Uber has agreed to acquire ezCater, the Boston company that lets businesses order group meals and catering from restaurants, in an all-cash deal valued at $2.3 billion. The two companies announced the agreement on 6 October 2026.
The deal still needs regulatory approval and is expected to close in the coming months. J.P. Morgan Securities advised Uber and Evercore advised ezCater.
Uber plans to combine ezCater with Uber Eats and with Uber for Business, its corporate accounts service. Neither company has said what will happen to the ezCater brand or its roughly 900 staff.
What ezCater built
ezCater was founded in 2007 by Stefania Mallett and Briscoe Rodgers as an online marketplace where companies could order large meals from local restaurants. TechCrunch likened it to an Expedia for catering. Today it connects businesses with more than 140,000 restaurants across the US and offers tools for recurring office meals, meetings and events, along with round-the-clock customer support.
According to the announcement, ezCater generated more than $2.5 billion in gross bookings over the last twelve months, with growth in the high teens year on year. Average orders are above $400, far larger than a typical food delivery, and the business is profitable on a non-GAAP operating income basis.
The company came close to collapse when the pandemic emptied offices. It laid off more than 400 workers in 2020, the Boston Globe reported. Today it employs about 900 people, roughly 300 of them in Boston, where it is based in the Financial District.
“Catering is a big business, and can be a huge revenue stream for restaurants. Nihad 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.”
Why Uber is buying
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said catering is a large business that can bring restaurants significant revenue, and that Uber's reach can take ezCater's service to many more customers. The company expects the deal to add to its margins.
Uber for Business already counts more than 300,000 companies using it for employee rides and meals, Nation's Restaurant News reported, which gives Uber a ready list of corporate clients to sell catering to. Uber also said its delivery couriers would gain new ways to earn from larger orders.
ezCater CEO Nihad Rahman said his team was proud to have built the leading platform for workplace catering and was looking forward to bringing that experience to Uber's customers, merchants and couriers. Rahman became CEO in May 2025 after serving as chief financial officer since 2022.
The founders and the funding
Mallett stepped down as chief executive in 2023. Her successor, former Lyft executive Ashwin Raj, left after about 18 months, and Rahman took over.
ezCater raised about $420 million from investors. A 2018 round of $100 million was led by Wellington Management, with ICONIQ Capital and Insight Venture Partners taking part. In April 2019 Lightspeed Venture Partners and Singapore's GIC led a $150 million Series D-1 at a $1.25 billion valuation, bringing total funding to $320 million. In late 2021 SoftBank led a $100 million round that lifted the company's valuation to about $1.6 billion.
After the 2021 round, ezCater revived plans to go public, but it never listed. The Uber price of $2.3 billion is more than 40 per cent above that last private valuation.
A busy market for food delivery
The purchase is part of a wider buying spree. Uber is also in the process of acquiring Germany's Delivery Hero for $15 billion, a deal that would roughly double its global footprint, and it has invested in drone delivery companies Zipline and Flytrex. Rival DoorDash has bought Wolt and Deliveroo.
Uber's record with acquired brands is mixed. It paid $1 billion for alcohol delivery service Drizly in 2021 and shut the brand down three years later, a point the Boston Globe raised in its coverage.
Catering itself has cooled since the pandemic rebound. Nation's Restaurant News, citing Technomic, said catering sales rose nearly 69 per cent in 2021 after inflation but grew only 0.6 per cent last year. Uber is betting that its scale with restaurants and corporate customers can restart that growth.
