Uber is looking to expand its services and has sent out an email to drivers to find out if they’d be interested in taking on additional on-demand jobs, such as cleaning, moving and food service.
According to a Recode news report, the ride-sharing company is looking into the possibility of providing TaskRabbit-like services for consumers and potentially other businesses.
The email, which came from the company’s research department, stated: “We would like to ask about your interest in receiving requests from Uber to perform other types of tasks on a flexible basis. Task requests would be similar to ride requests from Uber. A request would be sent through the Uber app for a task. If interested, an Uber partner would accept the request and then travel to meet the request at the specified task location.”
There was also a link to a survey asking what would be the lowest hourly pay a driver would accept for tasks such as health care services, moving assistance, customer service, retail, cleaning services, clerical tasks, warehouse tasks and food service tasks.
A source said that the company has been looking into launching this type of service for over a year. Uber already has a successful food delivery business, UberEats, which launched in 2014 and is now profitable in 27 of its 108 cities. In fact, the service is on track to post more than $3 billion in gross sales by the year’s end.
But the company has had difficulties as well, shutting down its experimental product delivery service, UberEssentials, five months after it launched in Washington D.C. in 2014.
Both Uber and its rival Lyft have been working to expand their B2B services. Lyft has a partnership with Delta and Blue Cross Blue Shield, although that focused primarily on providing rides to other businesses.
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