Cyclists in Toronto! Should You Work for Uber Eats, Foodora or DoorDash?

Up to date as of Jan 26, 2019.

Since starting work doing food delivery, I have cycled around downtown Toronto, getting to know its streets, weaving in and out of traffic, and integrating myself into the pulse of commuters coming and going.

Despite being surrounded by people, bicycle food delivery is relatively solitary work. I see lots of delivery people like me passing by on the street - some pass by as if I were just another citizen, some acknowledge me, showing some solidarity. Sometimes I find myself side by side with them in the restaurants also waiting for food. We have conversations mostly about the work - usually about which company is the best to work for.

While I have still a relatively small amount of experience, I also have more than a lot of people just entering this dynamic field of employment. I also have a blog! Thus I decided to share my experience in the hopes that others can learn from it.

Please note that my experience is very specific to delivery by bicycle downtown! This blog might not be helpful to driving deliverers, or those working outside of downtown. I personally would never deliver by vehicle - the traffic headache, risk of illegal parking, risk of accidents, and cost of gas and maintenance are not worth it to me. I may consider using a vehicle only late at night. Nor would I work outside of downtown; the lower volume of opportunities outside of downtown also makes it less profitable.

Lastly, before I dive in, I would encourage you to watch this 23 minute CBC Marketplace episode. The first half is intended for would-be customers, while the second half is targeted towards delivery people. Overall it is quite well done and informative.
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1372790851816

Without further ado, here's my experience:

In the beginning of 2018 I worked for 3 months for Foodora. After leaving Toronto for the summer and fall, I returned from December 2018 to January 2019. I worked mostly for DoorDash, in order to earn the referral bonus ($1000 for my friend the referrer, plus $100 for me, but we split it halfway for $550 each). I also worked just a bit for Uber Eats to earn their referral bonus ($350 for my friend who split it with me). Please keep these timelines in mind, as things may have changed since my own experiences with them, particularly my earliest job with Foodora.

Also keep in mind that I tended to work during peak hours only where the earning potential is higher. So my income rates may be skewed by this fact. I rarely worked more than 15 hours a week doing food delivery because I had another job working from home to balance the physical nature of bicycle delivery. But I have met people who do this work full time and can earn in the range of $25/hr consistently.

Foodora

My 3 months with Foodora in winter of 2017 I remember as being good and enjoyable. Foodora is a company who obviously looks out for its deliverers. They have a Slack channel for its deliverers, which facilitates group chat. Foodora staff participate too, occasionally providing important information through Slack. And as far as I know, they're not on there to monitor and spy on discussions, but to keep us informed and receive feedback.

The Foodora orientation went fairly smooth and the staff were generally friendly and helpful. Food bags are given with a returnable deposit, if bag is returned. Its office also gives away free cheap bicycle lights and jackets.

On shift I was almost always busy, rarely waiting for opportunities, and occasionally double bagging, meaning I carried two orders at one time. One time I think I even triple bagged. Over my 3 months I believe I averaged $24/hr with one very profitable shift averaging $40/hr. My worst shift was unsurprisingly in my first week, and I think it was $17/hr which is still not bad.

Because I rode a mountain bike, I was able to ride in snowy, slushy and stormy conditions. These days were the busiest, resulting in a higher volume of deliveries and better pay. While I did this to make money, I also did it to test my body's limits and I came out of this job a much tougher, weather tolerant person.

Foodora's app, while did occasionally have issues, is user friendly and transparent, displaying various performance metrics such as number of deliveries, tips earned and kilometres ridden. It also breaks down each delivery opportunity so you know exactly how you're getting paid. At the time I worked for them it was $4 per delivery + $1 per delivery km + tips, and they did not offer any peak time bonuses unlike the other companies.

Perhaps the biggest differentiator about Foodora for riders is that it has a policy covers riders in the event of an accident. I have no idea of Foodora's integrity in enforcing its own policy, and I have heard of some controversial cases surrounding rider injury. However, this is still a step further than Uber Eats and DoorDash, which do not offer any rider safety compensation whatsoever. This topic is covered in detail in the CBC Marketplace episode, linked near the top of this blog.

DoorDash

My 2 months with DoorDash were from start to finish forgettable. My first interaction was already negative. The staff member carrying out the orientation was rude and lacked articulation and clarity. He acted more like the customer, inconvenienced by my presence and angry that I was wasting his time. The bag I purchased for $30 which while isn't a lot of money, cannot be returned for a deposit. The bag is now mine forever!

DoorDash will offer extra delivery pay during peak times. For example, Friday and Saturday dinner hours can offer an extra $6 per delivery, or booster pay. But then once the peak hours end (lunch ~11-2, dinner ~5-7:30) often times the booster goes down to zero and it's simply not worth staying on shift. Without the booster riders earn just $1 per delivery plus tips, distance and a few other factors. Overall the pay is not broken down transparently for you to know exactly how you're getting paid, like with Foodora.

On shift, the work was mostly a lot less busy than Foodora. I found myself often waiting several minutes, sometimes 10, and even up to 20 minutes for an opportunity. This really sucks income wise, but also if you're idle on cold winter nights. I prefer to be busy. I also find myself sometimes waiting at the restaurant for food - it seems DoorDash doesn't quite have the food ready estimates correct in some of its restaurants, and call riders over too early. There have even been a few occasions where I arrived at the restaurant and they either just received the order from DoorDash, or not received it yet! This is unacceptable in my mind.

Overall through 18 shifts and 80 hours of work I averaged a pitiful 1.9 deliveries per hour. During my least busy shifts I earned $13/hr and $16/hr. Yet I remember one shift where I had double bags the entire time and earned $30/hr. The delivery volume seems to fluctuate wildly across the board, which is tough mentally on the rider.

Finally some more minor but still relevant gripes if you care to read on:

You only earn the booster pay in the end if you accept 80% of all delivery opportunities during the booster period. This rule leads to a few issues. Firstly, the app is not transparent at all. Throughout your shift there is no way for you to see how many deliveries you've accepted, which is really unfair if your pay depends on this. And the time window you get for accepting deliveries seems short. In one instance, an app glitch prevented me from accepting the delivery at all.

In another instance, there was an issue between DoorDash and the restaurant causing the delivery to be cancelled. I spoke live with an agent regarding this issue, and they reassured me that this will not affect my delivery rating. Sure enough at the end of the shift, it dropped me below the 80% threshold and I did not get my booster pay. I had to go through the Help channel in the app, which was not so straightforward, in order to chat with an agent to get this resolved.

In many aspects DoorDash seems to place a lot of unnecessary responsibility on the rider. Unnecessary in that Foodora and Uber Eats don't ask you to do any of these tasks. For example DoorDash requires you to carry a tailor made credit card called a RedCard. Some restaurants require you to swipe that as payment for the food. And on a few occasions I've had to actually place the food order to the staff (then have to wait for the food to be prepared)! Why this isn't all done in the background without the rider's intervention, I really don't know.

Some other rider responsibilities are just patronizing! For example the app asks you to make sure there's enough cutlery and napkins, and after you confirm receiving the food, there will be a popup notice asking you to double check! Sometimes in the special instructions the customer asks for extra hot sauce. All this is supposed to be the restaurant's responsibility. Sure enough, one restaurant staff said they receive those same instructions and always take care of that anyway, so why should riders care?

I personally never bothered to check for napkins, cutlery or condiments, and have not received any negative feedback regarding this. I do admit though that my current 4.27 customer rating is below average, but that could be for other reasons.

My on time early rating is at 72%, also below average. Perhaps that's because of the occasional time I made a wrong turn, and ended up being late. But I've started to notice that the expected pick up time and delivery time seem set in stone before the opportunity shows up on my screen. So often times I arrive at the restaurant in good time but the pick up time has elapsed, usually because the restaurant is slow. And when the restaurant gives me the food after the pick up time, the delivery time doesn't adapt to the change in pickup.

In these cases I make sure to contact the customer to inform them that the restaurant is slow, so it doesn't affect my customer rating, and just because it's fair to the customer anyway.

In short, there are a ton of nuances and issues with DoorDash which turn many shifts into a drama. These issues to me are an indication of larger issues with the company culture. The only reason I worked for them as long as I did was to complete the 150 delivery requirement to earn the $1000 referral bonus that my friend split with me. But I dreaded the leadup to every shift, wondering what was going to go wrong this time.

I think DoorDash is still a relatively new player in the food delivery industry, so in time there may be more work and income potential, and perhaps transformations in work culture, but right now I do not recommend working for them, even for the referral bonus.

Uber Eats

After earning the referral bonus for DoorDash I decided to give Uber Eats a try, though I didn't have much time before leaving the city, again. However, I had a much better experience with Uber Eats! Granted I happened to work for them during a period of winter storms, however, I found the work better in more ways than one.

I initially had some annoying app issues while signing up, but I went in to their office, which was very well set up to handle rider issues. I used the DoorDash bag, which I prefer because it's much brighter and apparently larger than the Uber bags. Neither Uber nor the restaurants care which bag you use. I simply made sure to clarify to staff of certain restaurants that I was Uber.

Firstly, on the busy days, I never had to cycle more than 5 minutes to a restaurant, nor 5 minutes to the customer. I would receive my next delivery opportunity while on the way to the current customer, so it was timed in a way that I would leave for the next restaurant and arrive just as the food was ready. I worked my first ever lunch peak period (I didn't work any with DoorDash) and it was just as busy and paid just as well. There was one day which I had numerous deliveries that were over 3.5 km, which was a bit frustrating, but I felt adequately compensated for that extra distance, because I still had a good earning rate at the end of that shift.

Overall compared to DoorDash, all the cycling distances were much shorter, the work was busy and consistent so I rarely waited for delivery opportunities (I averaged 3.1 deliveries per hour), and the algorithm worked better so I rarely waited in the restaurants for food. Similar to DoorDash, Uber Eats pays extra incentive during peak periods, such as 5 to 9 pm. Their boost is in the form of a multiplier. For example, dinner peak periods often offer 1.6x boost pay. If there was one weakness regarding earnings with Uber, the amount of tips earned with them is really low. With DoorDash I made nearly $3 in tips per delivery, while Uber was just 26 cents! Who knows how much difference this really makes in taxes.

Finally, my friend works exclusively for Uber Eats, and really likes that you can sign and off at any time you like. As a driver of an electric powered Vespa, he needs that flexibility to sign off whenever his vehicle's battery is running low.

Summary

Among the fleet of bicycle food deliverers on the streets of Toronto, most commonly I see Uber Eats bags, followed by Foodora bags. There are increasing numbers of DoorDash bags, while I never see Skip the Dishes, except on drivers when they walk in the restaurants.

DoorDash is rapidly expanding, with a pyramid scheme referral system rewarding the referrer $1000 with the requirement that the referred worker deliverer complete 150 deliveries. At this point though they still don't have many restaurants and are not super busy. With DoorDash I waited too much and had a number of app and restaurant issues that caused headaches. Their app is not transparent with performance metrics that might affect your pay. I averaged just $20/hr. It was worth it just reaching the 150 delivery mark, earning the referral bonus for my friend, and him splitting it with me, because it raised my overall rate to $27/hr. But now that that's done I no longer plan on working for them. Also, their referral bonus is down to $750 now, so not as worth it. 

I enjoyed my time with Foodora much more. Foodora seems to have a strong company culture resulting in relatively good treatment of its riders. Their worker compensation policy stands heads and shoulders above their competition, even if that policy is a bit deceptive and sometimes doesn't work out for riders. The work was pretty busy, the app and algorithm overall worked well to maximize rider productivity, the app was very transparent with performance metrics and earnings breakdown per delivery. I averaged $24/hr in my time with them, which I believe is fair for this kind of work. With Foodora it is important to book your shift a week ahead of time, but at least Foodora does a good job of ensuring the right amount of riders are on the road, to balance out fulfilling all the orders while ensuring the riders stay busy.

Over a small sample of working for Uber Eats I liked that it was really busy and I had the highest earning rate $27/hr. Once I completed the referral bonus requirement of just 30 deliveries, my friend split it with me for $175 each, bumping my earning rate to $45/hr in that short time period! Uber Eats provides the ultimate flexibility because you can work anytime you like. The downside of this, unlike Foodora, is that if it's not busy it's really not busy. I spoke to many Uber Eats deliverers over the course of the winter, while I was working for DoorDash, and they said it was really not busy over the winter. My own sampling of Uber Eats was probably a bit lucky, in that I was quite busy.

Overall, it seemed like not such a busy winter for the food delivery business as a whole. I spoke to many other deliverers while waiting for food in the restaurants, and they all agree that the heavy recruiting and referral system of all the food delivery companies resulted in a high supply of workers. Combine that with the fact it has been a really mild winter with little snow, and the volume of work was much lower.

I'm quitting food delivery for now, but next time I pick it up I hope to purchase an e-bike to perform the work with. They seem like the ultimate tool for this kind of work, maintaining access to bike lanes for faster commuting within the traffic snarled downtown, resulting in more deliveries and higher pay, while still allowing you to pedal and get in some exercise, making the work more fun while not completely tiring you out.