Seamless Xtra’s Alia Alhussein speaks to Cikida Gcali-Mabusela, General Manager Grocery for New Verticals at UberEats, SA.
Cikida has been instrumental in building the Grocery and New Verticals business lines, which have experienced significant growth due to her leadership. Her vision is to build this segment within Uber Eats towards becoming the Virtual Mall of Africa.
Let’s start by how Uber Eats adapts to evolving consumer expectations in the grocery shopping landscape. How do changing lifestyles impact the industry and how does Uber Eats stay ahead of these shifts?
I think one of the things that we have learned at Uber from launching the weeds market a year and a half ago is there are nuances in customer shopping especially in grocery and retail where traditionally you get your full basket grocery or you get your top up grocery. But I think with Uber Eats, because it’s so easy to use the product and it’s so easy to get products delivered we realised that the ease and convenience shapes different types of shopping from customers. So we realised we do have an opportunity here to create a curated experience for grocery and retail for customers. And so we developed this dark store grocery offering. From there we were blown away with the insights. We realised that a customer could buy things they need right now. as one onion or somehting they might need at a Braai, for example. This is an experience that they traditionally wouldn’t get in brick and mortar shopping
So from a habitual perspective, there’s an exciting campaign we launched called fresh Tuesdays, where every Tuesday we have a really good special, which is 50 percent off our fresh items. And what we realised is now customers habits have changed. Every Tuesday people are stocking up on their fish on that the app. So I think what we’ve realised is that lifestyles are adaptable and the speed and convenience at which we offer grocery and retail items has allowed people to have a shopping experience that they traditionally wouldn’t have in the brick and mortar world. It has allowed them to actually develop new habits that they didn’t have before, through the offering and through how we offer the different products and selection.
Now, based on this, can you share some innovative approaches Uber Eats has taken to redefine the grocery experiences? Particularly I’m interested in hearing about the initiatives focused on increasing convenience and speed for customers.
I think our vision is to be a virtual mall of Africa. And if you think about the shopping experience in the mall, you go to the food court and you buy food. And then you go to a shopping retail store and you buy clothes and then you go to a grocery store and you buy groceries.
So we wanted to mirror that experience because we realised that from the data customers are really doing this. They’re going to our food court and they’re buying the KFCs, the McDonald’s, and then they’re going into a convenience store. Then they’re going to a retail store. One of the features that we actually added is to enable add on. So if you’re buying restaurant food, for instance, if you’re buying pizza and then you realise you want to compliment your pizza with a six pack of beer, you can do that and have the carrier deliver everything you want in one order.
Another product that we’re working on in terms of our batching optimisation is single carrier batching for many restaurants, but one eater. I don’t know if customers have noticed this, but if you’re ordering from many stores, if the stores are close to each other, It will actually be one carrier. So we’ve optimised our batching now to have one carrier to pick up everything. It feels like you’re getting the carrier to go through the virtual mall and get everything for you.
Something else that’s also super exciting is expanded hours. So we’ve realised that actually there’s this period between 6am and 8am where a lot of stores are not open, but people need the emergency buys such as eggs, bread, lunch supplies. So we’ve actually expanded our operating hours in some of our geos in those areas. And then late night trade because we’ve realised that there’s this period between ten and midnight where people are just on the app and want to buy stuff,. I don’t know if you’ve been through an emergency where it’s late and you have a cough and you need something. Now we’ve opened that app, too. Essentially what we’ve done is we’ve really allowed the data of how customers are moving, what customers are looking through to feed new value propositions that we offer them. And these are some of the few that we’re actually working towards.
Sustainability is a topic which has become increasingly important to consumers. How does UberEATS address these concerns, such as eco friendly packaging and promoting environmentally friendly practices in delivery?
That’s a really good question because sustainability is a big focus for us in 2024. Uber Eats is like a global business. One of the goals that we set for ourselves is to have environmentally friendly packaging. Eighty percent of all our orders should be environmentally friendly by 2025. And this should be 100% by 2030. Locally, we are working on some really good initiatives such as partnering with our merchants across the packaging that they actually have. We are also working on optimising our fleet. There are initiatives in the pipeline around how do we get environmentally friendly fleets such as e-vehicles. So we are in the market of partnering with e-vehicle suppliers to gain efficiency from these e-vehicles, but also get an environmentally friendly way of delivery.
Let’s move on to technology. How does Uber Eats leverage technology to provide personalised product recommendations and offers to customers? And how does this enhance customer relationships and foster brand loyalty?
I think from a product perspective, in technology one of the things that we’ve actually launched is called collections. So collections are an item first view. So as most people know, Uber Eats store first. So you see a store, then you click on the store, then you see the items. But with collections and grocery and retail you open the app and you just see a collection under meat or snacks, for example,, and you see items first.
Now, those collections are actually very personalised. If you open your feed and if I open my feed, the collections that we’ll see are actually not going to be the same. What we are working on is becoming a virtual mall of the future so that it’s a customised mall. Imagine you are at a mall and you only have the shops that are relevant to you in that mall. That’s what we’re trying to create. We’re trying to be the Netflix of retail where your Netflix and my Netflix are not going to be the same. It’s based on your preferences. It’s based on what you like. And that’s what we are also working on where you open the app and the few items that you actually see from a collections perspective relates to the habits that you actually have.
Where we want to move is to get to that world where we are at a time of day where we are prompting that you forgot to buy asparagus because we know that you buy asparagus every Tuesday. That’s the world that we’re getting into. We’re not quite there yet, but I think we are at the stage where your feed and my feed look completely different and we are closer to becoming that Netflix of shopping and retail that we wanted to become.
Another thing is that we also have a family profile that we’ve launched because I think what we’ve noticed is that there is a lot of group ordering that happens on the app where people are ordering takeouts for the whole family on Fridays or at the end of the month. Group ordering habits are very pronounced in South Africa, especially around payday. So we’ve created a family profile and it’s like the family Netflix accounts that we all watch movies in. So I think we are navigating all the different use cases. From an individual to group we’re trying to adapt the technology and adapt the ads to cater to all of those.
Lastly, I know we’ve touched on Uber Eats’ vision for the future and the concept of the virtual mall experience. But I’d like to also just touch on the initiatives like Uber One membership programme. How do these endeavours contribute to enhancing the overall shopping experience for users?
I think our global mission is to allow customers to go anywhere and get anything. That’s essentially Uber across the mobility business and the delivery business. And I think initiatives like Uber One really encompass the ecosystem that we’re building for customers. So for instance, we’ve got Uber package that’s live in South Africa where customers can actually send and receive packages using the bikes. But we’ve taken it a step further with the package where customers can actually shop and have the grocery outlets or the retail outlet then pick it up using Uber package.
So Uber One is offering free delivery for a certain amount of orders on the delivery platform, and then really good discounts on the mobility platform. So if you’re an Uber One member, you have this whole ecosystem of I can get discounts in how I live my life and how I go somewhere through being a rider, or how I get anything. And that’s what Uber One is trying to bring to customers so they can go anywhere, get anything, get anything delivered, anywhere at any time, and get a discount for it and be rewarded for it.
Thank you Cikida for sharing your insights and expertise on the future of grocery shopping and delivery. It’s been a pleasure speaking to you and I look forward to hearing you speak at Seamless Africa this October.
Thank you so much Alia. I look forward to speaking once again and I really appreciate the opportunity to share insights on the exciting things that Uber Eats is doing.
