Uber Bets $2.3 Billion on Catering With ezCater Acquisition

Uber has agreed to acquire ezCater, a marketplace for ordering large-format business meals, in an all-cash deal worth $2.3 billion. The move extends the company’s push to diversify what Uber Eats can offer beyond everyday restaurant delivery.

The two companies are not the closest of fits on paper. ezCater, founded in 2007, built its business around companies that need meals for meetings, events, and workplaces rather than individual diners. Its model has been compared to an Expedia-style booking layer for catering. According to Uber, the company processed more than $2.5 billion in gross bookings over the past year.

The financing path behind ezCater also stands out. It stayed bootstrapped for roughly seven years before taking outside capital, beginning with a $4 million round in 2014. That patience has now produced a sizable payday.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi framed the purchase as a way for restaurants to reach bigger buyers. In a statement, he described catering as a significant business and a potentially major revenue stream for restaurants, adding that Uber’s scale could expose that service to more customers and help restaurants capture more high-value orders.

The acquisition is part of a broader expansion of Uber’s food delivery operations. The company is separately working to buy Delivery Hero in a $15 billion deal, and it is backing and partnering with drone delivery players including Zipline and Flytrex. Taken together, the moves signal an appetite for owning more of the logistics stack around food, from single meals to corporate catering.