Bowie Cheung is the director of operations for Uber Eats across the U.S. and Canada, where Uber partners with over 70,000 restaurants and will service 70 percent of the population by the end of 2018.
Cheung is scheduled to appear on a panel of retail buyers titled What’s for Dinner? Fighting for the 6 PM Mindshare.
What foods or brands are you hoping to see at the Fancy Food Show?
I’m looking forward to learning about all the latest trends and innovations happening in the food industry.
How is artificial intelligence being used to improve the Uber Eats customer experience?
At Eats, we obsess over customer experience. We leverage Uber’s Artificial Intelligence platform to run a variety of models that power our business.
For example, one of those models is our Estimated Time of Delivery model which provides customers with a real-time estimate of when their orders will arrive. The model synthesizes a host of inputs and information such as the request (e.g., time of day, delivery location), historical features (e.g. average meal prep time for the last seven days), and near real-time calculated features (e.g., average meal prep time for the last hour). It then recalculates the time-to-delivery predictions at every step of the delivery process to provide our customers with the most accurate delivery estimates.
How have you seen the food service industry change over the course of your career?
I’ve seen Eats evolve from an experiment to a thriving business spanning 350 markets in 36 countries across 6 continents over the past three years.
In 2018, more than 40 percent of first time Eats users are also new to using Uber. This is part of a bigger trend we’re seeing of people embracing food delivery as an everyday life event, as opposed to exclusively for special occasions.
How is Uber Eats continuing to innovate and disrupt the food service industry?
Eats illustrates how we can successfully leverage our logistics expertise from ridesharing to innovate in new spaces.
Our platform helps restaurants grow their businesses and reach new customers. For example, we’re building a vibrant restaurant ecosystem by taking a data-driven approach to food delivery. By analyzing customer searches in a given area, we can help restaurants better utilize their existing assets and spin up new concepts with a minimal upfront cost.
Virtual Restaurants are delivery-only restaurants that have no storefronts and no seats; they operate out of a corner of a professional kitchen or inside a restaurant with a different name and menu. This means our restaurant partners can experiment with new ideas and grow their business at a fraction of the cost. So, a seafood restaurant, for instance, can start delivering poke bowls under a different name without having to purchase new ingredients.
from Specialty Food News http://bit.ly/2FjRGaQ
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