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Postmates

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PPP · Unemployment insurance
Type
Company or group
Role
Other company
Programs
PPP, Unemployment insurance
Updated
  • Type: On-demand delivery marketplace (food and goods). Acquired by Uber: announced July 6, 2020 (~$2.65 billion, all-stock); closed December 1, 2020.
  • Legal entity: Postmates Inc. (Delaware C-corp, San Francisco); now part of Uber Technologies, Inc.
  • Founded: 2011, San Francisco, by Bastian Lehmann, Sean Plaice, and Sam Street.
  • CEO (through the acquisition): Bastian Lehmann (co-founder).
  • Role in the pandemic-relief story: Postmates classified its couriers as independent contractors, and its pandemic period ended in a sale to Uber.

In the archive

Role in pandemic relief

  • Reader shorthand: delivery platform with internal courier relief, merchant acquisition relief, and no loan-access platform.
  • What Postmates did for couriers: Fleet Relief Fund credits, telehealth/familycare programs, and non-contact delivery tools; no documented PPP lender partnership.
  • What Postmates did for merchants: commission relief for newly onboarded restaurants.
  • What Postmates sold to other companies: on-demand delivery and marketplace logistics, not KYC, lender, or public-relief infrastructure.

Before the pandemic (2011–early 2020)Uber's acquisition announcement called

Uber's acquisition announcement called Postmates "an early pioneer of 'delivery-as-a-service'" (Uber to Acquire Postmates, July 6, 2020), but it entered 2020 losing share to DoorDash and Uber Eats. Postmates classified its couriers ("the Postmates Fleet") as independent contractors (Uber prospectus).

During the pandemic (March 2020 – acquisition)

Postmates had been planning to launch its initial public offering in March 2020 (Uber prospectus for the Postmates merger, Nov. 18, 2020). It sold itself to Uber instead. Its revenue for the first nine months of 2020 was $435.1 million, against $218.2 million a year earlier, and its net loss fell from $343.8 million to $170.2 million (same prospectus). At a June 12, 2020 board meeting, management noted an improvement in the business "resulting primarily from increased demand arising from the COVID-19 pandemic" (same prospectus).

Couriers (the Postmates Fleet)

On March 10, 2020, Postmates announced a Fleet Relief Fund: couriers who had made at least one delivery in a listed state in the previous two weeks were eligible for a credit that could be deposited into a Postmates health savings vehicle "powered by Starship" (Postmates release, Mar. 10, 2020). The release's lead said "over 22 states"; its list names 21 states plus D.C. It gave no size for the fund. The courier portal said that "physician-confirmed cases of COVID-19 are eligible for 14 days of financial support compensation." In December 2020 it still said so, beside a reservation of the right to amend the fund's policies "at any time, with or without notice" (Postmates Fleet COVID-19 Resources, Wayback Machine, Dec. 9, 2020).

On April 8, Vice reported that some drivers who sought help from the fund had received $30 (Vice, Apr. 8, 2020). A Postmates spokesperson confirmed it and said those payments came from the part of the fund for drivers who had not been diagnosed; Postmates argued that $30 would let a driver buy hand sanitizer or masks. On April 20, 2020, Postmates said it was "issuing hundreds of thousands" of masks to couriers. It also added what it called the industry's first Emergency Familycare Relief Policy, a cash stipend for couriers in California and New York, and telehealth access through Ro, Doctor on Demand and Nurx (Postmates release, Apr. 20, 2020). The same release said new workers on the platform had risen 84 percent nationally in the past month. Postmates had introduced non-contact "Dropoff Options" in a blog post dated March 6, 2020 (Introducing Non-Contact Deliveries).

Restaurants and merchants

The March 10 package also included a Small Business Relief Pilot that waived all commission fees for businesses in San Francisco "not currently delivering on the platform" (Postmates release, Mar. 10, 2020). By July 23, 2020, the company's COVID-19 page said the pilot had been extended to the SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Detroit (Postmates Coronavirus (COVID-19) Response, Wayback Machine, July 23, 2020). Uber's merger prospectus listed Los Angeles, "Postmates' largest market," among the places that had imposed or were considering caps on the commissions delivery companies charge merchants, and presented that as a risk (Uber prospectus).

PPP applications through Womply

The April 20, 2020 release announced a partnership with Womply, which it called "a registered loan agent," to help Postmates merchant partners and gig workers "unlock federal aid." Postmates said it had "already enabled hundreds of merchants to prepare for applications totalling nearly $10 million in PPP loans," and promised a campaign to help workers apply for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (Postmates release, Apr. 20, 2020). The figure is Postmates' own and counts applications; we found no count of loans funded. Under SBA's first PPP rule, the lender paid an agent out of the lender's own SBA fee, at most 1 percent on loans of $350,000 or less, and the agent could not charge the borrower. SBA paid the lender 5 percent on those loans (SBA interim final rule, 85 FR 20811, Apr. 15, 2020). Womply's Postmates page told applicants that "Applying through Womply is completely free" (Womply, womply.com/postmates, Wayback Machine, Aug. 8, 2020). This is the Postmates counterpart to Uber's Kabbage PPP funnel and DoorDash's BlueVine partnership.

SBA's PPP loan data list 20 loans with "Postmates" in the borrower's name, approved between April 2020 and May 2021. Their current amounts run from $507.50 to $12,500, and each reports one job. Two give 201 3rd Street in San Francisco, the Postmates address on Uber's merger prospectus, as the borrower's address. The data carry no owner names (SBA PPP loan-level data, Sept. 30, 2024 release).

Communities

Postmates' community efforts ran through partners. With the nonprofit Random Acts it backed Feed Hero Nurses, delivering meals to frontline workers, and on National Nurses Week (May 2020) it partnered with Subway to donate sandwiches, capped at $85,000, to that effort (Subway × Postmates / Feed Hero Nurses release, May 4, 2020).

Policy

Postmates contributed to California's Proposition 22, which passed November 3, 2020 (Ballotpedia, reports about $13.3 million).

After the pandemic (acquisition and wind-down)

On July 6, 2020, Uber announced an agreement, signed the day before, to buy Postmates for about $2.65 billion in stock, roughly 84 million shares (Uber to Acquire Postmates, July 6, 2020). On the call that day, Uber said Postmates had $643 million of first-quarter gross bookings, up more than 67 percent from a year earlier (Uber 8-K, Exhibit 99.1, call transcript, July 6, 2020). On October 9, 2020, Postmates borrowed $100.0 million from Uber at 2.50 percent; principal and interest were to be deducted from the merger consideration payable to Postmates stockholders (Uber prospectus).

Postmates' executive officers signed change-in-control severance agreements on July 5, 2020. The prospectus tabulates what each would receive if terminated without cause immediately before closing: Bastian Lehmann's total is $13,306,000, of which $12,500,000 is a retention award in restricted stock units. The prospectus says retention awards would be deducted from the consideration payable to holders of Postmates common stock (same prospectus). Uber closed the deal on December 1, 2020 and put the consideration at $3,902 million, valuing its 70,401,550 shares at that day's closing price. It recorded $3,149 million of preliminary goodwill, "primarily attributed to the assembled workforce of Postmates and anticipated operational synergies" (Uber Form 10-K for 2020, Note 18). On January 21, 2021, "Postmates, LLC - Uber Technologies, Inc." gave California notice of 69 permanent layoffs in San Francisco (California EDD WARN report, July 2020 to June 2021). The Postmates brand was kept as a front end inside Uber and the separate courier app was later retired (company statements).

Current posture (as of mid-2026)

Postmates is a consumer brand inside Uber. No Postmates corporate PPP loan or PPP-fraud finding has been found.

  • Bastian Lehmann — co-founder and CEO through the acquisition
  • Uber — the acquirer; deal closed December 2020
  • DoorDash — delivery peer (made no-contact delivery the default; larger merchant-relief program)
  • App-Based Work Alliance — advocacy group Postmates formed with Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart in November 2020.
  • Dara Khosrowshahi — Uber's chief executive when Uber acquired Postmates in December 2020.

Sources

Primary documents in this archive

External references

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