Is it possible to make close to $2,000 a week delivering groceries with platforms like Shipt and Instacart? Most of the time, two types of content exist on the internet for earnings in the gig economy—stories of drivers making slave wages or drivers who break out from the group and make an absurd amount of money. The slave wage headlines are plenty. How bad are the worst cases? In January of 2020, Salon published an analysis by Working Washington (a non-profit) suggesting that Doordash drivers make an average of $1.45 an hour. You read that right. Not $14.5 an hour. $1.45 an hour. 

Gig Economy Success Stories Are Rare

The stories of people making lots of money are rarer. This scarcity is because drivers who make good money on a platform don’t want to draw attention to that platform. It makes sense. Why invite more drivers into the market and compete with you, right? But sometimes, you do hear about success stories – even if the gig platform sponsors them.

In 2018 I read an article about a man making $100,000 a year delivering groceries for Shipt. Quite a remarkable headline. It was unbelievable. 

The individual was someone who is considered a “power user” on the platform. To make that much, he had to make around $1,950 a week. Consistently for 52 weeks. It’s been a few years. And during those years, I wanted to figure out how this was possible. I was waiting for a chance to hack the Shipt gig.

COVID-19 And Gigs

That chance came in 2020 when COVID-19 hit. And Shipt had come to my city.

I recently published a case study using my delivery data to compare food delivery and grocery deliveries during the pandemic. It was clear that grocery delivery destroys food delivery when it comes to earning potential. It wasn’t even close. 

In this case study, I want to show you how it’s possible to make around $2,000 a week driving Shipt doing grocery delivery.

These were my payout on Shipt during the recent holiday season: 

How Do You Make $2,000 A Week With Shipt? 

Here are my basic tips for you out there who want to lay a foundation in order to hack this gig.

Slow Start With Grocery Deliveries 

When you first start doing deliveries for Shipt, it’s crucial to establish a foundation. This foundation involves four critical things: Learning store layouts, strong lifetime ratings, understanding the processes, building rapport. 

Learn Store Layouts

It would be best to learn the layout of the stores and groceries in your market – QFC, Target, Best Buy, Petco, Safeway, Fred Meyer, etc. If you know the store’s design well, it allows you to quickly navigate in and out of the aisles for a given order. This knowledge helps your speed and efficiency. 

Establish Strong Metrics Early

Make sure you take your time at the beginning of your Shipt experience to establish stellar metrics. It will help you down the road. Shipt shoppers have ratings for three key metrics: Average Rating (by the customer), On-Time Percentage, Acceptance Rate. The Acceptance Rate, in my opinion, is essential to your earnings. The higher it is, the more offers the software will give you. Make sure you accept and complete at least one order for each hour you set yourself to be available to keep it close to 100%. Shipt shoppers are assigned offers because of their acceptance rating.

Learn The Grocery Delivery Process

Grocery Delivery has a different process than food delivery and rideshare. All three services involve moving people or food from point A to point B. But grocery deliveries require more from the gig worker. Unlike rideshare and food delivery, grocery delivery involves more attention to detail, communication, and time management skills. You have to know what brands are, what details like glutton free, vegan, etc. are. You have to make judgment calls on substitutions. And you have to communicate with the customer from beginning to drop off.

It takes time to learn and recognize all the items in the store. But if you take your time and learn the brands and products on the shelves and the process of communicating with customers on substitutions, it will make life way more comfortable down the road. You need strong time management skills. You’re working against the clock, and you have to gauge how long an order will take and understand how to pace yourself. Otherwise, you’ll drop off late. It can be very stressful if you’re working on multiple orders at the same time. 

Build Relationships

There are rapports that you must build as a grocery delivery driver. You have to have a good rapport with the employees at the grocery stores you will shop. They are your teammates. They can help you find items and get you through the checkout promptly. Make sure you build strong relationships with them. Also, you must build rapport with the customers.

The process of substituting an item for a customer can vary depending on the customer. Starting slow allows you to learn each customers’ preference over time, which makes substituting for repeat customers easier. And trust me, a lot of customers who use grocery delivery services use it frequently. You’ll run into a repeat user way more often with grocery deliveries than with rideshare and food delivery.

Develop Instinct And Judgement

As you learn how to get the hang of Shipt, you have to learn to use another app. Google Maps has a feature that allows you to queue up several addresses and rearrange their orders to see the best route. Learn to master and get used to this app during the early stages of your experience. It helps you plan your routes like Santa.

Eventually, you won’t need this app, as experience takes over your instincts, and judgment call about time and distance for drop-offs become automatic.

Learn From Other Shipt Shoppers

Also, while you’re learning, make sure to take advantage of the fact that Shipt shoppers get discounts on grocery deliveries. Use the services to learn from other shoppers. For example, shopping isn’t something I do with much attention to detail. So I used the service to learn how other shoppers do things. I learned from another shopper that you should package meat in a thin plastic bag (even if it already comes in a manufacturer’s packaging) when dropping it off to the customer. It just demonstrates that you care about food hygiene.

Become a customer, so you can learn how other shoppers communicate with a customer when they need to make a substitution. Recognize what is useful and what isn’t. And adapt it to your communication. For example, some shoppers wait until the end to make all the substitutions needed in one message. Others send the message for each item as it comes up. Which is more appreciated by the customer?

Claim As Many Offers As Possible

Okay, now that you have the foundations down. You have built a rapport with key people. Your instinct and judgment on time and distance are deadly accurate. Your knowledge of the layouts allows you to weave through the aisles and slay any grocery list. As a shopper, your communication and techniques have been polished by learning from others. You recognize where items are and the details about them (size, brand, vegan, etc.). 

It’s time to crank it up. Now you kick all the old ladies out of the way, and you hack the gig. Grab all the orders you can get. There’s two way to make this happen.

Early Bird 

Start to make yourself more available on the schedule in the Shipt app. You cannot avoid getting up early in the morning if you want to make $2,000 a week with grocery deliveries. I’m talking at 6 am. Claim as many orders as you can in the morning. There are a couple of benefits to working early. If you’re early, you can park close to the entrance, allowing you to go in and out of the store with items faster if you have multiple orders to complete.

Also, in the morning, the temperature is more relaxed. Products that need to remain cold and delivered cold have a chance. You’re going to be playing “save the ice cream.” from time to time. Also, being there early means that fewer people crowding the aisles and slow you down. And with less of the general public in the store competing for attention, you can quickly get help from the store employees.

Give Up Your Weekends

It’s true with food delivery. It’s true with rideshare. And you can bet it’s also valid with grocery delivery: the weekends are where the money is. 

I go all day on weekends. I’m talking 12-14 hours of straight-up grocery deliveries. On Friday through Sunday, you can make $400 – 500 a day. The bulk of the money comes from those days. Bonuses are usually offered on weekends. You cannot earn $2,000 a week if you don’t give up weekends. I’m sorry. There’s no compromising on this. 

Earn The Tips

It’s not enough to just do a lot of delivery. You must try to earn as many tips as possible for each of those orders you complete—especially the big ones (I call them “whales”). As you can see from this case study – grocery delivery comes with gigantic tips. You cannot have this part of your game be slacking if you want to make $2,000. 

Earning tips isn’t hard. There’s a science behind it. And I compiled the techniques here: 

Closing Remarks

I’m oversimplifying it a bit here. There are a lot more details to learn about grocery deliveries in each market. The strategies differ a lot compare to food delivery and rideshare. I cannot share all the details here. It would shift away from this case study’s purpose, showing the possibility that you can make $2,000 a week with grocery delivery. Long story short. It’s possible.

But it takes a willingness to learn, building relationships, developing instincts, strong communication and time management skills, and effort. And you have to work smarter, not harder.

It’s been a few years since I first heard of the school teacher who made $100,000 a year doing grocery deliveries. And I wanted to test it for myself to see if it was possible. 

My curiosity has been satisfied. It’s possible. I think Shipt is an excellent platform in the gig economy. Highly underrated, in my opinion. I enjoyed learning and hacking this gig. I hope some of you will too. 

Good luck out there.