Uber Launches Home Delivery Service In San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) – Local businesses in San Francisco are now able to deliver to people's homes using Uber, as the ridesharing giant launched "UberRush" on Wednesday. The company is the latest big player to enter the home delivery wars.
With so many services offering home delivery, these days you may never have to leave home. The catch, they only offer deliveries from a select number of primarily big box retailers, leaving the mom & pop shops to fend for themselves if they want to get into the home delivery game.
Enter UberRush. It allows any shop to sign up and use an Uber driver as their delivery person.
"It enables them to focus on what they do best in their small business and let UberRush take care of the same-day delivery with our technology platform and with our operations," said Uber GM Susan Alban.
UberRush allows businesses to request a delivery and track the driver, much like Uber riders do with the app. In most cases, the consumer won't know their items are being delivered by Uber, until they get a delivery confirmation email or text.
When the delivery arrives it may not be on four wheels. "It opens up the platform to driver partners but also to a new set of bike delivery partners," Alban said.
Those partners get 75 percent of the delivery fee, $3 for the first mile, and $3 for each mile after that.
Uber said the average fee is $6 to $9, which may, or may not be passed on to you.
"It's up to the small business owner to decide if they're gonna cover that cost or pass it along to their customers," Alban said.
Like the delivery apps before it, Uber's launch is limited to just a few major cities. When Uber first began testing this service they did offer a courier service that would allow you to say have a driver go pick up something you left at work. But they say business owners quickly became the primary users, so that's where they're focusing now.