Uber buys ezCater for $2.3bn to add group ordering
The cash deal folds ezCater's network of 140,000 restaurants into Uber Eats, Uber's first serious push into workplace catering.
Uber will buy workplace catering platform ezCater for $2.3 billion in cash, folding group food orders into Uber Eats. The companies announced the all-cash deal on 6 October, with the close expected in the coming months pending regulatory approval.
Boston-based ezCater works with more than 140,000 restaurants across the US, handling food orders for office meetings, conferences and recurring workplace meals. Its gross bookings topped $2.5 billion over the past twelve months, growing in the high teens year-on-year, with an average order value above $400, far higher than a typical Uber Eats delivery.
Uber says ezCater is already profitable on a non-GAAP operating income basis and expects the deal to be margin accretive once combined with its own business. ezCater was last valued at more than $1.6 billion in prior funding rounds, so the acquisition price marks a sharp step up.
Workplace catering can be a huge revenue stream for restaurants, and now it runs through Uber Eats too.
A push into group ordering
Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi framed workplace catering as "a huge revenue stream for restaurants" and said the deal lets Uber extend ezCater's reach through Uber for Business, which already serves more than 300,000 companies. The plan is to combine that corporate client base with ezCater's established restaurant network rather than build group ordering from scratch.
For Uber Eats, the deal marks a first serious entry into group and catering orders, a segment rival DoorDash has only recently started to target. It follows Uber's $425 million investment in Wonder's robot kitchen network, part of a broader push to widen its food delivery margins beyond single-diner orders.
A patchy record on acquisitions
Uber's dealmaking history in food and drink is mixed. It bought alcohol delivery service Drizly for $1.1 billion in 2021, only to shut the brand down three years later once it folded the service into Uber Eats directly. Whether ezCater keeps its own name and app, or disappears into Uber's platform the way Drizly did, has not yet been decided.
Restaurants that already use ezCater will be watching commission terms closely once the deal closes, after similar concerns followed Uber's expansion of in-app ordering tools covered in recent research on restaurant technology.
