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The annual Christmas rush, characterised by frantic supermarket dashes and sold-out delivery slots, is undergoing a fundamental change, with on-demand delivery cementing its role as the crucial last-minute lifeline. Uber Eats has laid out its strategy to dominate this market, deploying a heavy suite of new tech aimed at maximising order efficiency and expanding into high-margin retail goods. But the aggressive push raises inevitable questions about operational complexity and the persistent price premium that customers pay for convenience. New data from Uber Eats confirms the necessity of rapid delivery, revealing a near 20 per cent surge in grocery orders on Christmas Eve last year. This reliance extends beyond forgotten milk, with customers placing orders for over three tonnes of turkey on Christmas Day itself. This trend validates the platform’s shift from takeaway to essential retail logistics. As Katie Hunter, general manager of grocery and retail at Uber Eats UK, announced at an Uber Eats event on Wednesday, the business is focused on ensuring customers get “what they need, when and where they need it” during an “incredibly hectic” period. Tech vs price To cope with this high-volume, high-stress trading environment, Uber Eats is leveraging its global tech platform. New features, such as ‘live order editing’, which allows users to modify their order right up until the point of checkout, aim to tackle the problem of human error and forgotten items, which affect a “double-digit percentage of orders”, according to Rohan Matthew, global engineering lead. For merchant partners, batch picking is set to allow in-store staff to group multiple orders for simultaneous collection, helping to boost efficiency and maintain accuracy, the delivery giant has claimed. However, this convenience comes at a premium price. While Uber Eats’ sales grew from £1.1bn to £1.3bn last year, the company faces mounting cost pressures and has itself warned it may not be able to sustain profitability in the UK. This backdrop heightens scrutiny of the price disparities, which consumer watchdogs have highlighted, showing that items ordered via the app can be significantly more expensive than in-store prices. Uber Eats maintains that partners set their own prices, but the rapid delivery model, which includes courier and platform costs, necessitates higher pricing. Uber’s investment in ‘Uber One’ membership deals and “value initiatives” is designed to mitigate this by offering discounts to loyal customers. Retail expansion The platform is betting on more than food as an opportunity for growth. Orders for gift sets more than doubled in December, prompting the launch of a dedicated gifting hub featuring partners such as John Lewis and Boots. This move into high-value, non-perishable retail, including electronics like Apple products, which Zap’s founder confirmed is now a “very meaningful part of our business”, has become key. These higher-value items are less sensitive to delivery fees and can boost the average order value, potentially offering a more sustainable path to profitability than razor-thin margins in the grocery sector. Ultimately, Uber Eats is betting that the convenience offered by its refined technology will override customer concerns about the premium price. As Chris Conway, quick commerce director at Co-op, noted, their focus remains on making it easy for shoppers to get their “favourites and everyday essentials delivered,” signalling that the battle for Christmas spending will be won or lost on reliability.
