What Happened
Popular ride-hailing service Uber has been testing UberRUSH, an on-demand local delivery service, in New York City since April. Following last month’s confirmation that they will expand the courier program, today the company announced the official launch of UberRUSH in New York City, San Francisco, and Chicago. With its large fleet of drivers and bike messengers, Uber is no doubt looking to use its infrastructure advantage to take on existing on-demand delivery services such as Postmates and Deliv.
What Brands Need To Do
UberRUSH offers a great opportunity for local vendors to modernize their customer experience with on-demand delivery service. Although only available for local merchants in select cities at the moment, it seems reasonable to assume that Uber will be extending this service to more cities soon. And with Shopify and Clover as its launch partners to help with the onboarding process, UberRUSH has the potential to help establish Uber as an aggregator for small local stores in the brick-and-mortar retail space, similar to the way Amazon provides a platform for independent online vendors. That is something all retail brands need to be aware of.
Source: TechCrunch