Diagnosing and Fixing Inventory Accuracy Problems in Uber's Grocery Delivery

Uber lets customers order groceries from partner stores through its app and have them delivered. You are the product manager, and you are told the grocery business has inventory problems. Explain how you would work out what is causing them and how you would solve them. ```hint Follow one item from shelf to doorstep "Inventory problems" can mean several things. Trace an item from the store's own records to the app's catalog, the customer's cart, the person picking it and the checkout, and note each point where what the app believes can drift from what is physically on the shelf. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - What symptom is showing up: items listed in the app that turn out to be unavailable, wrong quantities or weights, items missing from delivered orders, or something else? - Who picks the orders: shoppers working through Uber, the store's own staff, or a mix, and how do they record what they could not find? - How do partner stores share stock information today: a live connection to their point-of-sale or inventory system, periodic file uploads, or not at all? - Has the problem existed since grocery launched, or did it start after a change such as a new retail partner, a catalog update or an app release? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Defining the inventory problem precisely and sizing how it hurts customers, the people picking orders, partner stores and Uber. - Mapping the fulfillment flow and forming root-cause hypotheses at each step, each with a way to test it in the data. - Fixes on two fronts: making availability data more accurate, and handling a missing item well when it still happens. - Prioritization by impact and effort, separating what Uber controls from what needs retailers to change how they work. - Success metrics with guardrails, such as catalog breadth, order conversion and picking time. ### Follow-up Questions - A large retailer can only send a stock file once a day. How would you estimate whether an item is on the shelf between files? - Hiding every item with uncertain stock would shrink the catalog and could cut sales. How would you decide where to draw the line? - How would you tell whether customers were actually happy with the substitutions they received?