Our first time experience with using UberEATS in Wichita

One of the biggest questions I’ve had from readers is, “Have you tried UberEATS? I’ve been wanting to try it but would like for you to try it first.”

I guess for many people, I’m their guinea pigs when it comes to anything food related in Wichita. So to anybody who asked that, this blog is for you.

So what is UberEATS exactly? By now you’ve heard of Uber, the ride-sharing service that is in Wichita. UberEATS is a spinoff of that same service except those drivers also deliver food from participating restaurants. At the moment there are over 50 participating restaurants with more coming weekly. It’s grown a lot since day one.

To use the service, go to UberEATS.com or download the app on your Android or iPhone. There’s a flat $5.99 delivery fee per order with no limit to how many meals that can be ordered in a single transaction. One of the nice benefits of UberEATS is the entire menu is available from within the app. At launch, the service was available to certain parts of Wichita so you will have to go in and see if they deliver in your neighborhood.

Once you order your food, you pay for your meal via the card you have set up with your Uber account along with the $5.99 delivery fee. How Uber makes a bulk of their money is they charge the restaurant 30-35% of the bill.

I used this service for the first time while at work with colleagues. We order from the Artichoke Sandwich Bar which is 7.2 miles from work. Through the app, we were able to select the meals we wanted, add extra meat, and order extra sides. Everything was very simple and transparent as the prices were all there. The order was finalized at 12:07pm and a notification stated that the order would arrive at 12:35pm. We were shocked it would be that quick.

At 12:22pm, a phone alert popped up saying the food was picked up and on its way.

Food finally arrived at 12:40pm which was perfectly fine as we didn’t expect them to be spot on with delivery time.

We met the gentleman at the door, he kindly gave us our food and left. After the delivery, you can then tip the driver through the app (or give cash directly if you’d like).

The only problem we had was a a partially received order. We were missing half of the sides. That probably had more to do with the Artichoke than UberEats. So one drawback is the drivers don’t necessarily check the food order nor should they have to. Whether that was a miscommunication in the app and the restaurant though is unknown. We didn’t bother calling in to complain as it didn’t make sense for the driver to have to go back and deliver again. That’s a waste of his/her time despite we were ripped off on some food.