurant-focused delivery offering. In 2021, it acquired Chile-based grocery delivery service Cornershop, and added 24,000 grocery stores around the world. Growth has only continued, including the notable US addition of 2,000 Albertsons stores over the last two years.
With a raft of new features announced on Thursday, Uber said it is rolling out a fuller version of the integration with Cornershop’s technology and team to users and merchants this summer. Taken together, the updates are the largest improvement to Uber's service yet, all designed to make grocery delivery “more convenient, intuitive, and reliable.”
For users, Uber is making a number of updates based on consumer feedback. They include:
For merchants, updates coming to the app this summer include:
Uber’s continued expansion of grocery delivery shows it sees continued growth for the service, even as more in-store shopping and ridesharing is returning.
Speaking in April at the ShopTalk conference, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that expansion in grocery delivery was part of the company’s push to be a leader in “local commerce,” which involves the delivery of items from nearby merchants to customers. Khosrowshahi added that Uber believes that “rapid delivery should be a part of every local grocery player's offerings," and that Uber could introduce for them in a "capital-light" way. While Uber Eats started with meals from restaurants, it is expanding with delivery of items from grocery and convenience stores, including non-food items – the so-called Don’t Eats model promoted by its celebrity-strewn Super Bowl commercial.
Each of these areas has its own set of players vying to quickly shuttle orders to doorsteps alongside Uber. Grocery delivery has Walmart, which makes it a part of its subscription service, and Instacart, which announced intentions to go public, has been slashing its valuation and making its own product updates. DoorDash and Grubhub are also expanding from meals into non-food items. Quick commerce companies like Gopuff are delivering convenience items in tight timeframes. Plus, Amazon looms over each segment, not only in grocery delivery via Whole Foods but also the ability to deliver items quickly via its fulfillment network.
Still, there's plenty of potential upside in grocery. It is an area that is expected to grow, with executives in the grocery sector recently telling McKinsey that they expected ecommerce penetration to more than double in the next 3-5 years. Uber is positioning itself as part of this rise, and it has quickly built up a notable presence in the area, given the range of stores it is partnering with in the US and international markets. Offering delivery from multiple locations creates a kind of marketplace, and additional opportunities can also grow out of this model to further strengthen the business. Retail media could offer brands and retailers the opportunity to advertise inside Uber’s delivery experience. And Khosrowshahi hinted that the company will seek to provide logistics technology to local businesses.
The product provides a foundation for all of that, and this summer’s upgrades to Uber Eats signal that the company wants to continue to make the service better.
Ask Instacart answers prompts with personalized recommendations.
A pair of recent launches from Instacart highlight how the grocery ecommerce company is integrating two of the key emerging areas of technology into its offerings: Generative AI and marketplaces.
Let’s take a look:
Instacart is seeking to harness generative AI to create a more personalized shopping experience.
A new tool called Ask Instacart that is launching this week is designed to allow customers to type in questions about specific recipes or general recommendations for an occasion. Embedded in the search bar, Ask Instacart also provides personalized questions to be asked by customers. In addition to specific items, it provides information about food preparation, product attributes and dietary considerations.
For those eying how generative AI will play a role in the shopping experience, Ask Instacart shows how search can be transformed into a place for discovery. Instacart is aiming to provide answers to the more open-ended questions that people would naturally ask, not just simply provide info in response to a question that has one answer. It shared the following sample prompts:
The tool is also showing the way for generative AI to integrate with retail media. Ask Instacart is designed to integrate with a brand's sponsored products campaign, so that the answers to questions that match consumer needs can also provide a way for brands to stand out.
To create the tool, Instacart combined the language understanding of ChatGPT with its own AI models. It added in catalog data from 80,000 retail partner locations around the country, which together have more than one billion shoppable items.
Beyond mission: Ecommerce marketplaces have honed a shopping experience where it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. But if shoppers want to happen upon something they didn’t know they needed, social media or the store is still the best place to visit. Instacart is showing how generative AI can make discovery a marketplace function. It also signals that advertising will come to generative AI by way of retail media. Going forward, the growth of discovery could make retail media more valuable as a tool for advertising that raises brand awareness, not just lower-funnel conversions.
Instacart will power a new virtual convenience store for the grocery chain Aldi.
Aldi Express will feature 2,000 of the most-shopped Aldi items, ranging from prepared food and snacks to grocery staples.
Drawing on 2,100 Aldi locations around the country, items will be delivered as fast as 30 minutes, the companies said.
“Through ALDI Express, we’re making shopping more convenient so you can satisfy a craving or get a missing ingredient in minutes,” said Scott Patton, VP of National Buying at ALDI, in a statement. “Together with Instacart, we’ll continue to find ways to innovate and make the online grocery experience even more effortless and accessible.”
Aldi began offering delivery via Instacart in 2017, and has since expanded services to include pickup as well as alcohol delivery.
Aldi’s marketplace moment? While Aldi previously offered delivery, making the assortment available through a virtual store offers the opportunity to create a marketplace for its goods. With the virtual store, it will more closely resemble DoorDash and Uber Eats, which have been expanding their grocery assortment. With a marketplace, additional revenue opportunities could open up for the grocer, such as advertising through retail media.