NYC Finally Launches Department of Sustainable Delivery
UniUni & Ninja raise millions, Uber adds grocers, Walmart plays catch up with Amazon
While delivery apps are raising hundreds of millions in Canada and Saudi Arabia, NYC has finally inched ever closer to regulating the city’s booming 3PD / 3PL industry. Meanwhile, Uber Eats added new supermarkets, Walmart’s catching up with Amazon and more…
Today:
New International Delivery Unicorns: UniUni & Ninja
Uber Delivers New Grocers
Chart Time | Walmart’s Amazonian Time Machine
Department of Sustainable Delivery — Details Revealed
FINANCE | UniUni and Ninja Raise Hundreds of Millions Abroad
It may be a quiet week for domestic delivery startups, but the 3PD landscape just got a billion-dollar shakeup overseas. Saudi q-commerce upstart Ninja raised $250 million, at a $1.5B valuation, in a new round led by Riyad Capital. Led by Ebrahim Al-Jassim, who previously founded HungerStation, Ninja delivers everything from groceries to beauty supplies in 20 minutes or less; the startup is reportedly eying a 2027 IPO. Closer to home, UniUni raised a $95.4-million CAD ($69.77 USD) Series D, led by Bessemer Venture Partners and China-based Sinovation Ventures. Based in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond, B.C., the startup sports 50,000-plus couriers, over 100 warehouses and coverage in 500+ cities across Canada and the U.S. No post-money valuation was released, but given traditional multiples for this startup stage, there’s a decent chance UniUni is also now officially a unicorn (or perhaps a Cana-corn, if we’re sticking to loonies and toonies.)
The Big Picture: Both startups speak to how quick moving the delivery landscape still is overseas. Ninja — operating in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait — was founded in 2022, three years after Al-Jassim was pushed out of his HungerStation leadership role by Delivery Hero. UniUni got its start in 2019, delivering food for Asian restaurants, before pivoting to a 3PL business specializing in partnerships with fast-fashion retailers like Shein and Temu. Its rapid growth has come alongside damning reports that the company underpays couriers and even has some workers sleeping in its warehouses. There’s some funding action back stateside as well: Thomas Bravo is buying up online ordering SaaS Olo for $2 billion; while this is a slight upside to its current $1.7B valuation, the company’s fortunes have fallen since its Covid-era heyday, when it garnered a market cap of nearly $7 billion.
GROCERY | Uber Eats Adds New Regional Supermarkets
Uber Eats continues its headlong march into new verticals, with the addition of six new grocery banners:
Foxtrot Café & Market: A Chicago-based, upscale c-store that recently slimmed down post-bankruptcy.
Big Y: With 75 locations across New England.
King Kullen: Featuring 30 supermarkets across Long Island, NY.
Superlo Foods: A Memphis, Tennessee-based retailer with 9 locations.
Lunds & Byerlys: Based out of Minnesota (as if the name didn’t make it obvious) and featuring 28 storefronts.
Vallarta Supermarkets: A SoCal-based hispanic grocer with 55 markets.
The Big Picture: As we saw with last week’s DoorDash announcements, the 3PDs are hard at work scooping up all the remaining regional grocers. Most of these markets are down double or triple teaming: Big Y made it onto last week’s list of new grocers on DD, Vallarta is already on both DD and IC. Lunds is even also on Shipt and Buncha (we won’t fault you for not being familiar with that latter service, if you’re from a part of the country that doesn’t say “eh.”) As of Q1, 18% of Uber's delivery monthly users place grocery + retail orders each month and the biz is at a $10 billion annualized Gross Bookings run-rate.
CHART TIME | Amazon’s Decade Plus Head Start Over Walmart
Amazon may have just overtaken Walmart in terms of total revenue, but that doesn’t mean the Bentonville Big Boxer is resting on its laurels. Walmart continues to grow its ecommerce vertical, reshaping it ever more into an Amazon-style marketplace, with its web shop matching up pretty nicely with Amazon’s performance a good 11 years prior. With both Prime Day and Walmart Deals returning tomorrow — who will see the bigger bump to quarterly earnings?
Bonus Chart: check out SNAP (food stamps) payment error rates by state. With Trump signing BBB into law, the impact to hungry Americans will vary widely by locale. (See our earlier coverage of how these cuts will also impact 3PDs and food retailers.)
POLICY | NYC Launches Department of Sustainable Delivery
NYC Mayor Eric Adams seems to be caught in a battle with everyone: City Council, the Feds, Dem mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, and of course… the big delivery companies. In a fiery press release this morning, the Office of the Mayor announced, (or really re-announced,) the Department of Sustainable Delivery, with Adams noting he hoped to:
Hold big delivery app companies accountable for incentivizing reckless e-bike riding by forcing delivery workers to make unreasonably fast deliveries.
Establish safe delivery times.
Penalize app companies that break the law.
Allow the city to revoke delivery apps’ licenses over continued bad behavior.
The Big Picture: The Department of Sustainable Delivery was first announced in January 2024, but since then progress have been slow going, bogged down by Mayor Adams infighting with city council. Last week, the city council finally funded the concept, allocating it $6.1 million of the city’s $116 billion budget. Full details remain scant, but budget docs note the money will fund a "Department of Sustainable Delivery" inside of the Department of Transportation "to regulate commercial e-bikes, including 60 positions for regulation and enforcement." That looks to include 45 unarmed peace officers, who won’t actually start their jobs until 2028. Much of the NYC City Council, as well as organizations like Los Deliveristas Unidos, worry this push will merely make life more difficult for immigrants performing delivery work, instead of incentivizing a shift to more sustainable operations.
A Few Good Links
Swiggy launches wallet-friendly 99 Store. Qatar seeks to regulate ghost kitchens. Meituan pushes merchants to use in-house “Raccoon Cantina” branded kitchens, in bid for food safety. DoorDash Canada doles out $300K in grants to Black-owned restaurants. Instacart and Wegmans launch Caper Carts pilot. Instacart FoodStorm adds Coborn’s, Giant Eagle, Lucky and Save Mart. Instacart and Branch debut improved Shoppers Rewards Card, with fee-free automatic payouts, cashback on gas / charging, no-fee ATM withdrawals, and free Instacart+ membership. So much for the pizza — Chuck E. Cheese spins off arcade concept. Country-specific tariffs set to return next month, as de minimis exemption heads towards 2027 expiration. Goodbye GetGo. Gelson’s partners with Upshop. Capital Hill Group and Worldwide Golf buy Big 5 for $112M. London IPOs fall to 30-year low. Joe & The Juice eyes 2026 U.S. listing. Walgreens loses $175M in Q3. SpotOn adds AI-powered menu recommendations. Teamsters contest UPS buyouts. Mercedes brings electric logistics to F1. Wolt expands partnership with mega-pharmacy Phoenix Group. (See earlier deal with competitor JET.) WhatsApp can’t crack fintech in India. Eternal names Aditya Mangla as food ordering and delivery division CEO. Stoner’s trials pickle pizza. Veho expands ecomm delivery to St. Louis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh. Deliverect and Paymob collaborate on payments. Indian drone maker Raphe mPhibr raises $100M. iFood adds e-bikes to courier rental fleet.
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