Uber buys grocery delivery startup Cornershop, which operates in Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Canada; Mexico blocked Walmart's acquisition of Cornershop in June
Kate Conger / New York Times :
Context & Ripple Effects
Cornershop's ownership has now flipped twice in a year. Walmart agreed in 2018 to buy the Latin American grocery marketplace for $225M, but Mexico's competition authority blocked the deal in June, citing Walmart's size and the competitor data Cornershop would have handed it. With that path closed, Uber steps in as the buyer — a player with no retail arm, so the data-concentration argument that killed the Walmart deal doesn't apply the same way.
The follow-on coverage shows why the asset mattered: Cornershop debuted in the US within months of closing, and Uber folded it into a 19-city grocery delivery launch across Latin America and Canada. Uber is buying an operating grocery network, not just an app.
First-order effects
- Uber immediately gains grocery delivery operations in Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Canada, extending its delivery business beyond restaurants into a new category with an existing merchant network.
- Walmart is left without the LatAm grocery delivery asset it had under contract, after spending a year and a $225M agreement on a deal its largest Latin American market refused to clear.
Second-order effects
- Walmart must source grocery delivery capacity in Mexico and Chile another way — building in-house or partnering — while its would-be asset now runs under a ride-hailing competitor's flag.
- Uber's driver fleet and routing stack give Cornershop scale it lacked standalone, pressuring local delivery players in those four markets on price and speed.
Third-order effects
- Mexico's block sets a template for how antitrust review reshapes consolidation: a regulator can redirect a target to a different buyer rather than kill the deal outright, deciding who gets to own last-mile grocery infrastructure.
- If the pattern holds, grocery delivery in Latin America consolidates around mobility platforms that already own drivers and demand, with retailers becoming suppliers to the platforms rather than owners of the delivery layer.
The trend: Ride-hailing platforms are acquiring their way into grocery and last-mile delivery across Latin America, with national antitrust rulings increasingly determining which platforms get to consolidate the category.