Updated: 06/23/2021
I used to combine rideshare and food delivery—Lyft and Uber with Caviar and Postmates in the mix. I don’t do that as much at the moment because of the Corona pandemic, of course. These days, the majority of my earnings are from food delivery. Rideshare demand has plummetted. Even in the past, when I combined food delivery and rideshare, I prioritized food deliveries. Here are my top 12 reasons why food delivery can be better than rideshare.
1. No car requirements.
Anyone who does rideshare will know that Uber and Lyft have requirements that your vehicle has to meet for you to get approved to drive. For example, Lyft requires you to have a car with four doors and a model year that is 2010 or newer if you drive in Portland. Uber requires a vehicle that’s 2009 or later. And it varies depending on the city you’re in.
On Uber, it’s even more complicated. There are different types of Uber services: UberX, UberXl, Uber Select, Uber LUX, Uber Comfort, Uber Black, Uber SUV. And they all have their separate vehicle requirements. In the long run, you’ll run out of eligibility with rideshare. It can be expensive to try and renew that eligibility (get a vehicle that meets the age requirement).
Food delivery doesn’t have that problem. Any vehicle will do.
2. Biking is okay.
Simply put, you cannot do rideshare on a bike. That would be super awkward to give someone a ride with your bike, not to mention inefficient. But on food delivery platforms, you can bike. There is no barrier to doing food delivery if you don’t own a car.
3. Less car maintenance.
Have you ever had to clean vomit from the backseat of your car after picking up some late-night clubbers who got way too drunk? If you’re doing rideshare, you’re likely to run into this. Or at least the potential for it is in the back of your mind. Drunk people who can’t drive themselves love to get into an Uber and Lyft.
4. Less mileage.
I have found that I am driving around town way less when doing food delivery. You don’t have to roam around looking for work. You can park in a hotspot surrounded by many restaurants and wait for an order to come through. This lack of roaming is similar to the difference between hunting and fishing. With rideshare, you are moving around hunting for passengers. With food delivery, you are fishing in a pond and waiting on a bite. Food delivery puts less mileage on my car, and I spend less money filling up at the gas station.
5. I don’t need to impress people.
With food delivery, you show up at the restaurant and pick up what you need to deliver. During your drive, there is no human interaction, just you and the food. You don’t have to worry about people judging how you’re dressed, the appearance of your car, or how it smells.
6. Restaurant locations are fixed, people are not.
One of the most pleasant things about food delivery is not locating anyone I’m picking up. Google Maps does it for me. Restaurants also tend to have huge signs telling you where they are, so if you get lost, it’s easy to find. Over time, you come to know where the restaurants are, and it doesn’t take to much thinking. I never liked being honked at by the car behind me while looking for my rider in a large crowd after they exited an event.
7. More platforms to choose from for work.
Uber and Lyft completely dominate rideshare. Those are your only two options for the most part unless you’re living in another country where a local rideshare company dominates. It isn’t the case with food delivery. There are more platforms—and you can drive for all of them if you want. This abundance gives you more advantages when you are trying to stack platforms and keep the orders coming.
8. There is always a demand for food.
It is a fact of life: people need to eat. There will always be a need for food to be delivered. It is less so with rideshare. As you can see with the current pandemic, everyone is staying home. So rideshare is being killed. But even if so, people are still ordering take-out and having it delivered. There might not always be a need for transportation, but there is always a demand for food.
9. The work hours are way better.
Food delivery has a very defined schedule: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you want to sneak in a few hours before or after those blocks, you can. That’s up to you. With rideshare, if you’re going to make good money, you have to get up early and pick up folks who have morning flights. You also have to stay out late to pick up those late-night party animals. With food delivery, I don’t have to be a morning person or a night owl.
10. You can stack jobs.
Most restaurants use multiple on-demand food delivery services. And if you work for several platforms, you can get orders from the same restaurant on multiple apps. If the restaurant has multiple orders going to nearby neighborhoods, you can get those without any hassle.
Imagine picking up a Uber rider and then try to pick up a Lyft rider. It’s so awkward. I don’t think I have ever heard of anyone doing that. You will get a 1-star review from both riders for sure. This situation doesn’t happen with food delivery. Customers can see you move on the map, but they are more understanding if you are stacking multiple orders. Hungry people can learn to wait. People who are in a hurry to get somewhere aren’t going to give you the same grace. It’s the same comparison with your mailman and a taxi driver. People understand a mailman gots many deliveries to make. But people don’t want to share a ride with another person generally because of personal space.
11. The tips are way better.
People tip way better for food deliveries. People are just conditioned to tip when it comes to food. When it comes to transportation, people want to get somewhere as fast as possible for as cheap as possible. The thriftiness makes the tips small if you think about it. It will generally be the case with rideshare.
When people buy food, they may order for more than one person. Think of family meals or corporate catering. And they can be eating a lot of food. These kinds of orders make tips more significant.
You will rarely get a ride worth $100 in distance and time. It’s more common to delivery orders worth $100 of food.
12. You don’t have to deal with awful people in your car.
I have met some nice and cool people through rideshare. I have had some excellent conversations with them. So I’m not saying there are only bad people who get in your car when you do rideshare. I am saying this: there are no bad people who get in your vehicle when you’re doing food delivery. Thank goodness.
If you have been a long time Uber or Lyft driver and business has been slow, consider adding on a food delivery gig to maintain a reliable income. There are many platforms to choose from. The demand for food delivery has increased a lot because of the current Coronavirus Pandemic. It’s a good time to try food delivery until rideshare picks back up again. I hope this article eases some of the anxiety you might have about making that move in the gig economy.
Good luck out there and stay safe. Cheers!
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