Estimate how many restaurants could adopt Freight in one year

Problem Statement Description

Product context: Uber is a mobility and delivery platform; its products include rides, Uber Eats, grocery and retail delivery, freight, driver and courier tools, and marketplace pricing.

Uber is evaluating the potential for Uber Freight to serve restaurants as a shipper segment over the next year. The task is to estimate how many restaurants could adopt Freight within one year, where “adopt” should be clearly defined in a practical business sense, such as completing at least one qualified freight shipment or becoming an active shipper account.

This is a guesstimate question, so the focus is not on knowing the exact market size, but on structuring the problem logically. Restaurants have different logistics needs depending on size, format, ownership, supply chain model, and shipment frequency. A single-location cafe, a regional restaurant group, and a national chain may have very different likelihoods of using a freight marketplace.

Your estimate should make reasonable assumptions about the addressable restaurant population, which subset has freight-relevant needs, how often they ship or receive goods, and what share Uber Freight could realistically acquire in one year given awareness, onboarding, marketplace liquidity, reliability requirements, and competitive alternatives.

The experience should consider:

- The geographic scope of the estimate, such as the U.S. market or another clearly stated market.

- The unit being estimated: individual restaurant locations, restaurant brands, franchise groups, or shipper accounts.

- Which restaurant segments are freight-relevant versus primarily served by local distributors or small-parcel delivery.

- Adoption definition, including whether one shipment, repeat usage, or signed onboarding counts.

- Funnel assumptions from total restaurants to addressable restaurants to reachable prospects to first-year adopters.

- Frequency and type of freight need, such as bulk ingredients, packaging, equipment, or inter-city supply movement.

- Sensitivity of the estimate to key assumptions like chain penetration, sales reach, operational coverage, and switching barriers.

- Sanity checks against marketplace constraints, including carrier availability, service reliability, pricing, and onboarding capacity.

The goal is to produce a clear, defensible one-year adoption estimate with transparent assumptions, reasonable ranges, and a brief explanation of which variables most affect the final number.