by Richard S. » Wed Jun 10, 2020 4:24 pm
I doubt if many drivers have any idea of the fees these services charge restaurants; financial discussions usually involve how little drivers are being paid. I'm getting a bit more savvy in the deliveries I'll accept, but there have been times that I've been involved in a delivery that took more than an hour and paid $6 or less.
For those who don't know, the biggest delivery service around (which I'll decline to name) pays $3 to the driver; maybe a bit more if it's a long distance. They'll also pay a per-delivery bonus on certain days if there's a shortage of drivers. On a busy Friday that might be $4-5; on Mother's Day it was $9 per run for Southwest Louisville. That sounds great, but it tends to bring out more drivers so you'll end up with fewer runs. Mother's Day was a disaster; I waited for more than an hour at PF Chang's for my pickup and 2 1/2 hours at O'Charley's. Tips end up making up the difference. You won't get kicked off the platform for declining runs but you will for unassigning too many runs once you've accepted them. So if you accept a run from Dairy Queen or Steak & Shake that pays $5 ($3 base plus a $2 tip) and you get there and there's a line of cars down the street, you're pretty much stuck waiting in line for an hour to make your pickup. Some Dairy Queens have a system for drivers to bypass the line but others don't, and Steak & Shake doesn't. You don't know where the run is going until you pick up the food; I guess to prevent redlining.
Some restaurants have a good relationship with drivers and others don't. There's a Facebook page for drivers so word gets around pretty quickly.
I guess the bottom line is that we're all just trying to get by, and the only ones getting rich are the executives at these services.
