Uber and Pipe Team to Offer Restaurants Working Capital Access
Uber has launched a restaurant industry-focused partnership with embedded capital products FinTech Pipe.
This collaboration, announced Wednesday (Sept. 10), is designed to help restaurants access working capital in a time of increased pessimism in the hospitality sector.
According to a news release, the partnership lets eligible U.S. restaurants access Pipe Capital via the Uber Eats Manager platform. From there, restaurants can see capital offers from Pipe that are customized based on restaurant revenue, cash flow and business performance.
“Uber Eats is an integral part of how its restaurant partners operate, making access to working capital a natural next step,” Pipe CEO Luke Voiles said in the release.
“Working with Uber, Pipe is able to move fast to understand the needs of these restaurants and deliver capital where traditional banks have failed. Together, we’re unlocking growth for restaurants by finally putting long-overdue capital within reach.”
The release added that Uber chose Pipe for its “merchant-friendly solution” that offers capital opportunities geared towards small businesses.
Recent research by PYMNTS Intelligence into the small and medium-sized business (SMB) space shows that hospitality businesses — a category that includes restaurants as well as hotels and travel-related services — continue to express the weakest outlooks, a trend driven by thin margins and rising labor costs.
Retail sales data from this summer showed that Americans were cutting back on meals at restaurants, even as other categories saw strong continued spending. Even bigger restaurants are feeling this pressure. Restaurant Brands International, which owns Burger King and other high-profile brands, released second-quarter 2025 earnings last month showing that the Whopper-maker’s same-store sales in the U.S. grew just 1.5%.
Against this backdrop, and with tariffs taking hold, research by PYMNTS Intelligence found that just 36% of SMBs had access to readily available cash, including another 8% that also had cash in the bank. As a result, 20% of these companies said they might not be able to survive tariffs.
“Perhaps it’s no wonder, then, that they are looking beyond traditional banks, and especially larger financial institutions (FIs), to gain access to the capital they need to expand, or simply keep the status quo,” PYMNTS wrote last month.
“PYMNTS and Visa found in a survey that 37% of small and medium-sized businesses … indicate that they’d be ‘highly interested’ in switching to embedded lending options, which offers online platforms a significant market.”
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