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MM of inc. revenues, multiple new market expansions, business model innovations, & top line growth
Company, Location, Date, Project Information:
Company:
Uber Eats.
Location:
Los Angeles County Area, California.
World-Wide.
Date:
2021- 2022.
Project Information:
Project summary of consulting by Zak Glenn Allen for Uber Eats. The project is divided into two parts, top-line growth & bottom-line growth. This is the top line growth portion.
I advised market expansion strategy, then assisted with sales channel optimization to ensure execution aligned with strategy. Consulting work led to MMs of increased global sales revenues, increased profitability, multiple new market expansions, business model innovation, & top line growth.
The top areas are divided into:
1) What: Explanation of results delivered.
2) Why: Insights/reasoning behind consulting recommendations.
3) How: Methodology/deliverables used to achieve results.
4) Other: Commentary on challenges during deliverable execution.
The bottom area is divided into my actual pitch deck, with additional commentaries of my thought processes in between the slides, while advocating for Uber Eats to expand into the Supermarket, and Grocery Industry, via the grocery delivery market.
If product development and business model innovation is successful and the sales channel is optimized and meets or exceeds the needs of the customer, then additional market opportunities will open for Uber Eats and their customers.
The second part of the pitch deck guides stake holders in collaboration with product development through the sales channel optimization process.
Our focus and goal for Uber Eats is to move into the Supermarket, and Grocery Industry, the Grocery Delivery Market successfully. This means Uber Eats needs to gain market share and keep/increase market share by producing a product that is as good or better, than the established competition. Thus, we are examining the grocery delivery consumer that already has preset expectations on driver interactions, product availability, application functionality, and what the overall experience feels like in the grocery delivery marketplace.
We take a base line "honest look" at a competitor's (Shipt) sales channel, then we compare it to our own (Uber Eats') sales channel.
How does the interaction between customers and Shipt compare to the interaction between customers and Uber Eats?
And how can we improve our sales channel to ensure maximum sales, while ensuring the customer's experience meets their needs and expectations?
The second part of the pitch deck is a brief overview of the sales channel optimization with a comparison between Shipt and Uber Eats.
At the end of the pitch deck, there is the longer 22+minute interaction at 7-11, it is a glimpse of the "real world, behind the scenes" optimization process. This process is a tough griding process of trial and error & design and redesign. In order to make any process look smooth and easy to use, like the Boston ballet, to use like Shipt's shopping process, and finally Uber Eats' shopping process takes a lot of patience, practice, teamwork, repetition, and a firm belief that we can make our product exceed our customer's expectations and even our own expectations.
Results, Deliverables, Measurements, A Brief Competitor Analysis, & Industry Statistics:
Results:
MMs of Increased Global Sales Revenues through Top Line Growth.
Business Model Innovations.
Multiple New Market Expansions.
New Revenue Streams.
Deliverables:
Market Analysis.
Business, Company, Organization Assessment.
Strategy & Business Development Planning.
Product Development.
Strategy & Business Development Implementation.
Sales Channel Optimization.
Measurements:
Increased Return Customers.
Increased New Customers.
Increased Global Sales Revenues.
Increased per customer profitability within Uber Eats and across Uber's ecosystem/applications.
Uber Eats Competitive Advantages in 2021-2022:
Estimated 3.5 million active drivers and delivery people
81 million users
6,000 cities and 45 countries
30 minutes average delivery
Brief Competitor Analysis (Estimates):
Shipt in 2021 (corporate Shipt media guide)
300,000 shoppers
2 million + households
5,000 cities nationwide
Same day delivery
130 retailers
20+ categories of products delivered (fresh groceries, electronics, baby clothes, beauty, home decor, wellness, pet food, etc.)
91% of orders were delivered within 5 minutes of the delivery time
Top 3 Reasons for customer use: shopper attentiveness, convenience and timely deliveries.
Customer Insights per Shipt:
Millennials are driving online grocery shopping.
Millennials use their cell phones for at least 1/2 of their grocery trips.
Forecasted total ecommerce growth between 18% and 23% with a range of $1.09 trillion to $1.13 trillion.
Instacart in 2021:
600,000 shoppers
9.6 million active users
600 retail partners
5,500 cities across North America & Canada
Same Day Delivery within 5 hours or with an extra charge 1 hour delivery with an express membership
Consumer Trends Application Downloads (zippia.com)
2021 Industry Statistics:
DoorDash-Uber Eats-GrubHub-Instacart-Postmates-Shipt-Other
2017 12% 39% 11% 5% 11% 1% 22%
2018 19% 31% 15% 6% 10% 1% 16%
2019 32% 20% 16% 5% 14% 2% 11%
2020 32% 18% 15% 12% 9% 3% 11%
2021 33% 21% 14% 12% 7% 3% 11%
2019 Total Downloads vs. 2020 Total Downloads Percent Change
Food Delivery 89 million 91 million +3%
Fast Food 69 million 81 million +21%
Fast Casual 32 million 39 million +23%
Grocery Store 12 million 19 million +56%
Casual Dining 12 million 17 million +47%
Cooking 15 million 26 million +9%
Pitch Deck Insights, Economic Insights, Consumer Strategy, & Driver Insights:
Pitch Deck Insights:
The first portion of the pitch deck presentation was specifically aimed at convincing investors, board members, CEOs and C suite decision makers that Uber Eats should expand services into the Supermarket, and Grocery Industry, to adapt to evolving market conditions. Market expansion within the Grocery Delivery Market would provide high ROI, increase profitability, increase revenues, increase customer satisfaction, increase employee satisfaction, increase partner satisfaction, and open additional markets for Uber Eats' products and services.
Projected revenue expectations are first. Then additional values to each of the stakeholders within the organization. Followed by supplemental benefits throughout the organization and to UberEats' partners. A few additional reasons to expand with competitors within the current market.
The second portion of the first half of the pitch deck looked at guaranteed market availability, additional market availability, and any other economic conditions that may affect market expansion.
I advised a business strategy to move into the grocery delivery market as a response to the changing market conditions after COVID restrictions were lifted. The corresponding consumer spending patterns changed, when consumers shifted from purely eating, drinking, and shopping online/app at home to going out to eat at restaurants or attending entertainment venues, thus reducing revenues from restaurant delivery services (US bureau of labor statistics).
In economic terms, restaurant delivery is a comfort good, while groceries are necessity goods. An increase in entertainment, transportation, and food away from home/restaurants/etc. had a corresponding decrease in other areas except necessities such as food at home and shelter.
Economic Insights:
The U.S. experienced a sharp increase in inflation (normally stable rates from the consumer price index) 1.7 % from February 2021 to 5 % in June 2021 then peaked at 9% in June 2022. Job vacancies to unemployed workers doubled, increasing wages and prices (NBER).
Additionally, bottle necks in supply chains for computer chips occurred in the fall of 2021, thus increased the costs of goods. Then Russia invaded Ukraine causing crude oil prices to change from $70-$100 a barrel, thus raising prices for food and gasoline. Fuel oils and other fuels had a 70.4% change in prices between June 2021-June 2022. Food at home had a 12.2% increase in prices. Food away from home had a 7.7% increase in prices (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Consumer Strategy:
Even though, Uber Eats grocery delivery market would be border line comfort and necessity. From a consumer's perspective, everything from food to gas to going out for a night on the town is more expensive because of inflation and I'm not making more money.
Thus, if I'm using Uber to attend a concert or a restaurant, the convenience of having groceries (that I have to buy no matter what) delivered at the same time or when I arrive back home is an innovative and very profitable value proposition for uber eats and their customers that also transcended across all of uber subsidiaries and ecosystems.
Driver Insights:
Cost of fuel has nearly doubled. Grocery shopping and delivery is an easy way to save money on fuel, reduce wear and tear on their vehicles, and reduce mental exhaustion from driving nonstop. Additionally, grocery shopping with Shipt resulted in an average of $30 per hour in comparison to Uber and Uber Eats' around $20 per hour.
Overview:
Discovered guaranteed market availability. Tracked and modeled industry trends and competitor strategies. Championed market
expansion with investors, C-level executives, and cross-functional stakeholders into the grocery delivery market to increase sales revenues, market share, and customer value using clear and concise presentations.
Utilized knowledge of multiple sales programs to advise clients, improve sales strategies, and optimize sales channel. Worked with product development to ensure tight alignment of sales strategy and execution.
Advised diligence around implementation, including test/learn scenarios and establishing/adapting software development systems and processes to scale. Used tactical methods including a YouTube video of the Boston ballet performing swan lake during product development cycle to convey the idea of “sales excellence” and communicate the necessity of smoothing out the customer’s sales journey to ensure long-term customer satisfaction and return customer retention.
Innovations led to multiple successful new market expansions with higher profit margins (small business, pharmacy, clothing, liquor, etc.), and new revenue streams from adjacent markets (inventory management software complementing restaurant and small business marketing software).
In Depth Analysis & Vendor/Business Partner Insight:
In Depth Analysis:
Recommended benchmarking competitor Shipt’s software (grocery delivery business owned by Target) vs. Uber Eats’ software via multiple perspectives; customer facing, driver facing, and vendor facing software, before attempted new market entry.
Shipt’s UPC scanning software allowed substitutions for out-of-stock items and the option of adding new items (1 item or all items equals partial revenues/increase in revenues) vs. Uber Eats’ canceling the sale (zero revenues).
Vendor/Business Partner Insight:
The current on the fly method of substitutions used by Uber Eats’ vendors, just to make a sale, when an item was out of stock, substituted a higher/lower priced item. But this method did not update the customer’s final bill, thus causing vendors/Uber Eats’ revenues and profit margins to be skewed.
Final product development changes added UPC scanning, resulting in the stabilization of cost of goods for restaurants/stores using accurate scanning software to assist with restaurant/store accounting, and management.
Communication & Consulting Challenges:
Front End Customer View & Back End Shopper/Driver View.
See Mobile Phone Pictures.
See Swan Lake Video.
Optimized the front-end customer and back-end shopper/driver view of the Uber Eats application i.e. sales channel using multiple perspectives. Advised tactical methods during product development to smooth out the customer's sales journey to ensure long term customer satisfaction and return customer retention.
When communication failed to properly convey expectations of changes needed to ensure product success for the intended market expansion. Advised investors, CEO/board members, directors/managers, and engineers to think about swan lake ballet (see previous swan lake video) as an example of how to create a smooth memorable experience that wows you and brings you back for more.
Mergers and Acquisitions Insights:
Mark Zuckerberg and David Ebersman once had an email exchange about the potential acquisition of Instagram by Face book now Meta.
The gist of the conversation from Ebersman was that mergers and acquisitions occur to either neutralize a potential competitor, acquire talent, or integrate their products and (services) with the acquiring company in order to improve (their) services.
Uber Eats' partially acquired, fully acquired, or developed partnerships with Cornershop, Postmates, Drizzly, Go Puff, Carrefour, and Careem in the years 2020-2022.
Uber Eats' acquisition of Postmates neutralized the leading competitor in large suburban areas like Los Angeles and Miami. Several of these areas Postmates already had the largest share of the market and their business clientele included many small and medium sized restaurants. Since many of these suburban cities were already saturated, Uber Eats would have had to spend more money than previous years to remain status quo. Postmates acquisition increased uber eats' customer base, increased per customer check averages, increased restaurants/business partners while keeping cost of market acquisition low.
Uber Eats' other acquisitions and partnerships were moves towards solidifying market share within the "global grocery industry" with deliveries and software. Each acquisition allowed Uber Eats to gain access to multiple global markets instantly through brand recognition and through the acquired company's already established customer bases.
For example, Cornershop is located in Chili and Mexico, Carrefour is in 14,440 stores across 30 different countries, and Careem is Dubai based and had access across 70 cities and 10 countries in the middle east.
The acquisitions also allowed Uber Eats time to fine tune their grocery shopping and delivery software with exclusive access to the acquired company's software, employee's experience, physical locations, & fulfillment centers. Additionally, each acquired company's data included customer behavior, customer lists, price lists, and UPCs from grocery, liquor, and everyday essentials.
Drizly's acquisition gave uber eats access to an already created online liquor delivery service market, 4000 retail partnerships, 2.5 million customers, ID document verification system, corporate sponsors like Anheuser-Busch, and wedding deliveries.
The GoPuff partnership allowed uber instant access to centrally located facilities in every local market (Bevmo & liquor barn in California, 42 states total, the United Kingdom, and France), their large consumer database included detailed information and trends on past consumer-packaged goods purchases. Gopuff originally delivered liquor and snacks but grew to a delivery service similar to a mini amazon delivery service.
The Gopuff partnership also gave uber eats drivers, area managers, and back-end engineers experience working within the industry (picking up alcohol and using the ID verification services) This allowed the market transition to be easier by giving more time for Uber Eats to perfect the software transition, employee transition, and customer transition.
This transition allowed Uber Eats to make small incremental learning mistakes from growth and transition vs. companies/corporations that move into another market full board without adequate planning and adapting their products and services to meet the needs of their future customers.
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