Uber Eats Partners With Japanese Chain On Tokyo Delivery

Uber Eats and Japanese convenience store chain Lawson are partnering on deliveries in Central Tokyo.

Lawson, which is the country’s third-biggest convenience store, will sell around 100 products through Uber Eats, including bento boxes, fried chicken and tissue paper, starting on Thursday (Aug. 29). The service will initially roll out near its stores in Shinjuku and Shinagawa during a test phase over the next three months. Sales data will determine whether the service will expand at a later date.

While Uber has not revealed user numbers, the company says it has partnered with 10,000 restaurants in Japan, including McDonald’s and KFC, according to Reuters. The company has seen success with its food delivery app in Japan, despite the fact that its ride-hailing service is still banned in the country.

To make delivery easier for its other customers, Uber announced in June that it had merged a fully functional web version of Uber Eats into its ride-hailing app.

Merging Uber Eats with its ride-hailing app gives Uber an advantage over Lyft or DoorDash, which don’t have both services. It will also enable the company to compete with Careem, Bolt and Didi, all of which offer both ride-hailing and food delivery services.

“We’re rolling out a new way to order Eats directly in the Uber app on Android (we’ve already been experimenting on iOS),” said an Uber spokesperson at the time. “This cross-promotion gives riders who are new to Eats a seamless way to order a meal via a web view instead of opening up the App Store for download.”

Uber has been experiencing a slowdown in growth. In its first earnings report since going public, the company said revenue increased 20 percent, which is slower than the 25 percent growth it had previously seen. Uber posted a $1 billion loss for the three months ending in March, which is narrower than the $3.1 billion loss a year ago.