Uber may have started out as a way to disrupt the taxi business, but it’s setting its sights on becoming a more integral part of our life — doing everything from delivering meals to providing health care.

“Their ambitions are being bigger than a taxi service. You’re seeing them move into logistics, connecting people who want a good or a service,” said Sunil Johal, policy director at the Mowat Centre at the University of Toronto.

“I would anticipate that they are constantly looking for new opportunities to disrupt new sectors.”

That could include everything from meal sharing to tutoring, from legal services to home care for the elderly. “It’s limitless, the amount of peer-to-peer services,” Johal said.

“What we are seeing is a real opportunity to move things, and not just people,” said Ian Black, general manager of Uber Canada.

“Traditionally, the first-mile and last-mile transportation networks have been underdeveloped,” Black said. “It’s an unanticipated result of building a network of drivers in all these cities . . . We’re in a good position to solve that problem.”

Uber is already partnering with transit authorities; in Dallas, it links Uber drivers with commuters for the last chunk of the trip from commuter rail stations.

Black argues Uber’s popularity — along with the popularity of services such as Hotel Tonight – have created demand for a quick response.

“Consumers are looking for instant gratification in more and more spaces,” he said. “People love convenience. Technology is allowing us to solve the logistical challenges in a way more efficient way. It empowers these new business models.”

Consumers are also becoming more comfortable with the sharing economy, where people can purchase a service or good directly. And for those want to earn some extra cash, such as also serves its purpose.

But the Mowat Centre’s Johal cautions that there is a threat of creating too much piecemeal work, especially for vulnerable workers.

“There is always a danger of any company getting too much of a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It’s rarely good for consumers if one company dominates,” he said.

“It wouldn’t be good if Uber was the only gig in town, with no competition to keep Uber in check, especially in terms of pricing,” Johal said.

Having many drivers on its app gives Uber an edge, but Johal warns that it wouldn’t necessarily be a permanent advantage.

“The downside for Uber is that it’s easy to download an app” from a competitor if one comes to town, he says.

Where’s Uber now?

Carpooling

Uber tried out carpooling during the Pan Am Games, when UberX drivers (who use their own personal cars) could make two stops to pick up two passengers during a single ride. Company officials promised savings of 20 to 50 per cent for riders, depending on how long the ride was shared.

Commuting

UberCommute was first tested in China, and is now expanding to San Francisco and Chicago, where drivers, not necessarily regular Uber drivers, can pick up a passenger on their commute to and from work. In Chicago, drivers would be paid 57.5 cents per mile driven with a commuter.

Couriers

The company used bike couriers in New York City deliver time-sensitive packages for businesses, but has now adapted that UberRush service to deliver courier items for companies in Chicago, New York and San Francisco for fees starting at $5 for trips less than 1.6 kilometres. Uber drivers are also delivering packages for Amazon in Seattle and for Shopify businesses in three U.S. cities.

Health care

This fall, Uber drivers ferried around registered nurses in 35 cities across the United States to flu shots in a service called Passport Health. In Asia, Uber has partnered with Practo to take patients to scheduled appointments at doctor’s offices and lab. It is testing similar plans in Florida and Massachusetts.

Food delivery

On weekdays, the UberEats service has drivers deliver three to five daily specials priced at $8 to $12 at lunch time within 10 minutes of ordering through the app. But it’s been so popular that the company is now expanding with a separate app to offer full menus from more than 100 Toronto-area restaurants from 10 am to 10 p.m. seven days a week.

Charity

From delivering up-for-adoption kittens for 15 minutes of playtime for $30 fee, to collecting donations for Goodwill, Uber offers up specialty services for charities. It has brought ice cream trucks to downtown offices on hot summer days, and on the federal Election Day, it touted free rides to the polls for voters (to a $15 maximum) who were first-time Uber users.

It’s not just Uber

Uber isn’t the only disruptive technology in Toronto. Here are some of the company’s local competitors:

Laundry

Talal Jandali loves piles of dirty laundry.

The business school graduate was working on app to track grocery-store deals with classmate Varun Mehrotra, but was struggling to get the idea off the ground.

“To our surprise, laundry is doing way more than dry cleaning. Our average load is 40 pounds,” said Jandali, who says Simply Laundry has agreements with 110 condo buildings, where concierge staff will accept and hold items.

In other buildings, users can schedule a pick-up or drop-off within a two-hour window in the morning and a one-hour window in the afternoon.

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Simply Laundry, which has partnered with a big plant for services that include both laundry and dry cleaning, offers free delivery with a minimum $20 order. Wash-and-fold laundry is $1.89 a pound. Dry cleaning for a 2-piece suit is $18.29; for skirt or pants, it’s $7.29. The turn-around time is 48 hours, though service can be done in 24 hours for an extra $20.

Jandali expected demand to be high in downtown condos, but he says the service is growing in houses, too.

Four drivers are dispatched by an algorithm that finds the best route to drive depending on traffic. And Simply Laundry’s drivers must also adopt the same policy as other big logistics companies such as UPS: avoiding left turns to save time.

Meals

Toronto is being flooded with companies like Just Eat, DoorDash and Favour Delivery that will bring you restaurant meals beyond traditional options like pizza and wings.

But Feast, operating out of chef Jamie Kennedy’s old Gilead Café, brings a different take — meals that are made specifically for delivery, not for a sit-in restaurant.

“We are a food company first. We cook and we source all of our ingredients. We produce our meals,” said Steve Harmer, co-founder and CEO of Feast.

As with Uber’s phone-based app, Feast’s transactions are handled via credit card. Feast has part-time bicycle couriers and drivers with electric cars to deliver orders, using an algorithm to route the nearest vehicle to the drop-off address, where the customer goes curbside collect their meal.

“Our servers are employees of Feast, know about the food,” said Harmer, who previously ran a digital marketing company in Vancouver, then became an angel investor in the tech sector. “We are going after a premium food product market.”

The menu, with items ranging from $8 to $12, features organic or free-range products. While the company will start with no delivery fee, it expects the charge will eventually be $2 at lunch, with plans to expand into dinner (and a larger geographic area) next year.

“I think there’s a huge market. Convenience is a big factor,” said Harmer. “I think people like the idea of ordering on their phone, not having to deal with cash, waiting in line. It’s all taken care of.”

Handy services

Muneeb and Nabeel Mushtaq’s company, AskforTask, was born out of the experience of trying to find a plumber to fix their mother’s leaky faucet.

After hiring someone to do the small job, the faucet started leaking again, but then the plumber stopped picking up the phone.

“We started thinking about a solution, or a better way to hire a service provider, connecting people on a very local basis,” said CEO Muneeb Mushtaq.

Popular tasks sought through the company include general help, which starts at $20 an hour, cleaning at $25 an hour, and handyman services at $50 an hour.

Surprisingly, one of the most popular jobs last year was on Boxing Day, where shoppers were willing to pay someone to stand in line — 1,300 taskers were hired to wait to buy everything from Air Jordan sneakers to Xboxes at Best Busy.

Following the Airbnb model, where individuals can rent their homes or spare rooms to visitors, AskforTask depends on reviews. When an asker posts for a job, the company’s algorithm automatically sends the request to the best-reviewed taskers on the platform, Mushtaq said. It also takes credit card information, but only puts through the payment when the job is complete.

The company takes a 15 per cent fee, with the tasker keeping 85 per cent.

Launched in 2013, the company operates in 100 Canadian cities, with an estimated 100,000 people signed up for doing jobs for extra cash.

Mushtaq said they are now focused on offering faster turnaround times, acknowledging that when AskforTask started, it would take 48 to 72 hours to make a match. It gradually improved to 24 hours, and now has a feature for finding someone for the job within 60 minutes in downtown Toronto.

Parking

The idea of fumbling for coins, or even circling a block to find a parking spot, will become a thing of the past if Michael Back has his way.

The CEO of Honk Mobile — a mobile app that allows users to input their vehicle licence plates and pay for parking by credit or debit card — says his business includes traditional parking lots such as those found at universities as well as spots that are only available at certain times of day.

“We refer to ourselves as the Uber of parking. We’re bringing new inventory to the marketplace,” said Back, who says they now rent 30,000 spots. “We’re taking an existing asset and we’re enabling the real estate owner to monetize it.”

That means if there are parking spaces at an apartment building that aren’t in use by tenants during weekday work hours, they can be rented out.

In addition to private parking, Honk Mobile handles municipal parking spots in Oshawa, including on-street parking, where users can pay through the app, which sends a warning 15 minutes before the payment runs out.

Parking enforcement officers can check if the licence plate has paid; the technology also allows users to know if parking is available, before even leaving home.

“The parking meter was antiquated, and it needed to be disrupted. There was a better way, beyond paper and coins,” he said. “To me, it’s not happening fast enough.”

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