Source: amid quarantines, Uber Eats recorded a 10% increase in US sales last week and a 30% increase in signups from people willing to deliver food
Amir Efrati / The Information :
Context & Ripple Effects
Uber Eats was already the company's growth engine before the pandemic: research cited by Droege and Khosrowshahi showed it climbing from 3% of the US food delivery market in 2016 to 24% in 2018 that 3%-to-24% climb, and its Q2 2019 revenue hit $595M, up 72% YoY $595M in Q2 2019. What this report adds is a demand shock layered on top of that trajectory — quarantines are converting restaurant closures into delivery volume while simultaneously pushing newly idle workers toward courier signups.
The significance is that both sides of Uber's marketplace moved in the same week: sales up 10% and delivery signups up 30%. With ride-hailing demand slumping, Eats becomes the pressure valve for the whole platform.
First-order effects
- Uber's US drivers facing collapsed ride-hailing demand have an immediate alternative inside the same app — the 30% signup surge means supply is arriving just as quarantines lift order volumes.
- Restaurants losing dine-in traffic now depend on Eats' marketplace for whatever revenue they can still reach, deepening their reliance on Uber's commission structure.
Second-order effects
- DoorDash and GrubHub — which per Fortune were already outselling or outgrowing Uber Eats in the global market — face the same quarantine demand spike and must match Uber's courier recruitment pace or cede capacity.
- A larger active courier pool lowers Uber's marginal cost of fulfilling orders, letting it absorb more restaurant partners without proportional headcount growth.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Uber structurally tilts from transportation to logistics: two weeks later it began listing delivery, food production, and grocery jobs directly in its app listing delivery and grocery jobs in-app, and by 2022 Eats had pushed into groceries and alcohol moving into groceries and alcohol — the pandemic surge looks like the inflection point where delivery became the durable core business.
- Food delivery consolidates around whichever platforms can flex labor between categories fastest, turning courier supply — not restaurant exclusivity — into the competitive moat.
The trend: Quarantine-era demand is accelerating food delivery's shift from a side bet on ride-hailing platforms to their primary business, with labor supply flexibility deciding who wins.