Postmates Revenue and Usage Statistics (2022)

David Curry

Updated: July 11, 2022

In a sea of food delivery apps, Postmates stands out not because of its business or employment model, but because of its tentativeness towards food delivery. Postmates CEO Bastian Lehmann has repeatedly said he runs an on-demand logistics platform, and “food to Postmates is what books were to Amazon”.

At launch, Postmates marketed itself as the new Craigslist. Buyers in San Francisco could have anything, from flowers to refrigerators, delivered in two to four hours. It was primarily targeted at small businesses, and took a few years to pivot to consumers.

For the first two years, Postmates survived payment to payment, without the yearly billion dollar funding rounds we see today. In 2013, the Founder’s Fund invested $5 million, which legitimized the industry and caused a wave of further investments. A few months later, DoorDash and Instacart would both land large series A rounds.

Food delivery shouldn’t have worked on Postmates. It had a flat $9.99 delivery fee, while its rivals Grubhub and DoorDash offered delivery for far lower prices. However, in California people were more than willing to pay the delivery charge for their favourites.

In 2015, Postmates finally lowered its delivery fee to $3.99 for preferred merchants, who would be featured prominently on the platform. It also was the first to launch a pro service, Unlimited, which waivers the delivery charge for all orders over $30 for $9.99 a month.

Postmates has courted some controversy for its ‘deliver everything’ mantra, often going against the wishes of restaurants and businesses. In 2015, several business owners complained about Postmates taking delivery orders without receiving permission.

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As more on-demand delivery services launched, Postmates saw its market share tumble, as Uber Eats and DoorDash supplanted Grubhub. It continued to see growth in some cities, like Los Angeles and Charlotte, NC, but was far behind the leaders in total US marketshare.

In 2018, DoorDash attempted to merge the two companies, to fend off Grubhub and Uber Eats. Postmates declined the offer, which led to DoorDash acquiring Caviar from Square. Two years later, Postmates sided with Uber in a $2.65 billion acquisition. It recently laid off 15 percent of Postmates workers, but has not said anything about merging the platforms.

We have collected data and statistics on Postmates. Read on below to find out more.

Postmates key statistics

Postmates made $730 million revenue in 2021, a 14% increase year-on-year
Postmates has 9.3 million monthly active users, who order five million items a month
Over 600,000 merchants are partners on Postmates
Uber acquired Postmates in 2020 for $2.65 billion

Postmates overview

Title	Title 2
Launch date	1 May 2011
HQ	San Francisco, California
People	Bastian Lehman (CEO), Sean Plaice (CTO), Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber CEO)
Business type	Subsidiary
Parent company	Uber
Industry	Food delivery