Uber already has thousands of drivers that bring people from one place to another, so why not have them bring packages from one place to another as well? That’s the idea behind UberRUSH, an experimental delivery service that the company launched earlier this year in New York City, and it must have been happy with the results, because it just announced that the service is expanding to Chicago and San Francisco.
We first told you about the soft launch of UberRUSH in the New York City area in April. Uber has now launched a pilot version of its merchant delivery service today in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago. UberRUSH began experimenting with a way to help shoppers get same-day delivery of local products through both Uber drivers and bike couriers earlier this spring. New York City still deploys bike couriers and on-foot delivery through the service, Chicago will deliver all the retail things by car and SF will be a mix of both bike and car. “In hundreds of cities across the globe, you can press a button and get a ride in minutes. Now, through UberRUSH, business owners can use that same technology to get customers pretty much anything in minutes,” reads the Uber blog post. Think of it as Postmates, but for, well actually UberRUSH competes with Postmates. They both deliver food and various retail items from local businesses. Postmates also delivers from bigger retailers like Apple and recently announced a partnership with both Etsy and Kenneth Cole in the NYC area, whereas UberRUSH is just for local shops at the moment.