New product concept to reshape meal delivery against apps like Uber Eats
Company: Uber
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Design a product that could disrupt the food delivery industry, the market where apps such as Uber Eats compete today. Explain what disruption means in your answer, which group of users you would build for and why, which of their problems you would solve, what you would launch first, and how you would know the product is succeeding.
```hint Define disruption before features
Disruption means some group changes its default behavior and switches to you. Decide which side of the marketplace (diners, restaurants or couriers) you want to change behavior for, and look for a group today's apps serve poorly, before you brainstorm anything to build.
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### Clarifying Questions
- Are we building this inside Uber, as a new bet that might cannibalize Uber Eats, or as an outside startup trying to take share from incumbents such as Uber Eats?
- Does "disrupt" mean winning share with a better experience inside today's model (restaurant, app, courier), or changing the model itself, such as who cooks the food or how it reaches the customer?
- Is there a target market, given that delivery economics differ sharply between dense cities and suburbs?
- Which side of the marketplace is in scope: diners, restaurants, couriers, or all three?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A precise definition of disruption for this prompt and a choice of marketplace side, justified by where current delivery apps underserve someone
- A focused segment with concrete pain points that today's apps fail to solve, ranked by severity
- A differentiated concept and MVP that an incumbent cannot simply copy as one more feature
- Unit economics and operational feasibility: delivery cost per order, restaurant commission, courier supply and density
- Success metrics tied to the behavior change, plus risks such as incumbent response and quality failures
### Follow-up Questions
- Uber Eats copies your headline feature within six months. What keeps your customers?
- How would your concept change if every order had to be profitable from day one?
- After three months, which single metric tells you the concept is genuinely disruptive rather than a small niche?
Overview: A product sense question asking how to design a new product that could disrupt food delivery apps such as Uber Eats. It tests whether the candidate defines disruption, picks a diner, restaurant or courier segment, ranks pain points, scopes an MVP and chooses metrics that show real behavior change.