Uber’s food delivery service UberEats is expanding to Pretoria, including Centurion, the company said on Wednesday. This is after the service was launched in Johannesburg last year and in parts of Cape Town early in 2017.
Jambu Palaniappan, regional GM for UberEats in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said the service will be launched in Pretoria “soon”. Meanwhile, it plans to expand its reach in Cape Town to include Constantia, Wynberg, Tokai and Plumstead.
“We are getting requests from both eaters and restaurants in all major cities, requesting launch dates, and our goal is to be in all major cities by end of the year or early 2018,” he said.
Palaniappan said the UberEats app has been downloaded 100 000 times by South Africans and now had 700 local restaurants providing food deliveries through it.
The company revealed a number of statistics about how South Africans are using the app.
For example, the most ordered dish for 2017 so far is the humble cheeseburger.
Businesspeople are pre-scheduling breakfast orders to arrive at work at the same time they do and offices are ordering in food or coffee for their business meetings.
On weekends, some South Africans use the app to entertain, ordering in large quantities of small dishes to share on Friday and Saturday nights, Palaniappan said.
Users can also now order alcohol using the app, but only if the restaurant concerned has an “off-premise” liquor licence. And Uber will check IDs on delivery, he said.
The largest order to date was for R6 000 worth of food, delivered for an office celebration. — (c) 2017 NewsCentral Media