Strategy question
How would you reduce operational costs for Uber Eats?
- Uber
- Strategy
- Medium
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
Start a mock interview on this question · Mock interview from a job description
What this question tests
Tests operational cost reduction strategy for a logistics-heavy marketplace, requiring the candidate to break down cost drivers rather than proposing a single blanket cut.
How to approach it
- Clarify the cost base: delivery courier payouts, restaurant onboarding and support, or platform operations (customer support, payment processing).
- Segment cost drivers: courier pay per delivery (the largest variable cost), delivery batching inefficiency, and support costs from order errors and cancellations.
- Identify the highest-leverage lever: delivery batching, combining multiple nearby orders into one courier trip, which reduces per-order courier cost without cutting courier pay.
- Propose route optimization and demand-based courier positioning to reduce idle time and increase deliveries per courier-hour.
- Address the error-driven cost separately: reducing wrong or missing item rates lowers refund and support costs, a smaller but real lever.
- Define success as cost per delivery and courier utilization rate, with a guardrail on delivery time and courier earnings so cuts don't degrade service or drive courier churn.
What a strong answer includes
- Targets batching and utilization as the primary lever, correctly identifying courier idle time as the biggest inefficiency in delivery economics.
- Separates variable delivery cost from support and error cost, tackling both instead of one alone.
- Uses illustrative numbers as assumptions: assume 30% of trips are single-order deliveries that could be batched, representing the biggest opportunity.
- Adds explicit guardrails, delivery time and courier earnings, so cost cuts don't quietly hurt service quality or courier supply.
Common mistakes
- Proposing to simply cut courier pay, which risks courier churn and worse service.
- Treating cost reduction as one number instead of breaking it into distinct drivers.
- Not adding a guardrail against degrading delivery speed or courier satisfaction.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you convince couriers batching doesn't hurt their earnings?
- What's the trade-off between batching and delivery speed?
- How would you measure whether cost cuts hurt customer experience?
More strategy questions
- Should Uber Eats be a different app from Uber Rides?Lyft · Strategy · Hard
- Lyft wants to enter the Indian market. What should be the strategy?Lyft · Strategy · Hard
- Define a strategy of loyalty program for Google Pay.Google · Strategy · Hard
- How can you increase the basket value for Uber Eats orders?Uber · Strategy · Medium
- You own 6 pizza shops in the city and want to improve revenue. Do you develop a mobile app or use Uber Eats?Lyft · Strategy · Hard
- How would you acquire more users for Uber?Lyft · Strategy · Easy
More questions from Uber
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop