Uber Eats adds searchable pickup maps (with emojis)

Uber Eats users don’t just use it to have food delivered to their location. Some use the option to pick it up from the restaurant directly. However, you’d have to switch to a map or navigation app to find the one that’s nearest to you. That problem is now solved as Uber is adding searchable pickup maps within the app itself. Even better, you can even use food emojis to search so you can see the nearest pizza or burger joint along your way.

Whatever food it is that you’re craving for or even when you don’t know what it is you want, you can open your Uber Eats in-app map and either type what you’re looking for or see what’s near you. You will also be able to see the exact distance from where you are or your selected location. Uber Eats says there are 700,000 local restaurants and merchants that are part of its pickup map and the map itself will be activated when you choose Pickup as your option.

Another thing that you can do for the global pickup map is to search for the type of food they’re looking for using emojis. This is useful for those who are visiting somewhere with another language or if you’re just too tired or lazy to type out all the letters. For example, you can look for burger joints using the burger emoji or for the nearest pizza pickup place using the pizza emoji. The search results will also show you the results using the same emoji.

This new feature comes from feedback from 8 out of 10 Uber Eat users who said they had to switch to another app to look for food that’s nearby. So having the map built into the app will make it less inconvenient for users and also maybe prevent them from just ditching Uber Eats and go directly to the restaurant or merchant that they found on the map. Uber has been pushing its Eats business unit to be able to reach their profitability targets.

The searchable pickup maps on the Uber Eats app will start rolling out globally. This should be available to most users within the next few days.