Uber's M&A Blitz

AI Summary

Uber agreed to buy business catering firm ezCater for $2.3 billion, extending a broader wave of acquisitions in food delivery. The article says Uber and DoorDash are pursuing growth through acquisitions as subscriber expansion becomes more difficult, while both companies have also consolidated major European delivery businesses.

We’re well into the growth-through-acquisition era in the food-delivery industry. Uber’s $2.3 billion purchase of business catering firm ezCater, unveiled on Tuesday, comes just a few weeks after DoorDash snapped up a college campus meal-delivery business for $300 million from Wonder. Neither of these acquisitions will excite many investors, but they signal that Uber and DoorDash are leaving no stone unturned to keep their growth rates humming. Both companies have been busy consolidating the European food-delivery market, to be sure, buying major players such as Deliveroo and Wolt (for DoorDash) and Delivery Hero (for Uber). But there are only a handful of such companies. And for both Uber and DoorDash—which between them dominate the delivery of restaurant meals and, increasingly, groceries and the like—growth by signing up new subscribers can only get harder.