Why Uber's delayed subscription service still lags behind competitors

Despite being the largest ride-hailing and food delivery service globally, Uber's subscription effort still lags behind a similar offering from smaller competitor DoorDash.The Uber-wide subscription, now called Uber One, was a long-tested, frequently debated program inside the company, people who worked on it said. They ultimately chalk that up to Khosrowshahi's inability to prioritize a strategy and foster enough collaboration among teams to execute it.Others argue that it took time for Uber's business, specifically on the Eats side, to grow large enough for the economics of a subscription program to make sense.Since joining the company in 2017, Khosrowshahi has repeatedly told employees he likes the idea of a subscription business for Uber. The two programs still exist in tandem, although Uber Rewards has not been a runaway hit at making people loyal to the app, according to three current and former employees.Employees who have worked on the subscription project said executives on the Eats side debated whether a subscription service made economic sense. They argued that cutting out delivery fees for Uber Eats customers would have negatively impacted an important source of revenue and they were skeptical that subscription revenue and the incremental increase in orders from members would make up for the losses.Then DoorDash beat them to the punch, launching its subscription product DashPass in 2018.Uber employees were jolted by data showing that a significant percentage of DoorDash's orders were coming from DashPass members, according to three people familiar with the matter. When employees would ask Khosrowshahi's direct reports where he stood, the line came down that "Dara was not prepared to make that call," said one source with direct knowledge of the matter.It became a joke among Uber subscription advocates that it was a race to see which long-delayed project would see the light of day first: an Uber One-style membership program or Brexit.