Food delivery has entered an era where growth comes through acquisitions.

Uber announced on Tuesday that it would acquire corporate catering service provider ezCater for US$2.3 billion, just weeks after DoorDash spent US$300 million to buy Wonder's campus food delivery business.

These two deals may fail to excite most investors, but they send a signal: Uber and DoorDash are trying every possible means to keep up their growth momentum.

Admittedly, both companies are actively consolidating the European delivery market: DoorDash acquired industry leaders such as Deliveroo and Wolt, while Uber acquired Delivery Hero.

But there are few targets of that scale left.

Uber and DoorDash together dominate the restaurant delivery market and are continually expanding into categories such as groceries, making it increasingly difficult for both to drive growth simply by adding new users.

To be fair, both companies are doing reasonably well even without acquisitions.

DoorDash's gross order value growth slipped from 36% at the end of 2021 to 19% at the end of 2024, but over the past 18 months growth has rebounded to 36%.

Although much of that recovery is thanks to the Deliveroo acquisition, DoorDash's business had already begun to recover before that deal closed.

Even without completing its acquisition of Delivery Hero, Uber's delivery business also saw its gross order value growth rebound over the past 18 months; over the same period, however, Uber's ride-hailing business saw growth slow.

Notably, the scale of Uber's acquisition of Delivery Hero far exceeds any acquisition DoorDash has completed in Europe.

Uber did not buy all of Delivery Hero's assets, but the target's gross order value last year was about half that of Uber Eats.

This means the deal will give a more significant boost to Uber's overall growth rate than the impact of DoorDash's announced acquisitions.

Both companies have also completed a large number of smaller deals whose contribution to revenue remains unclear.

For example, DoorDash acquired hotel software provider SevenRooms last year.

Over roughly the past 12 months, Uber has successively acquired parking app SpotHero and premium mobility provider Blacklane, and also bought a data collection company to serve its newly established AI data labeling business.

Uber and DoorDash both generate substantial operating cash flow, and the two seem to have reached a consensus: as long as an acquisition target has promising prospects, act decisively!