Uber’s first whacks at the delivery market have resulted in a few notable misses, as talks with major retail partners have reportedly dragged on or fallen through without an agreement.
Insiders familiar with the negotiations told the Wall Street Journal that Uber had recently courted Apple and Starbucks for a same day delivery service spanning multiple cities. Both retailers sided with a rival delivery startup, Postmates, instead. Talks with food ordering services such as GrubHub and Yelp have also continued without an agreement.
In total, Uber has signed on a half dozen retail partners since it launched a courier service one year ago, riding high on shareholder’s expectations that its fleet of roughly 200,000 vehicles could one day take on delivery giants such as UPS and FedEx.
