Uber Eats Expands to Farmers Markets in NYC and LA

This week, Uber — the San Francisco-based ride-hailing giant — announced that Uber Eats will soon be adding fresh produce from farmers markets to the food delivery app, among an array of sustainability initiatives at the company’s second annual GO-GET Zero event in London. The expansion launched in Los Angeles and New York City this week, with plans to expand to other markets within the next few years.

“We know that buying local and seasonal produce is another way to live more sustainably, so in order to make that a bit more effortless for our customers, we’re thrilled to welcome beloved purveyors from local farmers markets to Uber Eats,” Fay AlQassar, global head of delivery sustainability, told Food & Wine. “Plus, we look forward to offering farmers a new and alternative way to sell their goods.”

With the new feature, Uber Eats customers will be able to find — and shop from — vendors like Gone Bananas Bread at The Original Farmers Market in Los Angeles and Union Square Grassman in New York City, in conjunction with farmers market hours. And as per usual, customers and couriers can communicate about food selections or out-of-stock items using the app’s chat function.

Uber Eats, which was piloted in Los Angeles in 2014, has skyrocketed from a lunch delivery service called UberFresh to a ubiquitous app available in 11,000 cities that surpassed 1 million merchants in April 2024. Uber is now leveraging that network to impact change with the Uber Green Packaging Marketplace and a campaign educating merchants on reusable, recyclable, or compostable packaging options in their markets — like Notpla, which replaces petrol-based coating with seaweed in London so packaging disappears like a banana peel, and Releaf, which turns fallen leaves into paper bags in Kyiv.

“Each [Uber Eats] order has five to 10 packaging items included, a lot of which are made of unrecyclable material that typically ends up in landfills,” AlQassar explained. “If we can start to make those items more sustainable, it will have an enormous impact on the planet.”

The majority of food vendors in the U.S. and Canada identified cost as the primary problem with choosing sustainable packaging, so Uber Eats is incentivizing merchants with discounted containers, plates, cutlery, and more compostable or recyclable food packaging from partners like Green Paper Products. 

In tandem with these rollouts, the Uber Eats app has launched a Climate Shop (see the globe icon at the top of the home screen) featuring products like Cameron Diaz’s organic wine line Avaline and reusable bag brand Stasher.

“It’s all about proving with actions and not just words that sustainable choices can make sense for merchants, delight consumers, and minimize impact on the planet, and that on a platform like ours, small changes really can make a big difference,” AlQassar said. “A year ago, we set a goal to remove damaging plastics from deliveries by 2030, and we’re doing it by using our size, scale, and resources to make the sustainable choice the better one.”