I was laid back during my first couple shifts in Seattle. I didn’t work a lot of hours. My goal was to get a feel for the city before the weekend (and enjoy the coffee scene in Seattle). I was preparing to work longer hours on the weekend as I anticipate lots of orders.

Below is a table summarizing how it went during Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (in order top to bottom). The data does not include any Postmates deliveries. I only delivered for Caviar.

As you can see the number of orders (1st column) and orders per hour (5th column) increased significantly during Friday (1.71) and Saturday (1.64) compared to Thursday. Saturday evening was especially busy. Near the end of my shift that night, my friends in Kent were texting me to eat with them, but I was too busy catching jobs.
I also looked at how much I was making per hour driving for Caviar.

There was a lot of down time on Thursday. You can tell by the larger difference between Hours On-Duty (total time available to deliver orders) and Hours On-Delivery (total time working on orders) on Thursday compare to Friday and Saturday.

Saturday was a lot more busy than Friday (13 orders vs. nine orders), but I ended up only making $15.70 per hours Saturday compared to $17.72 per hours Friday. At first, I was a confused by this, especially since I didn’t receive any tips on Friday (see first table). But it made more sense once I looked at the payout report Caviar emailed to me (below). 

I completed more orders on Saturday, but the majority of them were in the $4-6 ranges. Eight of out the 13 orders were under $7. There was only one order under $7 bucks on Friday. I guess just because you’re catching more orders doesn’t mean you’ll be making more money per hour.

There can be several explanations for this:

1. Too many couriers active on Saturday resulted in more low paying jobs getting rejected, and I ended up with them (I don’t deny jobs often).
2. Caviar’s algorithm (or dispatcher) chooses the courier who will complete the job the fastest (I assume), and when there are too many orders on weekends, couriers get smaller paying gigs.
3. People are hungover from a Friday night’s out and want cheap food from a nearby restaurant. I suspect this because a lot of the low paying jobs were during the lunch hours.
4. People aren’t working on Saturday so they crowd popular restaurants for lunch, and some individuals who live near such restaurant would rather use Caviar than wait in line.

In total, I made about $290 for my effort for that whole week in Seattle (including Monday-Wednesday). I broke even once I accounted for the gas, parking, coffee, and going out with my friends in Kent, WA.