Dive Brief:

• Uber Eats added three marketing tools to help restaurants reach more customers, launch promotions and increase sales during the holiday, the company wrote in an email to Restaurant Dive.
• The features are holiday happy hours, multi-location offers and percentage-off offers. 
• Consumers highly consider price and promotions in their purchasing decisions. About 48% of consumers say they plan to order takeout or delivery during the holiday season. 

Dive Insight:

These marketing tools could help Uber Eats with restaurant and consumer retention, especially as Uber Eats continues to grow its business in the U.S. and Canada. The company had a record-high adjusted EBITDA margin during Q3 2023 in these markets, the company said in prepared remarks related to the third quarter earnings.

For a limited time, restaurants will be able to highlight happy hour specials, including seasonal items, during off-peak hours in a curated happy hour section. Merchants can add this feature by signing up in the Uber Eats Manager platform. 

Restaurants with up to 200 locations can access multi-location offers to create promotions at more than one unit during the holidays. This feature allows operators to market offers at multiple locations at once. Restaurants can select these offers in the “Marketing” tab in Uber Eats Manage, click “Create Campaigns” and then select offers that apply to the basket level. This feature is expected to be helpful in the U.S. and Canada, where almost half of Uber Eats Manager users manage multiple locations through this platform. 

Percent-off offers will allow merchants to offer things like “30% off storewide” discounts, which could encourage consumers to spend more and have larger basket sizes. Depending on the local laws, some items like alcohol may be prohibited from discounts. Merchants can apply discounts under the Marketing tab in the Uber Eats Manager and selecting “percent off offers.” 

The aggregator also offers merchants grow your store recommendations where they can get advice over what type of marketing campaigns to run next. These recommendations are available in the Uber Eats Manager “Marketing” tab and are based on a merchant’s business goals.

Affordability and selection continue to improve, and average delivery times in the U.S. are down by over three minutes. Costs per trip are also down 5% year over year, reaching an all-time low following improvements to technology and operations. Uber Eats is also seeing increased retention and healthy growth of consumers, and its U.S. monthly active platform consumers were at an all-time high last quarter. 

The addition of marketing tools for restaurants comes days after Uber added several holiday offers for consumers, including store pickup, in which a courier would pick up and deliver prepaid items. Delivery robots have also been decked out like reindeer where Uber Eats offers bot delivery in Los Angeles, Miami and Fairfax, Virginia.