Charitable Uber stunt delivers food to shelters

Uber has extended a festive hand of goodwill by offering free taxis throughout London and Manchester today – to transport goods to food charities and homeless shelters.

The one day “flash” charity event – UberGiving – will offer wheels to collect donations of non-perishable food from customers between 2pm and 8pm today and drop them to selected local charities.

Charitable users of the cab-app should swipe the slider on the app to “giving” and request a car.

Chocolate brand Lindt has partnered with the taxi service to deliver festive stockings in return for donations.

The charity drive is designed to instil favourable brand  to counterweight recent negative attention.

However, Stephanie Smart, Uber’s head of marketing, told Marketing Magazine the stunt was not a “direct response” to recent bad media coverage.

Uber will foot the bill and pay drivers an hourly wage for their time. UberGiving would not impact surge pricing, she added.

“We haven’t done anything like this in London before,” she said, “We’ve been thinking about this for a few months and this time we wanted to give something back to the people. We wanted to use our logistics network for good.”