Your Next Company Car Might Be an Uber The latest way ridesharing is shaping business.
By Michael Frank •
This story appears in the October 2016 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
You can't eat at San Francisco's Pythagoras Pizza: Each $20 pie is available for delivery only. The model keeps costs down, but when the shop's popularity skyrocketed in 2015, founder Evan Kuo had a problem. "How do you staff to endure waves of two- to three-times-demand spikes?" he says. After all, he needs way more drivers (and cars) for lunch and dinner, but he can't afford to own a huge fleet that goes unused during most hours.
His solution: Uber.
In 2015, the car giant launched UberRush, which is essentially a messenger service that uses Uber drivers. It partnered with e-commerce platform Shopify and is available in San Francisco, New York and Chicago, and has become a favorite tool of businesses that deliver. Today, half of Kuo's pizzas arrive via UberRush. "Even if your forecasting model is 80 percent accurate, you're still either overstaffing by 20 percent or underserving by 20 percent," Kuo says. "That volatility can be frustrating and really costly."
