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Uber is expanding its delivery business into seven new European countries this year, as tech groups step up their battle over the multibillion-euro food delivery market.
The San Francisco-based group will launch services in markets including Austria, Denmark, Finland and Norway during 2026 as part of a push it hopes will deliver an additional $1bn in gross bookings over the next three years.
Susan Anderson, global head of delivery at Uber, told the FT it was time to “shake things up” in Europe. Uber’s expansion will see it take on Finland-based Wolt, which was bought in 2022 by US delivery food giant DoorDash, in several of its core markets.
“We’re excited to be entering seven new markets where the incumbent has grown comfortable. We think it’s time to raise the bar, shake things up and deliver better value across the category,” she said.
The move, which will also see it expand into the Czech Republic, Greece and Romania, comes amid a wave of consolidation in the highly competitive European food delivery market.
Last year, Prosus — the European investment arm of South African group Naspers — struck a €4.1bn deal to take private Europe’s biggest food delivery group Just Eat Takeaway. DoorDash bought the UK’s Deliveroo for £2.9bn last year.
DoorDash said it was focused on “providing world-class products and services to customers and partners”.
Uber announced plans this week to acquire rival Getir’s food delivery business in Turkey, which Anderson said would “complement” Uber’s existing operation Trendyol Go in the country.
“By bringing those two companies together, we’re able to continue to deliver to the restaurant merchants all the demand they’ve been used to, but also be able to consolidate and use our global tech within that market,” she said.
Its European expansion comes as Uber’s market share has continued to grow in its largest markets in Europe, including the UK, Germany, France and Spain.
Uber’s share of the UK market has risen from 28 per cent in January 2022 to 38 per cent in December last year, while its share in Germany has jumped from 10 per cent to 26 per cent over the same period, according to YipitData.
Anderson said the growth had come from Uber’s ability to cross-sell to customers who already used its popular ride-hailing service.
“We have a strong established relationship with customers from the Uber [ride hailing] side, which has always been our advantage in this space,” she said. It has also seen a boost from its membership programme, Uber One.
Uber’s shares have come under pressure over the past few months as investors fret about the impact of rival groups expanding their driverless taxi services around the world.
Anderson said that Uber, which hopes to launch ride-hailing autonomous vehicles in the UK this year, also has plans to automate its delivery service through the introduction of drones and robots.
“We have quite a lot of AVs on the ground in the US delivering [and] we are absolutely seeing cost savings that come from this,” she said.
Data visualisation by Martin Stabe
