• The US is still in the relatively early stages of experimenting with drone delivery.
• Chinese companies, by comparison, have been doing it successfully at a larger scale for years.
• The difference highlights some of the ways that retail innovation is often tested first in China.

To see what the future of ultra-fast delivery looks like, just open TikTok.

Videos on the app feature influencers visiting a kiosk at a park in Shenzhen, browsing a screen of beverages and food sourced from multiple restaurants in the city, and then watching their order arrive roughly 20 minutes later via drone.

In one video, the drone hovers above the kiosk before descending down inside the structure. Moments later, a door slides open, revealing a package with the two teas the influencer ordered. The packaging can then be flattened and returned through a separate slot.

It's the sort of thing that looks downright futuristic to an American viewer but is increasingly normal in China.

The drones are operated by delivery giant Meituan — China's answer to DoorDash — which has similar kiosks in Beijing and Shanghai. Meituan reported roughly $46 billion in revenues last year across several business divisions.

While Meituan has been running these drones for a few years, the US is still very much in the early stages of retail drone delivery.

Retail giants Amazon and Walmart are demonstrably the US frontrunners in the space, offering products from their stores to shoppers primarily in Texas and some select other markets. Some restaurant brands like Wendy's, Chick-fil-A, and Chipotle have also tested the tech.

Unlike Meituan's low-fee deliveries from multiple brands, Walmart's offering is currently limited to what you can buy at Walmart and requires either a Walmart Plus membership or a $19.99 delivery fee. Amazon charges Prime members $9.99 for drone delivery and $14.99 for everyone else.

There are some key differences between the US and China that are shaping the rollout of this technology, including government regulation of airspace for autonomous drones and the population density of the markets they serve.

In particular, several of Meituan's solutions are tailored toward getting deliveries to people in more crowded cities along consistent routes. Meituan uses lockers to fulfill ground-based orders, and its kiosks also serve as a safe landing area for drones.

Meanwhile, Amazon and Walmart's initial approach is designed to tackle the suburban sprawl of American metro areas. Typically these drones remain airborne and lower a payload into a yard or driveway.

Even so, China's running start with drones highlights some of the ways that retail concepts are being first tested there before the ideas are adapted to the US market.

At Walmart's investor meeting last week, the company explained how it was using a hub-and-spoke fulfillment strategy in China to get Sam's Club orders to shoppers within 15 minutes — a benchmark that US executives said they were looking at with interest.

In other words, if you want to experience what the future of retail could look like in the US, go visit Dallas. And if you want to experience what the future of retail could eventually look like in Dallas, go visit Shenzhen.

The skies around Dallas are about to get a lot more interesting. No, DFW airport isn't planning any more expansions, nor does American Airlines have any more retro liveries to debut. This will be something different, something liable to make all the excitement around the supposed New Jersey drones look a bit quaint.

Zipline is launching its airborne delivery service for real, rolling it out in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Mesquite ahead of a gradual spread that, if all goes according to plan, will also see its craft landing in Seattle before the end of the year. These automated drones can be loaded in seconds, carry small packages for miles, and deposit them with pinpoint accuracy at the end of a retractable tether.

It looks and sounds like the future, but this launch has been a decade in the making. Zipline has already flown more than 1.4 million deliveries and covered over 100 million miles, yet it feels like things are just getting started.

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Road trips with just two people always have their awkward silences. In Dustland Delivery, my character, a sharpshooter, has tried to break the ice with the blacksmith he hired a few towns back, with only intermittent success.

Remember that bodyguard, the one I unsuccessfully tried to flirt with at that bar? The blacksmith was uninterested. What about that wily junk dealer, or the creepy cemetery? Silence. She only wanted to discuss "Abandoned train" and "Abandoned factory," even though, in this post-apocalypse, abandonment was not that rare. But I made a note to look out for any rusted remains; stress and mood are far trickier to fix than hunger and thirst.

Dustland Delivery, available through Steam for Windows (and Proton/Steam Deck), puts you in the role typically taken up by NPCs in other post-apocalyptic RPGs. You're a trader, buying cheap goods in one place to sell at a profit elsewhere, and working the costs of fuel, maintenance, and raider attacks into your margins. You're in charge of everything on your trip: how fast you drive, when to rest and set up camp, whether to approach that caravan of pickups or give them a wide berth.

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• Tesla fans and investors reacted to the company's declining sales numbers.
• One prominent Tesla fan, Omar Qazi, initially called the carmaker's first-quarter sales numbers "brutal" before later softening his stance.
• Tesla bull Dan Ives called the report "a disaster on every metric."

It's not just Wall Street analysts and investors who reacted with shock at how bad Tesla's quarterly sales were.

Tesla's online fans processed the sales whiff in real time on social media on Wednesday.

Omar Qazi, better known by his online handle @WholeMarsBlog, is one of Elon Musk's most visible supporters online and frequently interacts with the billionaire on X.

"Brutal," wrote Qazi, who hosts a Tesla-focused podcast called "The Gigacast" with two other Tesla fans.

"I think these are the worst quarterly production & delivery numbers I've ever seen for Tesla," he added.

Qazi said that he "didn't see anyone projecting numbers lower than what we actually saw," and said in a later post that it "looks like Tesla sales may not" return to growth this year like the company projected in January.

Tesla reported delivery numbers of just under 336,700 EVs for the first quarter on Wednesday, coming in well below analysts' expectations of about 390,300 deliveries. The numbers marked a 13% year-over-year decrease in sales and Tesla's worst quarterly deliveries since 2022.

Qazi attributed Tesla's delivery decline to the Model Y production loss — which the company also highlighted in its report — and appeared to disagree that Tesla's numbers had been negatively impacted by brand damage or anti-Musk sentiment.

"Did brand damage cause production to decline by 97,000 units sequentially? Or was that downtime in four factories on their best selling product," Qazi wrote in response to a post from analyst Gene Munster saying brand damage had cost Tesla 80,000 deliveries.

Meanwhile, Tesla bull Dan Ives partly blamed the sales decline on Musk's impact on the brand. Ives wrote in a post on X in addition to refresh issues, Tesla is grappling with a "brand crisis."

"We knew 1Q Tesla deliveries would be soft but these numbers were bad," Ives wrote. "We are not going to look at these numbers with rose colored glasses...they were a disaster on every metric. Refresh issues but brand crisis key. The time has come for Musk...fork in the road moment for Tesla."

Longtime investor Ross Gerber, who recently changed his stance to bearish, said on X that "the brand is broken and may not be fixable," and added in a later post that "Tesla needs a real CEO."

Tesla has been mired in political backlash since Musk took on a role with DOGE. The carmaker has been the target of a boycott and protest movement calling for Tesla owners to sell their vehicles and stock. There have also been widespread vandalism incidents, some going as far as involving arson and gunfire.

While Qazi seemed to disagree that backlash over Musk has damaged Tesla's brand, he echoed the sentiment that the stakes are high for Tesla at the moment — and the company needs to find a way to return to growth in its car business.

"If Tesla can't grow sales in 2025 with their best set of products ever, that is an epic marketing failure," Qazi added in a post on X about Tesla's upcoming robotaxi service launch, which Musk has said to expect in June.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

While Tesla shares dipped about 4% following the results, the stock rebounded over 5% after Politico reported that President Donald Trump has told his inner circle that Musk would be leaving his role in DOGE in the coming weeks. (White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back on the story in a post on X and said that Musk wouldn't be departing until his work is complete.)

"Epic trading for me. love this," Qazi posted alongside a screenshot of Tesla's stock increase.

Qazi, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, appeared to soften his stance on the sales report in the hours after BI reached out.

"Actually Tesla deliveries don't look that bad when you dig in a little bit," Qazi wrote on X. "Tesla appears to have sold pretty much everything they could make in Q1."

• Walmart is asking some Spark delivery drivers to verify their identities at a store.
• Gig delivery workers get $15 for verifying their identity in person.
• Some drivers have used Spark accounts to make deliveries under other people's names.

Walmart is asking some of its Spark drivers to prove who they say they are the old-fashioned way — and paying them to do it.

Some drivers for the retailer's delivery service are being asked to bring their driver's license to a Walmart store, where someone from the big box chain will verify their identity in person, according to an in-app message reviewed by Business Insider.

Spark drivers who verify their identity at a store will receive a one-time $15 payment, the email said.

"All drivers in your area will need to complete an in-person identity verification" to keep using the Spark app, according to the message, which directed drivers to a store in Northwest Arkansas, the region home to Walmart's corporate headquarters. The email gave the drivers a deadline of this week to complete the check.

The in-person ID check appears to be Walmart's latest effort to deter people who are using Spark under identities other than their own.

Some Spark drivers appear to shop and deliver for the service using accounts under other people's names, BI previously reported.

Accounts for Spark and other delivery apps are often offered for sale on social media, such as in Facebook groups for gig workers. Some of the posts make a pitch to people who don't have "papers," a reference to not having work authorization in the US, or say that having multiple accounts will allow them to deliver multiple orders at once and make more money.

Some drivers have said that hackers appear to have gotten into their Spark accounts and delivered orders using them. Walmart said last year that hackers accessed 200 Spark accounts, exposing drivers' personal information.

"We're always looking at new and innovative security technology," a Walmart spokesperson said when BI reached out about the requirement. "This is a pilot we are testing in certain markets, and we will evaluate the results before making any longer-term decisions."

Walmart started verifying Spark drivers' identities using a facial recognition feature in the app in late 2023. The tool asked users to take a series of selfies with their smartphones, which Walmart then compared with their ID photo. Spark drivers have to complete the check each time they log into the app, Walmart said last year.

The feature wasn't perfect, though. Some Spark drivers told BI that Walmart kicked them out of their Spark accounts even though their pictures and details matched their licenses. Walmart told BI at the time that the feature "was working as intended."

One Spark driver in Arkansas who completed the in-person verification said that she got a notification in the Spark app about it.

At the store, a Walmart employee took pictures of the driver's photo ID and asked her to take selfies using a company smartphone, she said. The driver asked not to be named in this article as she was not authorized by the company to speak about the matter.

"It really was not a big deal for me," the driver said. "It may be a big deal for somebody else if they're not who they say they are."

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at 808-854-4501. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Steph Thompson is doubling down on side hustles after they helped her earn money while studying.
• She has completed surveys, checked out stores as a mystery shopper, and sold digital products.
• She discussed with Business Insider her favorite gigs she has tried.

Many people are stuck in rigid 9-to-5 jobs. Others crave a more flexible schedule and move on to freelance work. Steph Thompson, 31, prefers having a mix of side hustles.

Thompson, who lives in Australia, said side gigs allowed her to support herself while working on a one-year academic program.

"When I had a more free week I could devote more time to it and when I didn't have spare time it didn't matter, the side hustles would always be there waiting for me," she said.

She made more than $5,000 between January 2024 and this past January from different side hustles, such as completing surveys, participating in user-generated content, referrals, and selling digital products. Thompson completed her program in November, and now she's doubling down on side hustles. Many people work a side gig while holding down a full-time job, and some side hustlers are stay-at-home parents looking to make some money. Some have quit their jobs to focus on side-hustle earnings.

Thompson encourages people to find a side gig that matches their interests and schedule.

"There is going to be something out there for most people," she said. "You may have to hunt for it a little bit, but you will find something out there that suits your personality, suits your brain, suits your time."

Below are a few of the gigs Thompson has tried and why they might be enjoyable for others.

Testing and reviewing products and services

UserTesting, a platform that says people can make money in their spare time by testing and providing feedback on products and services, is one of Thompson's favorite side hustles. She made over $400 in the past year on the platform.

Some assignments may involve giving feedback on camera or through a microphone, while others are surveys where that's not necessary.

Karan Mavai, vice president of product management at UserTesting, said "think-aloud tests" are the most popular on the platform. "Contributors speak their thoughts out loud while navigating a digital experience, prototype, or application," Mavai said, adding that the customer seeking feedback then gets a recorded session of screen interactions and verbal feedback.

"I like being on video, and I like chatting with people, so it really suits my personality," Thompson said about UserTesting and market research side hustles.

She also likes User Interviews, another platform where you can provide your thoughts. There are various ways to earn through the platform, including online surveys, focus groups, and multiday studies. Some studies require having a webcam to participate, while others may involve talking on the phone.

"If you like giving your opinion on things, it's the side hustle for you," Thompson said.

She said the pay can be lucrative; the platform says the average pay is more than $50 and paid through gift cards. Thompson has made some money from referrals to User Interviews and participating in studies. Her earnings ranged from $10 for a 15-minute study to $50 for a longer study. She has found that opportunities may happen during business hours, so she said it might be a good gig for someone who can fit in participation during the day.

Mystery shopping

Thompson said mystery shopping is an easy side gig to try because you could find opportunities through an app and then quickly start an assignment. She has made 6 Australian dollars, or about $4, for one mission and AUD$8 for another. The missions involved taking photos of the chocolate and sweets areas of two different stores to capture how they were displayed.

Thompson thinks this side gig is ideal if you often go grocery shopping. "They're a great little add-on to your day where it doesn't really have to take you too far out of your way to earn a couple extra dollars," she said.

Digital products

Thompson has also earned money from selling a meal planning template and a budget spreadsheet, both of which are digital products. Over seven months, she earned about AUD$1,418 from all her digital products.

"It's stuff that I made for myself and ended up going, 'Oh, actually, other people might want this too,'" she said.

Ebooks, budget trackers, printable planners, and art can be sold as digital products. Thompson thinks you don't need a large audience to get started with selling digital products.

"If you go with where your interests are, you'll tend to make better products, I think, because it's actually come from genuine interest," she said.

Surveys

Thompson said that while surveys can be a good side hustle option, she finds them boring. While surveys aren't her favorite side gig, she does like two platforms in particular: Prolific and Australian platform Octopus Group.

"If you keep an eye out for the ones that pay better, that tends to be an OK use of your time," Thompson said about survey platforms in general.

Prolific's site says the minimum payment is at least $8 an hour per task, but Prolific told BI many pay more than that. Prolific said studies usually are between five minutes to half an hour.

Thompson thinks survey sites would be ideal for someone hoping to make a bit of extra money or doesn't have a ton of time to set aside.

"It's definitely not the most lucrative side hustle, but at the same time, if you are the type of person that can sit and watch TV and scroll on your phone at the same time, you'll be fine," she said.

Delivery

While some people may enjoy making some extra cash from delivery jobs, it can also mean investing some of your money back into it. Thompson said with a delivery side gig you're likely accruing more costs than other side-hustle options because you will need to factor in gas prices, car maintenance, and other costs.

Food delivery is one option, such as Uber Eats. Thompson thinks Uber Eats can be a fun option if you enjoy driving. She said it can be a side hustle that can be easy to get started with if you pass the background check, but she doesn't think it's as good an option as it used to be.

"I haven't done it a lot in the last year or two because the pay rate has definitely started to not make it as worth the time and the effort when there are other options available," she said.

Being somewhat later than Europe in adopting the idea of parcel delivery, much of Asia built its delivery infrastructure around e-commerce, effectively “Uberizing” how deliveries worked down to the last mile. Think DoorDash but for parcels, not food. This is what the founders of Europe’s Relay realized and decided to bring to the region — […]

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Avride sidewalk bots will start delivering restaurant orders and groceries in central Tokyo this week through a partnership with e-commerce giant Rakuten, the latest commercial expansion by the Yandex spinout into Northeast Asia. The Austin-based autonomous vehicle startup is one of four projects under Nebius Group, a Netherlands-based company formerly called Yandex NV that sold […]

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• Customers making false refund requests are a big problem for food delivery apps, per a new report.
• Diners often can often get their money back even when nothing is wrong with their order.
• That can lead to losses for the delivery apps.

Asking for a refund on your food delivery — even when there's not anything wrong with it — is a big problem for delivery services, according to a new report.

About 48% of consumer fraud on delivery apps involved "refund fraud," according to a report released Wednesday by Incognia, a fraud-prevention company. Incognia works with gig delivery apps, including Grubhub and Texas-based Favor, and analyzed instances it detected on the apps.

"You can say the food wasn't good, the food was cold, there was something missing," André Ferraz, the CEO and cofounder of Incognia, told Business Insider. "How do you verify these things? It's very difficult."

It's an ongoing issue. Telegram groups and TikTok videos show would-be fraudsters how to request refunds and set up new accounts when the old ones get shut down, CNBC reported last year. Some even use "r3fund" instead of the correct spelling to avoid getting deleted.

On many apps, customers can get their money back on a few orders in a row, Ferraz said. "But if you do that 10 times, then the platform will not allow you to ask for refunds," he said. "You're abusing the platform."

However, some particularly determined fraudsters can obtain multiple emails and phone numbers to open multiple accounts and keep requesting refunds, Ferraz said.

Fraudulent returns cost retailers across the board $103 billion in 2024, a report from fraud prevention company Appriss Retail and Deloitte found.

Some users also use promotions from the apps to make money, Incognia's report found. In some cases that Incognia analyzed, for instance, a single user used multiple email addresses to create new accounts, each of which got a discount on an order for new customers.

That made up the 48% of fraud that Incognia found on food delivery platforms. Often, the scams draw on money that the apps have earmarked for attracting and retaining new customers.

"This method of abuse can drain marketing campaign budgets, increase user acquisition costs, and distort growth metrics," Incognia's report reads.

Some delivery services say that they have ways of detecting these types of fraud.

Uber Eats' website says that the company takes "fraudulent behavior seriously" and it has "filters in place to monitor both customer and delivery person behavior."

"We will not make adjustments on suspicious refunds," the company says.

DoorDash last year started sending a four-digit number to some customers to prevent fraud. The customers are supposed to provide the PIN to the delivery worker when they arrive as a verification that they received the delivery.

While the "vast majority" of customers are honest, "there may be times when a consumer makes a report that turns out to be inaccurate or even more rarely makes a false report," DoorDash said at the time.

Still, keeping up with fraudsters can be difficult, Incognia's Ferraz said, since they often use new tactics and ever-changing contact information.

But there are ways of identifying who is likely making an honest request and whether accounts are legitimate. When someone creates an account on a delivery service, for instance, Incognia looks to see whether their device's location is near the address listed on their driver's license. If it is, that makes it more likely that the applicant is who they say they are, Ferraz said.

"You need to keep up with all the things that fraudsters are creating," he said.

Do you have a story to share about gig work? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or 808-854-4501.

• Food delivery workers relied on tips for a majority of their gross pay last year, per a new study.
• Tips were also a major source of income for grocery delivery workers, according to Gridwise.
• Gig workers have said that pay from services like DoorDash and Uber Eats often isn't enough.

The person who delivers your restaurant order might be relying on your tips to make rent.

Food delivery drivers made 53.4% of their total earnings from tips on average last year, a report from data analytics company Gridwise published on Tuesday found.

The pay that companies such as DoorDash and Uber Eats offer to deliver orders can be as low as $2 or $3, gig workers have told Business Insider. That means that many delivery workers look to customers to make the deliveries they make profitable, said Ryan Green, CEO of Gridwise.

"It's relying on the consumer," Green told BI.

According to the report, tips represented 45.7% of the earnings of workers who delivered groceries. Ride-hailing drivers earned just 10.4% of their money from tips.

We want to hear from you. Are you a gig worker? What are the biggest benefits or challenges of gig work that you'd be comfortable sharing with a reporter? Please fill out this quick form.

Gridwise's report looked at several aspects of gig work, including gig workers' pay on each of the major ride-hailing and delivery apps. The company analyzed 171 million trips and $1.9 billion worth of gig worker earnings to compile its findings for 2024.

Uber declined to comment on Gridwise's finding. A company spokesperson told BI that Uber offers a suggested tip on food orders — most commonly 15% — though customers decide the amount. It also encourages customers to tip more during inclement weather, such as snow storms.

An Instacart spokesperson called Gridwise's conclusion "inaccurate and misleading." Instacart asks customers if they want to increase their tips when they give a shopper a five-star rating. Since 2022, the company has also offered to pay shoppers up to $10 when a customer takes their tip away after delivery.

DoorDash did not respond to a request for comment on the findings from BI.

Tips have long been a big focus for gig workers. Some have told BI that they decide which orders to take depending on how much the tip is. But that can be risky: Some drivers for Walmart's Spark delivery service said last year that customers sometimes take back their tips after their order arrives — a tactic that the workers call "tip baiting."

Other apps, including Instacart and DoorDash, have countered that practice by shortening the time that customers have to adjust their tip amount.

In late 2023, DoorDash started telling some customers that their orders might take longer to arrive if they didn't tip. A company spokesperson told BI at the time that DoorDash's gig workers can choose which orders they take.

Do you work for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, or another company as a gig worker and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at 808-854-4501.

• Gig workers for Uber, Instacart, and other services made less money for their time in 2024.
• Even when delivery and ride-hailing drivers made more, their hours rose, too, a new report found.
• Gig workers have said their jobs have gotten more competitive and less lucrative in recent years.

Gig workers for Uber, Instacart, and other services made less money on average in 2024 — even as the number of hours that they worked rose, in some cases.

Uber hide-hailing drivers saw their earnings for 2024 fall 3.4% on average to $513 a week, according to a study released Tuesday by data analytics company Gridwise. At the same time, Uber drivers worked 0.8% more hours in 2024.

Lyft drivers, meanwhile, worked 5.4% fewer hours in 2024, but saw their pay decline at a faster clip of 13.9% to $318 a week.

Workers who shop and deliver orders for Instacart saw their pay for the year decline 8% to $194. Their hours worked fell 4.9%.

"Drivers are earning less across all of the platforms," Ryan Green, the CEO of Gridwise, told Business Insider.

Meantime at DoorDash, gross weekly earnings rose 4.8% to $240 in 2024. Hourly earnings for those on the app fell, though, as the number of hours that gig workers spent on the app rose 5.2%.

Amazon Flex workers were in a similar situation. Their earnings soared 18.1% to $413 a week — just as their hours increased 20.4%.

Uber Eats workers made $178 a week, or 5.1% more than 2023. Average worker hours on the app rose 2.1%, though.

The only app where workers earned significantly more money for the same or less work was Favor, a service owned by Texas supermarket H-E-B that delivers online orders for the chain. There, workers saw their pay rise 3.4% to $155 a week in 2024 as their hours worked fell 13.1%.

In response to the report, an Uber spokesperson told BI that its drivers make more than $30 an hour on average.

A Lyft spokesperson referred BI to comments that CEO David Risher made this month on the company's earnings call, including that ride-hailing drivers on the app earned a collective $9 billion in 2024. That was "the highest amount of combine driver earnings on our platform ever," Risher said.

An Instacart spokesperson called the report's findings "inaccurate and misleading."

"Shopper earnings remain steady across the Instacart platform, and we continue to hear from shoppers that Instacart creates rewarding, flexible earnings opportunities that allow them to earn on their own time and their own terms," the spokesperson said.

DoorDash declined to comment. Amazon and Favor did not respond to requests for comment.

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Gridwise obtained the data for the report using its own app, which it markets to gig workers to track their earnings and expenses. The company analyzed 171 million trips and $1.9 billion worth of gig worker earnings documented by the app to compile its findings for 2024.

The report also found that the average restaurant delivery worker relied on tips for a majority — 53.4% — of their earnings. For grocery delivery workers, 45.7% of earnings came from tips.

Tips were much less significant for ride-hailing drivers, Gridwise found. Gratuities made up just 10.4% of earnings, per the report.

Gig workers have told BI that claiming good-paying rides and orders on the apps has gotten more competitive. Some workers have even set up their own businesses to offer rides or deliver restaurant food in hopes of making more money than they do on the apps.

Consumers, meanwhile, told Gridwise that they plan to keep using ride-hailing and delivery services despite the lingering effects of inflation on many items in Americans' monthly budgets.

Majorities of the 1,000 customers surveyed by Gridwise in January said that they thought prices on both ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft as well as grocery delivery apps like Instacart were "reasonable."

"They talk about being price-sensitive, but their actions reflect differently," Green said.

Do you work for Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, or another service that uses gig workers and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected]

E-commerce startups built around food continue to gobble up funding as investors look for sticky consumer concepts that can scale without breaking the bank. On Wednesday, Germany’s Lanch — which taps social media and influencers to develop popular food brands alongside retail networks for distributing them — closed funding of €26 million ($27 million) to […]

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• Food-tech startup Wonder has made two new executive hires, the company told Business Insider.
• Courtney Lawrie will focus on growing Wonder's food hall base and delivery operations.
• Whitney Pegden will lead Blue Apron, the meal kit brand that Wonder acquired in 2023.

Food-tech startup Wonder has hired two new executives as it opens more food halls, builds its delivery business, and adds new products.

The company told Business Insider that Courtney Lawrie will serve as Wonder's senior vice president and general manager in charge of Wonder's restaurants and delivery experience.

Whitney Pegden is the company's new senior vice president and general manager of Blue Apron, the meal kit brand that Wonder acquired in 2023.

Marc Lore, the former CEO of Walmart's e-commerce business, has been CEO of Wonder since 2021. Its goal is to "build the super app for mealtime," Daniel Shlossman, Wonder's chief growth and marketing officer, told BI. Wonder is one of several companies trying to build a super app, or a one-stop shop for a variety of related services and products.

"Both Courtney and Whitney have scaled businesses into nationally beloved brands and will make an immediate impact on Wonder and Blue Apron," he added.

Wonder, which got its start preparing meals in vans parked outside of customers' homes in New Jersey neighborhoods, has since quit that business to focus on food halls and delivery. Besides Blue Apron, it also announced plans to acquire delivery service Grubhub for $650 million last year. The deal closed in January.

Now, Wonder has to combine everything it has built itself as well as what it has acquired under a single "Wonder Umbrella," Lawrie said.

"It's really bringing these things all together and tackling a real customer problem," she said.

Lawrie comes to Wonder from Wayfair, where she worked on the houseware retailer's physical store presence.

Stores will also be a big part of Lawrie's job at Wonder, she told BI. Wonder already runs 38 food halls in the Northeast, which allow walk-in customers to order dishes designed by chefs including Bobby Flay, Marcus Samuelsson, and José Andrés. The food halls also offer delivery.

In 2025, Wonder plans to open more than 50 additional stores. Getting customers in the door — or ordering online — will be key, especially with many people concerned about how much they're spending when they dine out, Lawrie said.

Before joining Wonder, Pegden worked at Walmart on the retailer's generative AI shopping assistant, augmented reality, and InHome delivery.

Blue Apron's meal kit business is a different model from Wonder's food halls, she said. But part of Wonder's ambition of being a super app is to offer diners different choices, she added.

"Customers don't necessarily want to eat a meal kit every single night of the week or get delivery every single night of the week," she said.
"They want to mix things up."

Pegden said that there are opportunities to add products to Blue Apron that are "simpler and quicker to get dinner on the table."

Wonder's goal is to get customers to turn to the app "not just for pickup and delivery, but also for meal kits, also for groceries, also for dining out at a restaurant," Pegden told BI.

Do you have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected]

• Instacart is testing a new kind of gig work at some stores.
• Contractors can now earn money by photographing products on shelves to show what's in stock.
• The brands behind the products use the photos to review what's there and how displays look.

Instacart is offering its independent contractors a new type of work: Checking shelves on behalf of the companies that supply stores.

Instacart has been testing the program, which it calls "brand tasks," at some stores since last fall, according to messages seen by shoppers via email and the Instacart app, shared with Business Insider.

"You'll get paid to take photos of what's in stock or refill displays," a message sent to a shopper about a beta version of the program in November said, which was seen by Business Insider.

Instacart built its business using hundreds of thousands of gig workers to shop and deliver groceries, sporting goods, and other items to consumers. The "brand tasks" experiment is one way it's trying to expand into other areas of grocery and retail technology, along with smart shopping carts and advertising.

One shopper in Pennsylvania, who didn't want to be identified for fear of retaliation from Instacart, told BI that they completed one of the tasks, which involved taking a photo of a display of Dove body care products, which Unilever makes. Unilever did not respond to a request for comment. BI verified the shopper's identity and employment by Instacart.

The gig paid about $12 and took about 10 minutes to complete, according to the shopper. That's more than Instacart pays to shop and deliver some orders, which can easily take an hour, the shopper added.

Instacart confirmed that it is testing the program.

"Shoppers can opt-in to receive access to these tasks and will be able to accept the tasks just as they would a standard batch" of orders, an Instacart spokesperson told BI. The spokesperson declined to confirm where in the US Instacart is testing the new offering or which retailers and brands are involved.

Taking photos of how a shelf looks gives the companies that make food, personal care items, and other items information on what's selling and how their products appear to customers. "Brands often work with third parties on a periodic basis to gain insights into their in-stock inventory," the spokesperson said.

Instacart is "primarily focused on display check," the spokesperson said. "We have evaluated other tasks and could consider adding additional tasks in the future."

Gig work has been expanding far beyond delivering restaurant orders and driving people to the airport. Multiple apps now allow nurses to pick up single shifts at hospitals and other medical facilities, for instance.

Do you work for Instacart and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected]

• UPS said Thursday that it would cut its business with Amazon in half by mid-2026.
• CEO Carol Tomé said Amazon's business with UPS, while big, was becoming less profitable.
• Amazon has been building out its own logistics infrastructure in recent years.

UPS's CEO said Thursday that it would reduce the number of Amazon packages it handles as profit from those shipments shrinks.

"This was not their ask," Carol Tomé said on an investor call. "This was us. This was UPS taking control of our destiny."

Shares plunged by as much as 18%.

The shipping giant said it would cut its business with its largest customer in half by June 2026. UPS's chief financial officer, Brian Dykes, said on the call that Amazon shipments made up about 20% of UPS's volume in the US. The company had reported fourth-quarter results before the stock market opened.

"Amazon is our largest customer, but it's not our most profitable customer," Tomé said on the call. "Its margin is very dilutive to the US domestic business."

Tomé said UPS used recent contract negotiations with Amazon to reach an agreement on the drawdown. She added that keeping the same amount of business with the retail giant would "likely result in diminishing returns."

"Due to their operational needs, UPS requested a reduction in volume, and we certainly respect their decision," an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider. "We'll continue to partner with them and many other carriers to serve our customers."

Analysts at Goldman Sachs said on Thursday that while the move away from Amazon would cost UPS business in the short run, the company could use it to "focus in on higher-yielding, margin-enhancing volumes."

Tomé said that the remaining half of UPS's business with the e-commerce giant included handling some returns for Amazon — something UPS does "very, very well" and is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

"We have 5,200 UPS store locations that make it very convenient for customers of Amazon to return their Amazon packages," she said.

Amazon has spent years building its logistics services, including its warehouses and its aircraft fleet.

The company has used those resources to offer its own shipping options. Late last year, for instance, Amazon launched a new option for sellers on its website to deliver products from source factories to customers.

Amazon also offers shipping options to sellers who don't even sell on its website.

Amazon announced Monday it has picked the North England town of Darlington as the first site for its planned U.K. drone-delivery expansion. Amazon was expected to expand Prime Air to the U.K. and Italy in 2024. After missing that initial target, the company opted to not share a timeline for this latest launch. Instead, the […]

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Amazon has paused testing of its delivery drones following a crash involving two of its models, according to Bloomberg. It’s the latest setback for Amazon’s beleaguered Prime Air program, which aims to deliver around 500 million packages a year to customers by the end of the decade. Bloomberg reports two Amazon drones crashed in rainy […]

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"It's time for THE charger," the European Commission posted to X on December 28, 2024. While the sentiment only applies to one continent (and not all of it) and only certain devices, the Common Charger Directive now in effect in the European Union suggests that far fewer gadgets will foist barrels, USB-micro, or proprietary plugs onto their owners.

The Common Charger Directive demands that a "USB-C receptacle" be equipped on "radio equipment" that is "equipped with a removable or embedded rechargeable battery" and "can be recharged via wired charging." If it has a battery and can be powered by up to 240 watts through a USB-C connection, it's generally subject to the EU's USB-C requirements. The directive applies to devices "placed on the market"—sent to a distributor or buyer—after December 28, even if they were initially designed and sold before that date.

Laptops get until April 2026 to comply, but most other things—phones, tablets, handheld gaming devices, computer accessories, and wireless headphones—will have to be powered by USB-C to be sold inside the EU from now on. Drones, for the time being, are largely unaddressed by the directive, but the EU will likely get around to them.

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