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UberEats has been around for a while as the kind-of-random food delivery service available within the popular car-sharing app Uber. Basically, the digital equivalent of a Reverse Speakeasy. But its brand-new standalone app, which just became available in NYC today, is a total game-changer.
Previously, UberEats only offered two or three items a day that it would deliver to your door lightning fast, sometimes in as little as five minutes. Now, you can scroll through more than 100 restaurants on the app, including awesome places like Black Seed Bagel, Mighty Quinn’s, Westville, Burger Joint, Bar Primi, Empellon Al Pastor and Ivan Ramen Slurp Shop.
Each dish has a crystal-clear image, and wait times for orders range from a few minutes to an hour.
A test order placed at 11am today saw a pretty perfect Chana Masala bowl from Bombay Sandwich Co. delivered to Times Square in 40 minutes. Once you order a meal, you can see when the restaurant accepts it, when it’s done being prepared, when your courier is on their way, how close they are to you and when the food has actually arrived. You feel so involved, it's almost like you cooked it yourself.
The interface and excellent list of curated restaurants is similar to Caviar but, for now at least, there’s no delivery fee. Michael Conti, the general manager of UberEats, has said that the time a fee will be implemented has yet “to be determined,” and that the company wants “to offer free delivery for enough time that people have the chance to try the app many times.”
The UberEats app is already available in other cities including Los Angeles and Chicago, where the delivery fee is currently $3. So take advantage of the no-fee window and try the service out for yourself. Delivery is currently available anywhere in Manhattan below 100th Street.