Uber to Acquire ezCater for $2.3B, Adding B2B Catering to Eats Platform

Uber will acquire ezCater for $2.3 billion, pulling the largest U.S. online catering marketplace onto the Uber Eats platform and folding its B2B ordering base into Uber's enterprise sales motion.

What does the $2.3 billion buy?

EzCater connects more than 140,000 restaurants to corporate buyers placing group orders for meetings, offsites, and employee meals. The company generated more than $2.5 billion in gross bookings over the trailing twelve months, with year-over-year growth in the "high teens." The average ticket exceeds $400 — an order size roughly five to ten times a typical consumer delivery basket, which directly changes unit economics for the restaurants that win those catering orders.

Uber frames the combination as a margin and reach play. More than 300,000 companies already use Uber for Business to manage rides and meals; ezCater's catalog and order infrastructure extend that spend pool into a higher-ticket, lower-frequency category. The companies say the deal will route larger catering orders to restaurants that already meet ezCater's onboarding bar.

How does this fit Uber's delivery rollup?

The acquisition continues a rapid consolidation cycle in third-party delivery. In July, the company struck a deal to acquire Germany-based Delivery Hero, which would roughly double its global footprint. Rival DoorDash has moved the same direction, absorbing Wolt and Deliveroo in recent years. Each transaction shifts channel power toward the platforms that control demand-side enterprise relationships.

For ezCater, the deal ends a long IPO pursuit. Boston-based ezCater was founded in 2007 by Stefania Mallett and Briscoe Rodgers, raised $100 million in late 2021 led by SoftBank, and explored a public offering that did not materialize. Mallett stepped down as CEO in 2023; Ashwin Raj, a former Lyft executive, succeeded her. Nihad Rahman, ezCater's CFO since 2022, took the CEO seat in May 2025.

What does the catering category look like?

Catering demand exploded post-pandemic. Inflation-adjusted sales growth surged nearly 69% in 2021, according to Technomic data cited by the companies. That boom has normalized. Growth slowed to 0.6% last year, even as overall chain restaurant sales weakened in 2025 with consumers cutting back on dining. Coffee, beverages and snacks, and chicken held up; full-service operators bore the brunt.

In other words, ezCater is being acquired at a high-teens growth clip at the moment the category it dominates has decelerated to a crawl. Uber is paying for the platform's installed base of corporate accounts, its 140,000-restaurant catalog, and the cross-sell into Uber for Business — not for category tailwinds.

What does CEO Dara Khosrowshahi say?

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi framed the deal as a distribution win for restaurants. "Catering is a big business, and can be a huge revenue stream for restaurants," Khosrowshahi said in a statement. "[ezCater CEO Nihad Rahman] and his incredible team have built an amazing platform. With Uber's reach, we can bring that experience to millions more customers and help restaurants win more of these valuable orders."

How do restaurants read the math?

For a caterer or high-volume restaurant operator, the practical question is order routing. Uber Eats already controls a large share of on-demand consumer delivery demand. Adding ezCater's corporate pipeline means a single platform relationship can increasingly determine access to both consumer and B2B catering dollars. Gross margins on catering runs typically exceed those of single-meal delivery because the basket size covers packaging, dispatch, and platform fees many times over — which is why both Uber and restaurants have incentive to push more of these orders through ezCater's rails.

The deal is expected to close in the coming months, subject to regulatory review.

Looking ahead, the question is whether Uber can convert its 300,000-company Uber for Business footprint into incremental ezCater order volume at a time when catering growth has flattened to under 1% — and whether restaurant suppliers will treat the combined platform as a must-have channel or as another toll on already-thin operator margins.