I don't think Uber Eats has any specific pros over the million other food delivery startups
The eventual result is that Uber can operate more efficiently than competitors that only do rides or food, allowing them to compete better in both markets.
(I used to work at Uber)
ubereats is a flanking product, meant to protect the core business. strategically, uber really only has market power on the supply side, and ubereats is primarily about protecting that advantage and less about being a standalone business (although i'm sure they'd be thrilled if it succeeded as a standalone business).
i'd be surprised if ubereats went away any time soon. at least, not without something else replacing it.
I'd say that Uber has zero moat in it's core business, anyone with a little bit of cash can roll out a competitive alternative in any city onces Uber raises prices.
But with Uber eats, a competitor has to also roll out meal delivery in order to be equally profitable and thus competitive.
Still not a huge moat, but a little bit harder to beat.
Uber has a huge most that Eats adds almost nothing to. Every day millions of people reach into their pockets to request a ride using the Uber app. Competing with Uber means a) recruit large numbers of drivers so your app has rides to offer. b) convincing large numbers of people to download your app. c) convincing them to make your app their primary ride share choice.
Even tackling a small city would be horrendously expensive. If it truly was easy Uber would be getting eaten alive by numerous small startups in every major city they operate in.
I can't imagine that a food delivery service could be competitive using drivers rated for safe person delivery.
Is the driver fleet for Uber eats even the same as the minicab fleet or is it really just another business?
The experience was absolutely awful back then. That's why I wanted to get into it. You'd have restaurants on FOO that didn't even know they were on FOO, so you'd make an order then FOO would literally call in and place the order acting like a customer doing a regular pickup (possibly screwing it up). Then FOO would find a delivery person in that area, like around college towns they'd call the local delivery food couriers and pay them to go pick it up. They'd make deals with groups and have to switch them out constantly. If one courier closed at 9 but your ordering at 11 who knows who would be delivering the food if you got it at all. I don't know how many times my food vanished into the night and I just never heard anything.
The experience absolutely sucked. And a transaction that can already be rife with issues (restaurant forgetting an item, etc) now had even more possibility of giving the customer a bad experience.
Now it's not all perfect now and there's definitely issues and always will be but UberEats actually seems to have forced some sort of standardization upon the entire process and the competitors have really had to just GET BETTER in general because of it. I can see my driver, see their GPS, the menu tells me if something is out of stock, the restaurant controls their menu, the restaurant knows it's UberEats, etc.
From the restaurant perspective they get to tap into UberEats population, use their drivers which is a streamlined process, UberEats has it's own software to see analytics, the popularity of their dishes, etc.
I could've been the Food Delivery King but I decided to work on a SAAS! C'est la vie. Kidding. I'd probably just be bankrupt now. "What if Uber, Yelp and Facebook get into this?" was never a thought that crossed my mind..