Ride-Hailing-Era Uber: Go or No-Go on Launching a Food Delivery Business

Imagine you are a product manager at Uber at a time when it offered only ride-hailing. Would you recommend expanding into food delivery, the business that became Uber Eats? Make the call and defend it. ```hint Map what transfers Sort what a food delivery marketplace needs into what the rides business already has and what it would have to build from nothing, then ask which gap is riskiest and how cheaply it could be tested. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Should I reason only with what the company could know before it had any delivery business, rather than with hindsight about how that business turned out? - Is the decision only whether to enter food delivery, or also how: inside the rides app or as a separate app, and in which cities first? - What is leadership optimizing for right now: profit within a set horizon, more frequent use by existing riders, or defense against competitors? - Can couriers include people on bicycles or scooters, or is the plan limited to the existing car drivers? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - The strategic case: how food delivery serves the company's mission and goals, and why the timing does or does not work - An honest split between assets that transfer from rides and capabilities the company would have to build - Per-order unit economics and what they depend on as the business grows - The riskiest assumptions, including driver supply at overlapping peaks and spillover onto the rides brand, with a cheap test for each - A clear recommendation with a launch shape and explicit criteria for scaling up or stopping ### Follow-up Questions - Dinner demand and the evening ride rush overlap. How would you staff deliveries without hurting rider wait times? - What results from a single-city pilot would make you stop rather than expand? - Would you build delivery into the rides app or launch it as a separate app, and why?