Uber hiring for grocery product position in Toronto

An
Uber Eats rider cycles through central London.
Jack Taylor/Getty Images

• Uber is
  hiring a head of grocery product in Toronto, Canada, according
  to a new job posting this week. 
• The company has big ambitions to grow its Canadian presence,
  employees have told Business Insider.
• Uber Eats is one of its fastest-growing segments, and
  delivering groceries could make its potential market even larger.

Uber
is rapidly staffing up its Toronto office, and a new job posting
on the ride-hailing giant’s website could be a window into those
ambitions.

Uber Eats is hiring a head of grocery product, according
to a job posting from Thursday. The role will “build
the organization and globally scale a brand new product offering
which will fundamentally evolve how people purchase their
groceries.”

Uber has big ambitions to grow its Canadian presence through
staffing up its office in the country’s capital, company
employees have told Business Insider previously, and this is the
latest example of those ambitions.

It’s also another sign of the company’s ambitions for Uber Eats,
which is one of the company’s fastest-growing units. In its
latest self-reported financials, Uber said that
Eats accounted for $2.1 billion of its overall gross bookings in
the third quarter of 2018, and that it was growing at more than 150% annually.

The company did not respond to questions from Business Insider
about its ambitions for grocery delivery, but in October, CEO
Dara Khosrowshahi hinted at the company’s ambitions to deliver
things other than people.

“With Eats, we’re getting into the business of moving food
around,” he
said at a Vanity Fair summit. “I think that this
product of delivering great quality food to you at home in 30
minutes or less is magical and is going to move into grocery in a
way that’s fundamental and a lot more people are going to be
eating at home … you can absolutely see grocery as being an
adjacency.”

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Grocery delivery could be a much larger market than just
on-demand meals, experts estimate. Online grocery sales currently
make up just 5.5% of all grocery sales, according to the advisory firm Bricks Meets
Clicks.

Uber has been in talks to purchase the UK-based delivery startup
Deliveroo, but the talks have reportedly stalled due to
valuations that are “miles apart” from the two sides. The Financial
Times reported that Uber’s offer for the six-year-old company was
less than $2 billion, while Deliveroo is reportedly eyeing a $4
billion valuation.

Uber Eats also recently joined the Uber for Business platform,
allowing employees of participating companies to expense meals in
addition to car rides. It’s a move that makes it easier for
companies to manage expenses and payroll, and it gives Uber a
locked-in source of revenue as opposed to solely relying on the
consumer business.