UberEATS reveals strangest orders after its first year in South Africa

UberEATS has officially been in South Africa for a year, and, to celebrate, the company has revealed some weird statistics that will both affirm and mar your faith in humanity.

For instance: the smallest UberEATS order this year was a single Dolce Kiss, which costs R4.50. One poor soul wanted a chocolate truffle so badly, they thought it worth the service delivery fee of R20, the extra bank charges, and a 33-minute wait, which UberEATs says is its average delivery time.

One order probably took longer, though, and that was the delivery service’s biggest meal of the year: 39 cheeseburgers, 16 fried chicken burgers, 21 Cokes, 22 Creme Sodas, 14 Stoneys, and three green salads.

Now we don’t know which lucky restaurant got this order, but Memeburn‘s own calculations (based on Wimpy and KFC prices) suggest that around R4500 could have been spent on it.

Asking for a friend: How does one crack an invite to these kinds of parties?

This baller user isn’t alone in their love for cheeseburgers, though — the classic food is UberEATS most ordered item ahead of margarita pizzas, salmon fashion sandwiches, salmon california rolls, and butter chicken.

General Manager Nic Robertson also provided this nifty statistic: if you lined up every chip ordered from the app this past year, it would cover the same distance as a return trip between Cape Town and Joburg 40 times. Here’s hoping the company’s calculations included those unnaturally long chips from McDonalds that make you question everything you know about potatoes.

UberEATS doesn’t only have fun food stats to throw at us, though: it also says it’s helped many a local eatery get its feet off the ground.

Capetonian restaurant Poke Co was able to move out of the owner’s own kitchen thanks to the app, Jazzy’s Pizza makes more than 80% of its revenue from UberEATS, and RocoMama’s growth was pushed to double digits — the highest it’s ever been.

In the year it’s been in SA, UberEATs has surpassed 550 000 downloads from a consistent 10 000 downloads a week.

Its competitor, the newly revamped Mr D, has 100 000 Android downloads, and its website boasts “375 126 happy customers” — which presumably counts for unique users placing an order.