ALEXANDRIA, Va.—Lula and Uber have teamed up to help convenience stores offer on-demand delivery to their customers via the Uber Eats app, the companies stated in a press release. Lula is an upstart technology company that aims to transform independent brick-and-mortar convenience stores into last-mile micro-fulfillment centers to deliver a range of need-it-now products to consumers.
Beginning this fall, Lula will help c-stores create a virtual listing of their store for the Uber Eats app so customers can easily shop their favorite c-store. Lula offers inventory management and aggregation software that enables c-stores to sync and manage their inventory through the Lula for Stores app. Uber Eats customers will be able to find these "Lula Convenience Stores" in the convenience category now available on Uber Eats.
“This exciting partnership between Lula and Uber will benefit thousands of convenience stores across all 50 states in the U.S., which may have all the popular items desired by shoppers but no way of getting their selection online,” said Lula in the press release.
Founded in 2020 by Drexel University graduates Adit Gupta and Tom Falzani, Lula this summer closed a seed round of investor funding to enable 30-minute delivery from thousands of c-stores nationwide.
Meanwhile, DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats filed a lawsuit against the city of New York over a newly passed bill that permanently instates emergency delivery fee caps that were imposed during the pandemic. According to CNBC, the suit claims that the price controls “will harm not only Plaintiffs, but also the revitalization of the very local restaurants that the City claims to serve.”
The bill creates a 15% fee cap for delivery services and a 5% cap for non-delivery services, and the delivery companies claim the caps are arbitrary.
The companies claim the law is unconstitutional because “it interferes with freely negotiated contracts between platforms and restaurants by changing and dictating the economic terms on which a dynamic industry operates.” They claim that their delivery companies are not the only options restaurants have to get their food delivered to customers, and restaurants don’t have to partner with the apps if they feel the prices are too high.
A similar lawsuit was filed by DoorDash and Grubhub in San Francisco after the city implemented a permanent 15% delivery fee cap.
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