Uber Eats, The Super Bowl & What’s Right?

In this guest post, Ebony Gaylor (pictured below), director of social purpose agency DOA takes a look at the Uber Eats model – and Gwyneth Paltrow’s Super Bowl ad – and asks: what are the social and environmental impacts of this on-demand consumer service many of us have become addicted to?

As Uber Eats releases their most recent ad during the Superbowl this weekend, I can’t help but wonder about the impact that ‘on demand food delivery’, or on demand ‘everything’ will have – not just on small businesses and gig economy workers, but on the wellbeing of people and the planet.

I remember my early rides in an Uber – a fresh water bottle in the back, nice smelling car and best of all, no payment. Well I paid…and probably a bit more…but Uber made it feel free and cool. And it’s that same feeling of ease when I’m tracking my lunch being delivered to my door. I get whatever I want, whenever and wherever I want it – creating mini moments of a rockstar lifestyle.

At an individual level, I love having a more bespoke experience, especially with the illusion of no (or low) additional cost to me. And I’m not alone, as a category on demand food delivery was valued at $1.5b globally. It is one of the fastest growing categories in Australia having grown four fold since 2018, now with an estimated 9.4 millio Australians using the platforms. This growth has no doubt been bolstered by COVID-19 lockdowns, which made it a sort of quasi ‘essential service’ during the pandemic. But, as convenient as it often feels having a burger delivered to my door (COVID-free) it’s impossible to ignore the emerging environmental and social impacts of our on demand lifestyles.

Watching the category grow so rapidly is a little bit like the lead up to a big UFC match – with Founders and CEOs selling us a vision of hyper-customised products, frictionless experiences through drones and driverless cars, new job markets where we are in control of our time and new business models that require no bricks and mortar. On the opposing team, we’ve seen the same visionaries attacked by regulators, small businesses, staff and advocates for misleading or unfair employment arrangements, not accounting for their significant environmental impact and accusations of bullying tactics that back small business owners into a corner of impossible profit margins.

Some of the category leaders have argued that their current business model has very low profitability, but it’s impossible to ignore the massive ad spend being thrown at making on demand delivery a permanent fixture of our minds and how we live. The millions thrown at Super Bowl ads, like the recent launch of Uber Not Eats this week with Gwyneth Paltrow eating her own vagina candle (which I appreciate on many levels) make this a tough argument to substantiate. These are clever (and very well funded) tactics that create cultural talking sticks aiming to influence our social identity as ‘on-demand consumers’ and occupy as much mental and financial real estate within us that they can.

But, as they continue to sell us this on-demand rockstar lifestyle, are they creating the perfect storm for us to consume more stuff without any consideration of the unintended consequences of their rapid growth?

Category disruption is nothing new, and we’ve seen lots of it over the last ten years, from Uber and the taxi industry to AirBnB and hotels. Disruption is inevitable, and at times an important pathway for growth and positive change. The challenge is who loses out during the disruption and rebuilding – which is exactly what we’re seeing with the impact of social media on public interest journalism. This is precisely why we need brands within this emerging and disruptive category to consider more than their exponential growth aspirations, in fact there are three things they need to focus on:

1. Business impact

On demand food delivery has caused incredible disruption to existing hospitality business models that have relied on the profit margin of people eating in their restaurants, and that currently don’t take into account the additional cost of platforms and delivery drivers. This has resulted in new models to accommodate shifts in costs, like dark restaurants that exist entirely online. But the impact on both new and traditional hospitality models is poorly understood, with the reins of control still sitting with those who fuel consumer demand at scale (AKA Gwyneth). The category has also come under fire for contributing to significant employment instability (ie. the gig economy), with many brands allegedly misleading or misclassifying employment in a way that benefits their business and negatively impacts and puts at risk the people (contractors).

2. Planet impact

One look at your last delivery and it’s easy to see the environmental cost for convenience. Most of the platforms, and the restaurants they work with rely heavily on single use plastics to make the ultimate demand delivery experience possible, at the lowest cost point. Producing, using and disposing of these products rely on huge amounts of energy and raw materials and ultimately release significant emissions. A study from 2018 showed that food delivery orders contributed 5,600 tonnes of CO2 emissions. This means we’d need to plant an additional 30,000 trees to offset the impact each year, which doesn’t even take into account the four fold increase of the category in Australia.

3. People impact

Ultimately, the on demand food delivery category is changing the way we consume, connect and live our lives. Making it easy to leave the house less and eat at home (often alone) more. Even though more of us are seeking out the 20 minute community lifestyle, on demand food delivery is reducing the need for walks along our streets and consuming through our local stores. It not only removes but promotes the benefits of not having to have human contact or interaction.

If the last two years have shown us anything it’s that we are a social species. Research backs this up, demonstrating that shared mealtimes are important rituals that influence everything from relationships, sense of belonging to school grades. As humans we rely on a system of regular points of connection and interaction with others to nurture our sense of connection, a feeling that can be a little hard to navigate with an Uber Eats driver.

What next?

The casual dining scene can also be considered a disruption in and of itself. In fact it was many decades ago that restaurants and cafes emerged, encouraging us to eat out of the home and democratising the luxury of eating out. The issue with on demand food delivery is a little different though, primarily because of the pace of growth and disruption. As the big four brands race to become number #1 in the hearts and minds of consumers, many of the business models and technologies they create fail to take into account innate human vulnerabilities. Showing little or no regard for what this disruption means for us individually or as a society by creating an offering that gets us unconsciously consuming more things and more frequently at scale.

Not wanting to go out for dinner or down to the shops is one thing, but ‘removing the human from the Uber car’, let alone reducing human interaction at every touch point means that we are building industries, lifestyles and brands that put us individually and collectively at risk. There has to be a better way for this business model to grow beyond exponential growth curves of fast, contactless consumption.

Chasing growth and demand alone puts the category at risk of losing their own social licence with consumers, who will only be wooed by clever celebrity placement for so long. Shaving a little off the multimillion dollar ad spend in the category and redirecting it to better understand and tackle the social and environmental impact they’re having is not only an important start, but will quickly be an expectation of us all.