Uber may soon deliver jewelry and handbags along with lunch

By Kyle Wiggers April 29, 2015

ubereats expansion version 1453341647 app

Uber’s no longer content with dominating the private car-hire market, it seems. Yesterday, the audacious on-demand transportation firm extended UberEATS, its prix fixe food delivery offering, to a handful of new cities. Separately, Tech Crunch reports that Uber’s planning to partner with high-end retailers to transport local orders.

UberEATS, the service previously known as UberFRESH in the pilot markets of Los Angeles and Barcelona, expanded to New York City and Chicago yesterday. It offers a daily rotating, curated lunch and dinner menu priced from $9 to $15 from “popular, iconic restaurants.” Delivery is a flat $3 ($4 in New York City), regardless of the number of entrees ordered.

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For now, food drop-off is only curbside — Uber isn’t delivering to doorsteps or offices just yet — but that limitation, in combination with a dedicated fleet of drivers, has helped Uber cut delivery times down to 10 minutes or less.

Even with those advantages, Uber’s entering a sphere that’s growing increasingly crowded by the day. In New York City alone, two new delivery services, Maple and Arcade, launched this year. That’s in addition to established companies like Grubhub, Delivery.com, Eat24, and others.

Uber isn’t a company known for putting all its eggs into one basket, though. Sources tell Tech Crunch that high-end merchants like Neiman Marcus, Louis Vuitton, and Hugo Boss are in talks with Uber to launch a same-day delivery program called Uber Merchant Delivery. The goal is to eventually have Uber drivers carry both passengers and packages, and the company is making strides — it’s already recruited over 400 stores.

If UberEATS and Uber Merchant Delivery sound like new territory for the transportation company, they are. But Uber’s no stranger to experimental pursuits in the name of profits. It recently launched a carpooling option to increase efficiency, and is pursuing self-driving car technology.

Just think of the possibilities: one day, your autonomous Uber could transport you, lunch, and a luxury handbag to your final destination. Sick.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Kyle Wiggers is a writer, Web designer, and podcaster with an acute interest in all things tech. When not reviewing gadgets…

Emerging Tech

Uber Eats is close to delivering your dinner using a drone

uber eats redesigned app lets you track your order with cute graphics

Along with announcing Uber Cash Monday, Uber shared a few more details about its plans to bring drone delivery to Uber Eats.
Uber unveiled the design for the drones at the Forbes 30 under 30 summit. The drones will have rotating wings with six rotors and will be able to take off and land vertically, Techcrunch reports.
While you might think the drones would be used for long-distance travel, instead they’ll likely be used for more local deliveries, at least for the time being. The drones are expected to have a maximum travel time of eight minutes, including takeoff and landing, and will have a range of 18 miles. For round-trip deliveries, the drones will likely travel 12 miles.
In previous conversations about the project, Uber has suggested that it doesn’t plan to use the drones for an entire restaurant to door delivery and instead plans to use the drones for more of a "last mile” approach. For instance, a restaurant might load up several drones for a delivery area and then those drones will all be launched from a central location to their final stops.
In another scenario, the drones will be deployed from restaurants to parked Uber vehicles that will then be responsible for delivering the food that final mile to its destination.
In July, Uber was conducting tests of the delivery drone in San Diego. Those tests were done from a McDonald’s in the area and were done using an Air Robot AR200 octocopter with a custom-built box for holding the food.
In July, Uber talked about building its own drones for food delivery and said that they could eventually reach speeds of 70mph. It had hoped to have its commercial service set up by this summer, which clearly didn’t pan out.
Earlier this month Wing launched the first drone delivery in the United States. Wing, which is owned by Google, is delivering over-the-counter medication, snacks, and gifts to people in Christiansburg, Virginia. It is working in partnership with Walgreens, FedEx Express and Virginia-based retailer Sugar Magnolia on the project.
In the case of Wing, customers have to opt into receiving deliveries via drone should they want to try the technology out.

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Tech Center at Birmingham, Hermle using autodesk software to design.

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Business

Find exceptional talent: the best hiring platforms for small businesses

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This content was produced in partnership with ZipRecruiter.
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