＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
Recently, I have been seeing more and more delivery people carrying backpacks with “Uber EATS” written on them.
１．What is “Uber Eats”?
Uber Eats is a delivery service that allows customers to order food from popular restaurants through a smartphone app.
In other words, it is “a service in which people who register with Uber as delivery agents deliver food from restaurants that have partnered with Uber by bicycle or motorcycle.
The user launches the “Uber Eats” smartphone application and “taps to add to cart” (order) the food of his/her choice from the listed restaurants. The “partner” then rides a bicycle or motorcycle to the restaurant, picks up the ordered items, and delivers them to the customer.
The operating company is Uber Japan K.K., a Japanese subsidiary of Uber, a company that started in San Francisco, U.S.A., in 2010 and provides a free smartphone app-based hire and cab dispatch service.
Not only pizza, ramen, and soba noodle stores, but also popular restaurants and major restaurant chains have recently begun to form partnerships one after another. In addition, it was recently reported that the convenience store Lawson has begun handling groceries and other items for sale.
As for regions, they are offering their services in the United States and Japan, as well as Singapore and Bangkok, Thailand.
As a side note, the company name “Uber” is derived from the German word “über,” which is equivalent to the English word “upper” and means “above, upper, superior.
２．Can “Uber Eats” make money on the side?
The recent availability of various services on the Internet has led to the birth of many new types of side businesses. Among them, “Uber Eats,” which is derived from “Uber,” a car-dispatch service that has become common overseas, is attracting attention.
The original “Uber” is a vehicle delivery service that uses private cars as a cab service.
As long as you have a bicycle, an “Uber Eats” delivery person can work at his/her own pace whenever he/she wants, but how much money can he/she make as a side job?
I found an article on the Internet about the experience of a person who actually became an Uber Eats delivery person. The results of the person who worked for 15 days, including Saturdays and Sundays, were an average of 550 yen per delivery, or about 1,100 yen per hour for a delivery time of about 20 minutes.
Shibuya is flooded with delivery requests, and recently requests have been increasing in Shinjuku and Chiyoda wards. They say they can make money in areas with many office buildings on weekdays and areas with many residences on weekends.
He says he earns explosively on rainy days.
However, it seems that bicyclists are at high risk of getting into traffic accidents.
People like Uber Eats delivery people, who “use their computers or mobile devices to perform one-off tasks in their spare time through online ‘digital platform providers,’” are called “gig workers. This type of work is also known as “gig work” or “platform labor.
Unlike “company employees,” they are precarious and not covered by “minimum wage” or workers’ compensation insurance. So the UberEats delivery workers formed the “UberEats Union” in October 2019, with 17 members.
However, “generous compensation” may lead to “higher labor management costs,” which may fall into the dichotomy of “bouncing back to the price of service.”
３．The Future of UberEats
I have heard that home delivery companies, suffering from a shortage of drivers and an increase in missed deliveries despite a rapid increase in the number of products handled, have begun “outsourcing” their business to “newspaper delivery stores” and have them “make deliveries and redeliveries in their spare time after newspaper delivery”.
I think it is a natural progression and trend of the times for the restaurant industry, which is suffering from a labor shortage, to consider using “Uber Eats” in addition to full-time and part-time delivery staff.
At first, it was only in central Tokyo and central Osaka, but now I often see them in Takatsuki City, where I live.
It seems that the base of the market is rapidly expanding.