UberEats wants to add thousands of NYC bodegas to its delivery app

UberEats is rolling out quick-delivery services for Big Apple bodegas who have been slammed by competition with fast-delivery apps like Gopuff and Gorillas, The Post has learned.

Customers get their orders within 30 to 60 minutes or so and pay a $2.99 fee. The merchants pay no extra delivery charge, which ordinarily costs them about 15% of an order with other quick-delivery apps.

Some 100 small delis and mom-and-pop grocers across the New York metro area have been testing the new service in recent months. Participants in the pilot include Ron’s Deli and Grocery Store on Jamaica Avenue in Queens and Smiley on Lexington Ave. and 62nd St.

“Not a lot of us have the time to create something like this and to do the marketing,” said Smiley’s owner, Nayeem Ghesani who also owns Third Avenue Garden at 91st. St. “And this is free.”

The plan is to roll out the service to thousands of businesses citywide, said Elie Y. Katz, chief executive of National Retail Solutions, a maker of high-tech point-of-sale terminals that’s spearheading the rollout.

“Bodegas have been under assault from the well-funded fast-delivery services and we’re leveling the playing field for them,” Katz told The Post. 

Most customers are ordering soda, chips, and other staples from corner stores that are sometimes just a block away, Katz said. The idea is that they are supporting a local business that has been largely shut out of the online shopping surge of the past two years. 

In the past, Ghesani said regular customers have called the store directly, but the process wasn’t always seamless. “Sometimes when the store is busy our employees might not be able to pick up the phone,” he said.

As fast delivery apps have taken off in the Big Apple and elsewhere, the fate of mom-and pop-grocers has become a rallying cry for greater regulation. The Bodega and Small Business Association has said its members deserve “protection” from the new competitors and it has worked with legislators to craft new regulations.

Bodegas have been at a “severe disadvantage” to the venture backed delivery app companies, Upper East Side Council member, Julie Menin told The Post.

“We can’t have a situation where they are pushed out of business and a mom-and-pop that is not doing same-day delivery,” can’t survive, Menin said.

New rules require quick-delivery apps to be licensed and to allow customers to walk into their stores, which have been nicknamed ‘dark stores’ because they originally operated as warehouses. Other legislation focuses on slowing down their delivery time promises and reducing the weight of their packages that the bicycle couriers carry on their backs.

When Doordash entered the fast delivery industry last year, introducing its DashMarts in New York City – small grocery stores that deliver food and sundries quickly – it courted the Bodega Association and other small business groups to avert the backlash by public officials that start-ups like Gopuff, Getir and Buyk received.

Doordash said it would help bodegas upgrade their technology and add them to its platform. It partnered with 400 small businesses, including members of the Yemeni American Merchants Association. The company confirmed that it continues to work with more than 400 small grocers.

NRS says it has 20,000 small business customers across the country and plans to roll out this new delivery model more broadly and help businesses market the program. It will also add other delivery partners, Katz said.

Initially, the grocers are listed on NRS’s app BRClub, but eventually they will be added to the UberEats platform, according to Katz.