Anyone experience working as an UberEats / Deliveroo driver?

[BusterBloodvessel]

What the title says really!

I have signed up to be an UberEats driver (waiting for DBS check) and looking at Deliveroo also. I am probably slightly mad since I have a full time job and a business on the side also but I’m looking to use some spare evening time making some extra cash and possibly have a backup plan as my day job is under threat at the moment so it would be good to have something to do in the short term if the worst comes to the worst while I look for a new job.

From what I see there’s money to be made at the moment up to £15-£20 an hour…. There seems to be a lot of drivers doing it and vlogging on tiktok etc so I’ve no doubt it’s a bandwagon plenty will be jumping on and then the earning potential may tank. But I’ve heard from multiple sources the possibilities of earning £1000 per week?! (That’s full time of course)

Just wondered if anyone had any experience and any hints or tips? In my own experience I would try and avoid McDonald’s/KFC as the waiting times seem to be huge and you only get paid a fixed fee for the job. Anything else to watch out for? Are the earnings realistic…? Is it boring as hell?! ?

Any thoughts would be welcome.

 

[MBE2017]

No real experience, but as with all jobs, it will depend a lot on your area and the amount of effort you put in. Don’t forget you will need extra insurance, fuel and allow for wear and tear on your vehicle.

Just as the claims are £15/20 hr, I would expect the reality is lower, probably £10/15 hr after allowing for costs.

 

[Martin Patfield]

I'm on UberEats / Deliveroo / Just Eat alongside my day job.

In lockdown 2020 and trying to clear £26,000's worth of personal debt I was working from Mcdonalds opening time of 7am - 11pm in my area. It took me from May - December including my wages.

I took it a little easier 2021 and pretty much stopped by September for the rest of the year.

Just got back into it this year - been doing £100 an evening Monday-Friday. No matter how quick or slow that occurs. £250 & £250 on a Saturday and Sunday. Target of £1,000 a week at the moment which I've been able to do relatively easy. Soon drop the expectation to £500.

Where I live, one town delivers to the next town along with Just Eat and Deliveroo but the 2nd town doesn't have UberEats which is frustrating so I usually just run with just eat and deliveroo simultaneously to increase order chances.

Like you say in your circumstance - it's fairly easy money, stress free, not a lot to think about vs your own business decisions.

Personally speaking, I recommend doing it even if just for the extra cash on a flexible basis.

Just get friendly with the mcdonalds / kfc staff, they'll soon sort you out. I get plenty of freebies compared to others haha.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

Its not a business It is a low paid part time job wrapped up in self employment

 

[estwig]

There are some requirements...........A beat up Yaris with broken tail lights, a crap mobile stuck to a cracked windscreen, cables all over the dash and dirty fingers for nicking chips with!

 

[fisicx]

A lot depends on location. Round here those making the most money use a bike. Young lad down the road does deliveroo and doing very well. Virtually no costs and it keeps him fit. Also helps that there are loads of takeaways in town and it’s fairly flat.

 

[Bob Morgan]

My 'Former' Solicitor charged me £125 Per Hour for an 'Unqualified Office Boy' to do some 'Cut and Paste' from a text document that I sent to them! - Note the word 'Former!'

 

[BusterBloodvessel]

I'm on UberEats / Deliveroo / Just Eat alongside my day job.

In lockdown 2020 and trying to clear £26,000's worth of personal debt I was working from Mcdonalds opening time of 7am - 11pm in my area. It took me from May - December including my wages.

I took it a little easier 2021 and pretty much stopped by September for the rest of the year.

Just got back into it this year - been doing £100 an evening Monday-Friday. No matter how quick or slow that occurs. £250 & £250 on a Saturday and Sunday. Target of £1,000 a week at the moment which I've been able to do relatively easy. Soon drop the expectation to £500.

Where I live, one town delivers to the next town along with Just Eat and Deliveroo but the 2nd town doesn't have UberEats which is frustrating so I usually just run with just eat and deliveroo simultaneously to increase order chances.

Like you say in your circumstance - it's fairly easy money, stress free, not a lot to think about vs your own business decisions.

Personally speaking, I recommend doing it even if just for the extra cash on a flexible basis.

Just get friendly with the mcdonalds / kfc staff, they'll soon sort you out. I get plenty of freebies compared to others haha.

Thanks Martin and fair play, that's impressive! Funny enough I hope to do similar over the next few months and clear off some credit card debt. I guess I'm in the fortunate position that I don't need it.... if a couple of hours here and there can make me a few quid I'm happy. Did you not find the wait times at McDonalds an issue?

Its not a business It is a low paid part time job wrapped up in self employment

At no point did I say or suggest it was a business.

My 'Former' Solicitor charged me £125 Per Hour for an 'Unqualified Office Boy' to do some 'Cut and Paste' from a text document that I sent to them! - Note the word 'Former!'

Not quite sure of the relevance but thanks anyway Bob

 

[japancool]

Try not to drop the food when you deliver it - which my Just Eat driver did this morning.

 

[Martin Patfield]

Thanks Martin and fair play, that's impressive! Funny enough I hope to do similar over the next few months and clear off some credit card debt. I guess I'm in the fortunate position that I don't need it.... if a couple of hours here and there can make me a few quid I'm happy. Did you not find the wait times at McDonalds an issue?

Depends on your area I guess. I have 4 branches in my locality. 2 in Aldershot and 2 in Farnborough which covers my delivery areas. It is what it is... You never know when the next order is going to come through if its quiet is the only problem.
I have a friend at Waitrose where they have Deliveroo set up. Early Sunday morning he sent me a message saying they had 6 or so unassigned orders. I was in the area but for some reason the system wasn't assigning any of those orders to me. So god knows how their systems work.

I did take a week off work November 2020 during our area's half term thinking I could capitalise somewhat on the lockdown / schools being off. I got to £1,900 in the week Monday - Sunday but on about 105 hours work. But at the time I was so close to paying the debt off I didn't care. Wouldn't be doing that now.

I was unsure if this would die a death come the country opening back up again or people just become accustomed to being lazy, and well clearly..... the money is still there.

Sign up now as like you say on the DBS checks can take a few weeks to get sorted. You might like it, you might not. End of the day no real money spent on getting set up.

Good luck with it.

 

[fisicx]

Depends on your area I guess. I have 4 branches in my locality. 2 in Aldershot and 2 in Farnborough which covers my delivery areas.

The drive through in Aldershot is always rammed with delivery drivers of all sorts. KFC next door the same. Not sure any customers still go there (except the drive through which is also jammed). It works because of the high density population.

 

[UrbanRetail]

I did a short stint during the lockdowns to help ride out the financial storm we were experiencing.

I thought it was quite good, money wasn't too bad and some customers hadn't spoken to anyone for a week, so it was nice to stand and have a chat for a few minutes.

 

[BusterBloodvessel]

Thanks again Martin. Bizarrely (and a bit annoyingly!) my friend who signed up after me last week suddenly got notification on Sunday morning that everything was all approved. Not sure how its gone through so quickly and before mine but hey ho. So we set off out yesterday with me in the passenger seat to see what it was all about. What can I say? An interesting experience if not particularly lucrative ??

We headed out around 11:45 towards a couple of local sandwich shops and picked a job up pretty much right away. From then it was nice and steady for an hour over dinnertime, not much more than a couple of minutes inbetween jobs. Predictably it dried up then around 1-1:30 ish, picked up an Asda order and then we called it a do for the afternoon.

Headed back out around 5:45 and again a good start with a couple of jobs right away. Then it seemed to die off. We headed up to an out of town retail park where there are a number of restaurants, thinking that might be lucrative, but we got nothing, and looking at the McDonalds and the KFC in particular on there, there were no signs of any drivers coming and going like there were at other ones we went to on the day so that was a wasted hour really.

All told, for being out of the house around 5.5 hours earnings came to a whopping total of........ £45! ?? But we're not bothered, it's a learning curve and as I say for example we already know it's probably not worth heading over to that retail park. Likewise we took some pickups in the town centre including one in the middle of an indoor shopping arcade, which were just impossible to park nearby to (unless paying for their own car park) and resulted in a 5 or 7 minute walk each way just to get to and from the car - I'd just reject these in future. Also, my friend was preferring to cruise round into different areas and see what jobs pinged in, whereas when I go out I think I would much prefer to find a spot within the vicinity of a few takeaways and park up and put my feet up. If I spend half an hour there with a flask of coffee and reading the paper while I wait for a job then it's not exactly the end of the world!

Regarding the wait at McDonalds, I was referring more to arriving and the food not being ready, rather than waiting for a job. In my experience of ordering with Uber often the drivers arrive for the food then are waiting 10 or 15 minutes but I have to say we didn't experience that yesterday - and in fact, in a McDonalds that was only built a few months ago there's actually a completely separate entrance for delivery partners with its own waiting room and serving area. I think that tells you how much business they must be doing through the delivery side to go to that length!!

 

[Martin Patfield]

McDonald's systems seem to only put the order through to the kitchen prep area once the driver arrives near by.
Sometimes it may take me 20 odd minutes plus to get to a mcdonalds and my order is at the bottom of the list still even though they've had the order for 20-25 mins hence the 10-15 min wait. But like i say if you decline the order you don't know when the next one is likely to come through. It is frustrating because they're now all "system" rather than common sense.

I assume you was just on the one app at the moment... You'll see an easy increase with multiple apps on at once.

Which area are you in?

Normal customers and delivery drivers are barely acknowledged in store these days - customers encouraged to use the touch screens - unless screaming out an order number which I think is a shame really and no personal touch/customer service these days. Just a number. But that's a whole other conversation.

 

[Martin Patfield]

I did a short stint during the lockdowns to help ride out the financial storm we were experiencing.

I thought it was quite good, money wasn't too bad and some customers hadn't spoken to anyone for a week, so it was nice to stand and have a chat for a few minutes.

You're quite right.

I didn't want to be banished to my house whilst this shambles was going on. I would have even gone back to a supermarket job for the time being although still working it wasn't appropriate.

Nice to be out and about and I felt sorry for many people so to know you've made contact with someone was a good thing.

 

[BusterBloodvessel]

McDonald's systems seem to only put the order through to the kitchen prep area once the driver arrives near by.
Sometimes it may take me 20 odd minutes plus to get to a mcdonalds and my order is at the bottom of the list still even though they've had the order for 20-25 mins hence the 10-15 min wait. But like i say if you decline the order you don't know when the next one is likely to come through. It is frustrating because they're now all "system" rather than common sense.

I assume you was just on the one app at the moment... You'll see an easy increase with multiple apps on at once.

Which area are you in?

Normal customers and delivery drivers are barely acknowledged in store these days - customers encouraged to use the touch screens - unless screaming out an order number which I think is a shame really and no personal touch/customer service these days. Just a number. But that's a whole other conversation.

I'm in Bolton. I'm hoping there might be a good amount of work as it's a large town so plenty of stores to go at (including a few different "clusters" that would be ideal to park up nearby waiting for jobs), but without the hassle of being in a city centre and the associated parking/traffic issues.

Yep I'm just on UberEats at the moment. There's a waiting list for Deliveroo which is a shame, and applying for Just Eat too also. I've just been approved this morning so I'll be heading out for a couple of hours tonight and seeing what I can do!

 

[Karimbo]

I did amazon flex delivery, it's not as lucrative as ubereats it seems. you are only allowed to do 24 hours of on the job driving a week which works out to be £320 or so a week, with potential of £540 a week if you grab the increased rates. you can't full time it, and basically you can do all your maximum hours in 3 days.

Maybe I'm getting old. but I got burnout from it, and couldn't juggle both business and delivery work. I had in mind that I was going to do delivery work, come home and then do work on the business. But I just can't do couple of hours of business work on the laptop. I have to sit down with a clear mind and commit 4-5 hours to it - something I couldn't do in the evenings/

 

[Karimbo]

Thanks again Martin. Bizarrely (and a bit annoyingly!) my friend who signed up after me last week suddenly got notification on Sunday morning that everything was all approved. Not sure how its gone through so quickly and before mine but hey ho. So we set off out yesterday with me in the passenger seat to see what it was all about. What can I say? An interesting experience if not particularly lucrative ??

We headed out around 11:45 towards a couple of local sandwich shops and picked a job up pretty much right away. From then it was nice and steady for an hour over dinnertime, not much more than a couple of minutes inbetween jobs. Predictably it dried up then around 1-1:30 ish, picked up an Asda order and then we called it a do for the afternoon.

Headed back out around 5:45 and again a good start with a couple of jobs right away. Then it seemed to die off. We headed up to an out of town retail park where there are a number of restaurants, thinking that might be lucrative, but we got nothing, and looking at the McDonalds and the KFC in particular on there, there were no signs of any drivers coming and going like there were at other ones we went to on the day so that was a wasted hour really.

All told, for being out of the house around 5.5 hours earnings came to a whopping total of........ £45! ?? But we're not bothered, it's a learning curve and as I say for example we already know it's probably not worth heading over to that retail park. Likewise we took some pickups in the town centre including one in the middle of an indoor shopping arcade, which were just impossible to park nearby to (unless paying for their own car park) and resulted in a 5 or 7 minute walk each way just to get to and from the car - I'd just reject these in future. Also, my friend was preferring to cruise round into different areas and see what jobs pinged in, whereas when I go out I think I would much prefer to find a spot within the vicinity of a few takeaways and park up and put my feet up. If I spend half an hour there with a flask of coffee and reading the paper while I wait for a job then it's not exactly the end of the world!

Regarding the wait at McDonalds, I was referring more to arriving and the food not being ready, rather than waiting for a job. In my experience of ordering with Uber often the drivers arrive for the food then are waiting 10 or 15 minutes but I have to say we didn't experience that yesterday - and in fact, in a McDonalds that was only built a few months ago there's actually a completely separate entrance for delivery partners with its own waiting room and serving area. I think that tells you how much business they must be doing through the delivery side to go to that length!!

I do think you need experience to know when are good areas and times to go for. E.g. Trying to deliver in a student town off term would be pointless. Weather plays a part, day of the week plays a part. Time of the week plays a part etc.

I know old timer taxi drivers who do well out of the trade in London, they just know the best places to be at at certain times to quickly get fares. New drivers struggle and earn below minimum wage.

 

[BusterBloodvessel]

An update for anyone interested! Only done one night so far myself, 5:30 - 8:40 on Wednesday for the grand total of £26 ? So £18-£20 after fuel and insurance for being out 3 hours. Yes it's less than minimum wage BUT that was for a total of 7 jobs, less than 1.5 hours driving in total I would estimate (going to gauge this more properly next time out of interest). The rest of the time I spent sat in the warmth of my car with a coffee, the odd cigarette, caught up on a few emails and proofread some documents for work.

My friend is out tonight and I'm going to try tomorrow night so that will be interesting, I'd expect/hope that it's none stop on Fridays and Saturdays, plus there's a 1.2x earning boost on tonight so I assume they expect high demand.

It does seem hit and miss, you can suddenly get 2 or 3 orders literally one after another and feel like you're on a roll, then sit there and get nothing for 20 minutes. Just the luck of the draw I guess and I guess that's where being on multiple platforms comes into its own.

On first opinions I wouldn't necessarily like to be relying on it for my main wage but as a few extra quid it seems a stress free, flexible option. For me to do a few evenings a week when I would otherwise only be in the pub or sat at home in front of the box, and have perhaps £300 or £400 towards the credit card bill at the end of the month, it's a nice option to have.

 

[Karimbo]

you may want to join amazon flex. I was going by the person earlier who said they cleared 26K debt with food delivery and made £1K a week.

But flex pays £350-£400 a week repliably.

If food delivery is that bad in your neck of the woods, you may want to try amazon flex. Base rates are £45.50 for 3.5 hours, but if you wait last minute and try and grab a block in the 11th hour you can get it for up to £77 for 3.5hrs.

 

[BusterBloodvessel]

you may want to join amazon flex. I was going by the person earlier who said they cleared 26K debt with food delivery and made £1K a week.

But flex pays £350-£400 a week repliably.

If food delivery is that bad in your neck of the woods, you may want to try amazon flex. Base rates are £45.50 for 3.5 hours, but if you wait last minute and try and grab a block in the 11th hour you can get it for up to £77 for 3.5hrs.

Thanks Karimbo, I did look at Amazon Flex actually but they're not taking on new drivers in my area. Plus to be honest I am not sure how much I fancy being stuck with a set number of parcels that I HAVE to deliver, especially if I have a bad run and it starts getting late, tired, etc. I do like the ultra-flexibility of just logging on and off with Uber when I feel like it. If it's quiet, if the weather turns bad, I get an invite to the pub (?) etc I just log it off and go home!

 

[Martin Patfield]

An update for anyone interested! Only done one night so far myself, 5:30 - 8:40 on Wednesday for the grand total of £26 ? So £18-£20 after fuel and insurance for being out 3 hours. Yes it's less than minimum wage BUT that was for a total of 7 jobs, less than 1.5 hours driving in total I would estimate (going to gauge this more properly next time out of interest). The rest of the time I spent sat in the warmth of my car with a coffee, the odd cigarette, caught up on a few emails and proofread some documents for work.

My friend is out tonight and I'm going to try tomorrow night so that will be interesting, I'd expect/hope that it's none stop on Fridays and Saturdays, plus there's a 1.2x earning boost on tonight so I assume they expect high demand.

It does seem hit and miss, you can suddenly get 2 or 3 orders literally one after another and feel like you're on a roll, then sit there and get nothing for 20 minutes. Just the luck of the draw I guess and I guess that's where being on multiple platforms comes into its own.

On first opinions I wouldn't necessarily like to be relying on it for my main wage but as a few extra quid it seems a stress free, flexible option. For me to do a few evenings a week when I would otherwise only be in the pub or sat at home in front of the box, and have perhaps £300 or £400 towards the credit card bill at the end of the month, it's a nice option to have.

I haven't really used Uber much in the last year because their app is shocking and if its not on top of everything else doesn't show where I'm actually delivering to - think it's an android issue, apple is fine. Only really gets used when quiet on Just Eat/Deliveroo. Mainly use it for Mcdonalds breakfast on a Saturday/Sunday morning.

Used it last night alongside Just Eat. The pay is pitiful. £3 a drop for mcdonalds when Just Eat pays £4.50+ for the same delivery area.

Deliveroo have just restricted my account though which isn't great. I've been back and throw with them over the last week and they just aren't playing ball which is frustrating. There system calculated it should take me 1 minute to arrive at a collection destination. Yes, that's great, but I'm not arriving in 1 minute for a 10 minute+ wait for food/order. I arrived 12 minutes later according to their system and this was done multiple times. This is even on orders that the customer has tipped me, which is laughable so the customer was happy with the service/food but deliveroo system says otherwise.

There's just not the same money on Uber as Deliveroo/Just Eat.


I've finished in the office for the week but I can't be arsed to go and sit in the car for pittance from now until 5, I'd rather go out at 5 when it starts becoming busy and your in the zone for the next few hours.

 

[SillyBill]

Anybody on this forum running a business full time or is it just part timers while moonlighting as Deliveroo riders and minicab drivers?