Uber Eats, which says rural America is becoming a top priority, has tapped discount retailer Family Dollar to focus on serving shoppers with discounts and deals on everyday essentials.
“When you look at all the retailers that we’ve onboarded recently—like Home Depot, Lowe’s, Sprouts, and Costco—they’re very rural centric,” Hashim Amin, head of grocery and retail in North America at Uber, told Retail Brew. “We continue to make massive expansion into that space.”
The restaurant and grocery delivery platform said it has been actively reaching out to retailers and grocers to expand its selection of everyday essentials and affordable items for on-demand delivery. “Family Dollar is in a very unique position because they index very highly in value and they also have incredible trust amongst their consumers,” Amin said.
Uber’s focus on affordability comes amid fears of a looming recession. Uber’s deal is a play to potentially safeguard itself to some degree from macroeconomic uncertainty. Economic downturns generally boost discount retailers like Family Dollar as consumers prioritize budget-friendly shopping alternatives. Separately, as Retail Brew previously reported, even Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said “there’s never been a more important time in recent memory” for keeping prices low, and that the e-commerce giant is “maniacally focused” on this goal.
Family Dollar said the Uber Eats platform will provide value and convenience to its customers. “Expanded access at an incredible value goes a long way in helping our customers save time and do more, especially in underserved communities,” Bonita Price, chief merchandising officer at Family Dollar, wrote in a statement. Items across the 5,000 Family Dollar stores in the US will now be available for Uber Eats delivery.
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The partnership aligns with Uber’s overall strategy of keeping Uber Eats affordable. “The cheapest way of getting your groceries will always be to go to the store to shop yourself and drive it home yourself,” Uber’s global VP for grocery and retail, Susan Anderson, previously told Retail Brew. “But for people who are time poor or needing things urgently, we need to make sure that [it] continues to be something that’s affordable and value for money.”
Uber’s food delivery service, which rolled out in 2014 as UberFresh, was rebranded as Uber Eats in 2015. According to eMarketer, online grocery shopping has more than doubled its market share since Covid-19. Over the years, consumer appetite for grocery delivery has become table stakes.
Apart from improving its value selection, Uber Eats has also added SNAP EBT payments to make it easier for low-income shoppers to buy items on its platform. Uber Eats said affordability and timely deals are becoming a bigger focus overall. Uber Eats is working to serve both private labels and cheaper alternatives to customers, Amin said: “We’re working on different creative ways to serve up offers.”
Within grocery, Uber Eats primarily enters the chat for that last minute, grocery top-up, Amin said, which caters to things like cleaning products, snacks, and midnight treats. “We peak late afternoons and early evenings and late night, so we really play into that convenience on-demand space,” he said.