Is Uber Eats profitable? (all you must know)
With the power behind Uber, Uber Eats has experienced significant growth since its launch and has become a multi-billion dollar business.
The situation has managed to attract a lot of curiosity about the company’s financial health. For anyone wondering if Uber Eats can make a profit in all of this, read on!
Will Uber Eats be profitable in 2022?
Uber Eats has reported that it has been profitable in recent months but is still considered unprofitable in 2022. Profitability means that a company has managed to be profitable and remain profitable for a long time, but Uber Eats has yet to achieve that. Like Uber Eats, most food delivery services, including Doordash and Grubhub, remain unprofitable.
Read on to learn everything you need to know about Uber Eats and profitability, including how profitable it is for drivers and restaurants, why the company is still not profitable, and more!
Why isn’t Uber Eats profitable?
Uber Eats has struggled to become profitable because operating costs still make up a large portion of its revenue.
According to different studies conducted by economists, food delivery services retain only 2.5% to 3% of what customers spend on each order.
A large portion of Uber Eats’ total revenue comes from:
- Advertising and Promotion
- driver
- Third parties, such as hosting service fees (Amazon Web Services) and payment processor transaction fees
At the end of the day, the company spends more than it earns, which is why it’s still not profitable.
When will Uber Eats be profitable?
Uber Eats has not made any statements or hints about when it expects to start turning a profit, so all we can do is speculate.
For a few months in 2021, Uber Eats reported that it was profitable, but that didn’t translate to profitability.
Profit differs from profit in that the former is absolute and short-term in most cases, while the latter is relative and usually determined over a long period of time.
Profit is when income is higher than expenses, no matter how small the difference, even $1 qualifies.
By contrast, the factors that make up profitability depend on the size of the company you’re looking at.
Profitability can also be achieved when a company does not have to put in a lot of effort or invest too much to make a certain profit.
For example, a small company that makes $10 million a year can be profitable.
However, a company as large as Uber Eats is still not profitable even if it makes the same amount of money for several years in a row.
Therefore, we can assume that it will take a while for Uber Eats to become profitable unless it does the following:
- Significantly increase prices on its platform
- Get bigger sales from restaurants
- Cut driver wages
How much does Uber Eats make?
Here’s what Uber Eats earns:
- $600 million
- $1.5 billion
- $1.9 billion
- $4.8 billion
- $8.3 billion
Uber Eats’ revenue in 2021 was $8.3 billion, up from $4.8 billion in the previous year following the December 2020 acquisition of Postmates.
How much money does Uber make?
Here’s how much money Uber makes:
- 2014 – $400 million
- 2015 – $1.7 billion
- 2016 – $5 billion
- 2017 – $7.9 billion
- 2018 – $11.3 billion
- 2019 – $14.1 billion
- 2020 – $11.1 billion
- 2021 – $18.3 billion
Uber made $18.3 billion in 2021, with $8.3 billion coming from Uber Eats.
Uber is still unprofitable for most of the same reasons Uber Eats is.
How does Uber Eats make money?
Uber Eats makes money by:
- Commissions – Uber Eats takes a cut of all revenue that restaurants earn through its platform.This cut depends on the services restaurants access on the platform, including marketing and delivery
- Fees – Uber Eats charges customers various fees, including service and delivery fees
- Advertising – Restaurants on Uber Eats can choose to pay for advertising and bid against other businesses on the platform to increase awareness
- Corporate Partnerships – Uber Eats partners with other companies to offer drivers rentals through a partnership with Hertz, getting paid to promote them
- Subscriptions – Uber Eats has a premium subscription plan called Eats Pass that costs $9.99 per month and allows access to different perks like free shipping on orders over $15
To learn more, you can also check out our posts on when Uber Eats will stop delivering, whether Uber Eats is safe, and whether Uber Eats takes cash.
in conclusion
Although Uber Eats had a profitable quarter, it still wasn’t profitable. Uber Eats hasn’t said when it expects to be profitable, but that seems unlikely without an overhaul of most of the business.
Uber Eats makes money through fees, commissions, premium subscriptions, corporate partnerships and advertising. Like Uber Eats, most major food delivery companies are not profitable.