Alex Troughton: the ‘grocery addict’ driving Uber Eats

After all, in the past two years, the number of people who have placed a grocery order on Uber Eats in the UK has nearly doubled. And across Europe there has been 50% growth year on year in grocery orders.

A not-insignificant proportion of those orders may have come from Troughton himself, one suspects, after hearing him evangelise about Uber’s grocery offering.

“You might be shocked by my orders. I’ve transitioned from being a restaurant addict to a grocery addict and order basically every other day, if not daily,” Troughton says with the frenetic energy of a puppy with a new toy. “If you have a pet, you can order petfood. If you’re up for a party, there’s party stuff. Shoot away, fire away, order away,” he says.

Uber Eats’ rivals – chiefly Deliveroo and Just Eat – made moves into grocery at a similar time. But arguably Uber Eats has pushed harder and moved faster to capture what Troughton calls  a “massive opportunity”.

As well as continually clocking up expanded partnerships with major retailers, Uber Eats has been eagerly improving its underlying technology and overall grocery offering. For example, giving users the opportunity to select their next-best alternative if an item is out of stock.

There is also replacements approval, where a store colleague can inform the user an item is out of stock and get their OK for the substitution. Earlier this year, Co-op began offering in-app access to member prices on Uber Eats, a UK supermarket first for a delivery aggregator app. “We’re always looking to answer merchant challenges,” says Troughton.

It must be doing something right. Currently, close to a third of its grocery customers use Uber Eats for grocery shopping only. And it’s not – as the cynics had long assumed – all late-night booze and sugary snacks. In the past two years, 74% of Uber Eats’ grocery growth in the UK has been driven by fresh produce and household staple categories.

That finding “was a real moment for the grocery business”, Troughton says. “It’s been exponential and it’s a core part of Uber as a business.”

Pick, pack and pay

Coming developments could be even more significant. In June, Uber Eats announced couriers would soon be picking items from store shelves as well as delivering the orders. Hailed as a first in Europe for a delivery platform, the ‘Courier Pick & Pack’ service follows similar operations in the US, Japan and Australia, where it helps merchants better manage spikes in demand when store staff need to man tills or do other tasks.

Uber Eats has been “squirrelling away in the background to get it launched”, Troughton says. “These things aren’t easy and take a lot of time. We’re making sure we get it right from when we launch because it’s brand new.”

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The concept was in fact pioneered by Instacart in the US, while in the UK and Ireland, it was tried by Buymie via official partnerships with the likes of Co-op and Asda – and several unofficial ones. Aldi ended up issuing Buymie – since acquired by Dunnes Stores – a cease-and-desist notice.

“There has historically been some friction,” acknowledges Troughton. “We’re here to facilitate [retailers] as much as anything.” Unlike Buymie, “we’re operating with the partner hand in hand”. Its approach could even upend the current model eventually.

There is also Uber Eats’ “flying” white-label delivery offering, Uber Direct. This sees retailers or restaurants use its couriers and tech to power their own apps and websites. It’s a solid answer to supermarkets’ fears that aggregator apps were stealing customer data and contacts from them.

Whoosh is ‘amazing’

While some supermarkets are on all aggregator apps, some are notably not, like Tesco Whoosh. But it’s Uber Direct doing much of the legwork in the background of Whoosh. “It’s an amazing business, Whoosh, and we’ve been lucky to be part of the journey for quite a while,” Troughton says. “Obviously they’re pushing it very hard, which is great.”

Whether Tesco will stick with Direct or come on to the Uber Eats app – like its cafés and One Stop stores – remains to be seen. Some, like Sainsbury’s, do both: stores are on the app, but its rapid Chop Chop service is powered by Uber Direct.

“They know what we can do on marketplace,” Troughton says. “We’re here to help if they want to come and acquire all the customers that traditionally might not be Tesco’s customers that sit on our marketplace, on rides – that’s their call. On the marketplace we have millions of active users wandering around looking for grocery orders.”

Those users are also looking for non-food items – and are now finding an increasing selection of gifts, beauty, flowers (“I’m obsessed with buying lilies,” Troughton says) and pharmacy on the platform to “fill any gaps” in user demand.

To suggest, then, that grocery and retail is a small side business to restaurant takeaways on Uber Eats would be “harsh”, Troughton says.

“In the UK alone, Uber Eats operates across a far wider span than Uber Rides. And that’s just a microcosm of one country,” he says. “Personally, I’d hope we’ll overtake [restaurants on] Uber Eats at some point. That’s my aspiration long term. It’s not happening tomorrow, but with the enjoyment and retention we’re now seeing from our customers – why not?”