Uber has agreed to acquire ezCater, a marketplace that matches businesses ordering meals for groups with restaurants and caterers, in an all-cash deal valued at $2.3 billion, TechCrunch reported Tuesday. The purchase gives Uber Eats a ready-made foothold in workplace catering, a segment built around large, scheduled orders rather than individual deliveries.

What Happened

ezCater, founded in 2007, describes itself as a leading U.S. platform for catering and workplace meals. Companies use it to order food for meetings, events and office lunches from a network of restaurants and caterers. The company processed more than $2.5 billion in gross bookings over the past 12 months, according to TechCrunch.

The startup took an unusual path for a venture-era marketplace. It bootstrapped for seven years before raising its first outside round, $4 million, in 2014.

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Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi framed the deal around restaurants, saying catering is a big business and a potentially large revenue stream for them. He said Uber's reach could bring catering to millions more customers and help restaurants capture more of those orders.

Neither company disclosed when the transaction is expected to close or what regulatory approvals it needs.

Why It Matters

Catering orders behave differently from a dinner delivery. They are larger, are often placed days ahead, are paid for by employers and come with expectations around setup, timing and invoicing. Building that business from scratch would have taken Uber years of sales work with corporate buyers and caterers. Buying ezCater brings both sides of the marketplace at once.

The price is close to ezCater's trailing annual bookings. Gross bookings measure the total value of orders on a platform, not the revenue a marketplace keeps, and TechCrunch did not report ezCater's revenue or profitability.

For restaurants, the pitch is reach: a caterer listed on ezCater could in principle be shown to the much larger pool of businesses and consumers already using Uber's apps, which is the case Khosrowshahi made.

Part of a Broader Delivery Push

TechCrunch placed the purchase alongside other recent moves to widen Uber's delivery business, including its $15 billion bid for Delivery Hero, which is still in process, and investments in and partnerships with drone-delivery companies Zipline and Flytrex. Together they point to a company assembling scale in delivery through acquisitions and partnerships rather than organic growth alone.

What to Watch

The main open questions are timing and scrutiny. Uber has not said when it expects the ezCater deal to close, and any antitrust review would unfold while regulators are also weighing the Delivery Hero transaction. Also worth watching: whether ezCater keeps operating under its own brand or is folded into Uber Eats for business customers, and how Uber prices catering commissions for restaurants that already sell through both platforms.