A look at the delivery partnership between McDonald's and Uber Eats, which as of today has expanded to 5K restaurants in the US and nearly 7K worldwide
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Context & Ripple Effects
This 2018 milestone sits early in the arc of Uber Eats' platform build-out: the app had only just launched internationally the year before with its Mumbai debut, and within a year executives would cite research showing Eats jumping from 3% of US food delivery in 2016 to 24% in 2018 — growth the McDonald's tie-up directly fed by putting a marquee quick-service brand on the marketplace.
First-order effects
- About 5,000 US McDonald's locations (nearly 7,000 globally) become orderable through Uber Eats overnight, giving the marketplace a flagship anchor tenant while handing McDonald's franchisees a delivery channel they don't have to operate themselves.
Second-order effects
- Rival chains face pressure to stop treating delivery apps as adversaries — a stance that held until Domino's reversed course and signed on with Uber Eats across more than two dozen markets in 2023.
- Uber extends the same playbook beyond consumers: corporate Eats delivery expands to over 20 countries via Uber for Business, turning restaurant supply into B2B catering inventory.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, delivery aggregators consolidate into default infrastructure that even the largest chains can't opt out of — a dynamic that later pulls adjacent players like Instacart into white-labeling Uber's courier network for restaurant takeout rather than building their own.
The trend: Restaurant delivery is consolidating around a few aggregator platforms whose brand partnerships — starting with anchors like McDonald's — convert fast-food chains from skeptics into dependent suppliers.