What’s happening above?

There are three hungry roommates collaborating to order food.

Three different apps were used to place a single order for a single address. (Facebook Messenger, Google search and UberEats)

2. It takes a long conversation to figure out what order needs to be placed.

There is often a conflict between choices of restaurants and menu items.

3. Order is still placed by a single individual.

It doesn’t make sense to order for the same address multiple times around the same time.

After looking at similar experiences on DoorDash and Postmates, the identified gap is:

UberEats, DoorDash and the likes cater to ordering food for an individual, not for a group.

Why should the UberEats care about this at all?

From my preliminary research, below are a few things I heard:

“I live with two other people. When I order, I ask them if they need anything right now or maybe later.” “While ordering food, I think about what I’m having for dinner or for the next day if it is already dinner time. I don’t want to pay extra delivery cost.” “Often times, I go pickup the food myself instead of waiting. That’s cheaper, and faster. But I ask others living with me if they want anything.” “Why don’t these apps allow ordering from multiple restaurants?”

At work, we use EatClub to order lunch for our team. Everyone can order food individually. It works, but only for large groups or teams. EatClub is rarely on time and food options are minimal.

Others, such as Lunchloop are targeted towards companies and operate in a different domain. Our context exists in a generic scenario where multiple people need to order food at once.

Ordering for groups still requires efforts on a design and product front. Who wants to be the first to fix it?

The Opportunity

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Think of this like UberPool for UberEats. Multiple people are ordering at the same time (Instead of traveling together, they’re eating together).

There needs to be a way for all the above to happen within UberEats. This will lead to fewer switching between apps, fewer decision points, and smoother ordering experience for the users.

Let’s start designing

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UberEats at present

Current experience on UberEats looks like this: