Australians will soon be able to order food from their favourite restaurants and have it delivered by an Uber driver within minutes.
Melbourne is set to become only the second city outside of North America to have access to Uber’s on-demand food delivery service UberEATS.
UberEATS Australia general manager Simon Rossi confirmed the service will be launching in Melbourne first.
“We’re really excited to announce that we’ll be bringing UberEATS to Australia and launching soon in Melbourne,” Rossi says.
The UberEATS Melbourne website went live on Friday morning.
“Melbourne, here we come,” the site reads.
“UbearEATS lets you use your favourite technology to get hometown favourites delivered seamlessly.”
Despite the UberX service still being technically illegal in Victoria, UberEATS will be launching in Melbourne before its crosstown rival Sydney, where the ridesharing app has been legalised and regulated.
According to Rossi, this is because of Melbourne’s reputation as the “foodie capital of Australia”.
UberEATS launched in a handful of US cities towards the end of last year and is also available in Toronto and Paris.
It will be housed in a separate app from the UberX service.
The news comes as the food delivery market in Australia is becoming increasingly heated, with international giant Deliveroo launching locally in November and a host of other rivals including MenuLog and Suppertime.
Uber has also just gotten its first local ridesharing competitor, with taxi-booking service GoCatch expanding into the market.
Speaking to StartupSmart earlier this month, head of Uber Australia David Rohrsheim signalled plans to expand the startup’s offering outside of UberX, including the UberPOOL service.
“That’s something we’re very, very excited about,” Rohrsheim said.
“It’s live in 15 cities around the world and will be in some Australian cities later this year.”
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Denham Sadler is a former editor of StartupSmart. He was previously a journalist at the publication and has worked as a freelancer for the Guardian, the Saturday Paper and the ABC. In his spare time he likes puns and jaffles.
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