McDonald’s wants Uber Eats orders to build its own loyalty

McDonald’s and Uber plan to let eligible McDonald’s orders placed through Uber Eats earn points redeemable in McDonald’s own app. That is the revealing detail in their expanded partnership, announced on 9 November across 14 markets including the UK.¹

The loyalty connection is planned, not confirmed as live. It would give the restaurant a way to draw platform customers into its own app without requiring them to order direct first.

For orders placed in McDonald’s app in participating markets, Uber becomes the preferred fulfilment partner, primarily through Uber Direct. Separately, it becomes the exclusive delivery and rideshare rewards partner in participating markets. That exclusivity concerns rewards, not all delivery orders.¹

There are three separate decisions here: where the customer orders, who fulfils the order and where the customer redeems the reward. The agreement brings those decisions together commercially without requiring them to sit in the same app.

Direct ordering itself is old ground. McDonald’s 2021 Uber agreement already provided for Uber Direct to fulfil orders from its app.²

Uber has a further interest. The rewards partnership includes offers for rides, creating opportunities to move customers between a restaurant purchase and another Uber service. McDonald’s is not the only business trying to get more from the relationship.

For a restaurant group, this makes the location of the first order an incomplete measure of customer control. A platform order could support the restaurant’s loyalty scheme; a direct order could still generate business for the platform. Neither route tells us who gets the better economics or what customer data each party can use. The announcement does not disclose those terms.

McDonald’s says its delivery business exceeds $20bn a year,¹ giving it considerable volume to negotiate over. Smaller operators cannot assume the same bargain is available to them. The ambition is to make orders placed elsewhere build a habit inside McDonald’s own app, while giving Uber a larger role in keeping that habit going.