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Thoughts ? Experiences ?
Are you able to ride at night without lights? seems like a requirement.
I have a nephew that does it but only because it's easy to do while filling in between other jobs
What do you know of the Highway Code?
you have to pay a deposit on the deliverooo box and jacket,buy your own lights, or if you live in mcr get stopped by police who will fit a free set for you.
Miserable when wet, and cold, and you diont often get free food, just some tips occasionally.
How good are you at jumping red lights?
I know a lot of people who do. Seems to be a nice inclusive scene and you get paid to ride a bike. Can't complain. Some of the bikes ridden by some people are ridiculous dross however.
Those boxes looked a tad unwieldy during Storm Doris last week!
so many of the buggers riding around Munich.... either Deliveroo or Foodora (don't know if you have that in the UK).
was out the other week. more deliveroo people coming in than customers in the restaurant...#
no idea what they make, but they certainly seem busy.
Yes, did it between Dec and last week (just found a new, more stable job) as a stop gap after severance from my last job.
The kit costs you a deposit of £150. This includes the bag, waterproofs, some tee-shirts, battery pack, helmet and lights if you need them. This is taken from your pay packets, no more than 50% of your pay. It's refundable on return of the kit. You don't have to wear the uniform. They'll tell you that you do, this is incorrect. As you're self-employed you're not obliged. You can even use your own bag if it fits their specific details. If you work a lot, your bag will break pretty quickly. The zip on mine is fubar already and I use a bungey cord to keep it shut. This is actually quicker than using the zip so I was in rush to replace it.
You'll be sent the Driveroo app, which you simply log in to to confirm that you're available for orders and log back out of to finish. You can work any time between 11.30am-11.30pm Mon-Fri and 9.30am-11.30pm Sat-Sun. You'll get a ping telling you to go to a restaurant and a map and directions on how to get there. Within a few weeks you'll know the vast majority of them. The system is entirely automated and pretty flawed. There's a lag in GPS data so if you leave one area and you get a ping, you'll likely be getting called back to the place you've just left. Sometimes you'll be called miles across town, which makes no sense at all. If you're busy, it's better to ignore these pings (you can't decline it, you have to wait three minutes and then it'll say you didn't accept it in time) as you don't want to waste 15min going across town for a pick up. Once you've accepted the ping, go to the restaurant. The allotted time to get there (and to the customers) is based on the google map estimate, which is pretty generous. Collect the food, stick it in your bag then swipe the app to say you've got it, ride to the customer and say you've delivered it then it's done and you're ready for more orders.
It's ok as a side gig but as a full time job it's tough. How tough depends on where you live. Some places are on hourly rates with a rate per drop, others, including where I live (Bristol) are drop rate only (£3.75 per drop Mon-Thu, £4.25 Fri-Sun, £6.50 Sat-Sun 9.30-11.30am). There are some guaranteed fees (2 or 2.5 drops per hour) but these are only when you're likely to make more than that.
Bristol is chuffing hilly so it's hard. There are a lot of rivers, which sucks, especially if half of the bridges are closed.
You'll want to ride a crappy bike as well as you don't want to leave anything nice outside a restaurant. If you do, you have to lock it securely every time and that eats into your time more than you'd think. Riding a heavy bike up hills with a bag that weighs about 4-5kg with just your basic multi-tool, tube, pump, food (you cane your way through calories!) and d-lock in is hard, doing it with three buckets of KFC and the assorted beverages is pretty crap.
How much money you'll make is up to a variety of things, mostly luck and timing. Anti-social hours, between 6pm and 10pm are peak hours all week, Sundays are often the busiest times. In these times the drop rate means you can earn, if you've got good legs, between £12-18ph. On a sunny Tuesday lunchtime you're more likely to earn £3.75ph. Good weather means more riders, fewer orders. Rain means more orders, fewer riders but ridiculously long drops. Both of those situations suck. The hardcore, full time riders will work 9-12hrs a day. I couldn't be arsed to sit around in the cold and wet all day so worked split shifts, lunchtime and dinner time when it was busier.
Very few people tip. If you cart food from a kitchen to a table then you're entitled to 10% of the bill, cart it halfway across a major city then you deserve little more than a comment about how much it must suck to do that in the rain.
If you deliver pizza, get ready to scarper before the customer realises the state it's in.
Poorly organised restaurants will be the bane of your life, and there are a lot of those. They're meant to have the food ready for your arrival a lot of them aren't. "It'll be a few minutes" can really mean it'll be half an hour. Top tip, if you're waiting more than 10min you can call rider support and get unassigned. Some restaurants will provide you with boxes that are far too big to put in your bag and refuse to do anything about it.
Customers can be great. They can give you precise addresses, visual tips to find their homes/businesses and give you cash tips when you get there. Soemtimes you'll be given a completely wrong map, an incomplete address and no idea of where you're supposed to go. The best customers are the ones who will order from a restaurant that's virtually next door. They will apologise profusely for being lazy but if every order were as great as that you'd be minted.
To sum it up. It's a mixed bag, mostly based on the luck of the orders, location and weather. If you do it full time, expect to get very bored, cold and wet for long periods. You'll get super-fit and get paid for it. I was riding between 25-60km a day. A long day and you could do 100+km easy. Doesn't sound like a huge amount but imagine doing it with a massive, heavy windbreak on your back. Best as a side gig or part time, student type job. I'll keep my bag and head out on the evening or weekend for some extra pocket money.
Thanks for the insight egb81 (just a casual observer). Sounds frikkin horrid.
But if I ever end up using it I'll bear the 10% comment in mind as it's a legitimate point.
If you tip online does it all go to the rider or do they only get a cut from it?
Riders keep 100% of online tips. Cash tips are better, mostly just because it makes you feel better when you see someone appreciates you a bit. That and you can buy beer with it. You can see your completed orders and if people have tipped online via the app after you've made the drop.
The above is an honest appraisal. It's not all bad, sometimes it's great, others it's miserable. You have to be somewhat more hardened than me (someone who's had cushy office jobs for years) to make it work as a full time job. I'm a bit too soft, haha. It doesn't help that the company have a very aggressive recruitment policy so there are around 800 riders in Bristol alone. There is a high turnaround of people but and most are part time but that's a lot of riders for a fairly small city so without the relative increase in orders it means less work and less pay. A lot of the guys I've met are really sound though, diverse, interesting and friendly. There's the occasional rider you think may not last the night if they ride like that but for the most part they're swift and safe.
I'll keep doing it as a part time side gig as a few hours on a Sunday will pay for some shiny new things/save for holidays.
Interesting
Is there a distance limit on where you can order from (as a customer)? i.e. what's the maximum ride length
Is there much waiting around for the next order to arrive on the app?
Do you get much free food?
Interesting thread, if I was ever out of work i'd be very tempted to give it a go to keep me ticking over.
Has the potential to be brutally hilly (N-S), or pancake flat (E-W) in Dundee.
Although rates are low here at £6/hr + £1/drop
Not sure if there's a limit as such for deliveries through there is a zone for where people can order from. The customer side app doesn't (it at least when I checked) give you the distance from your home to the restaurant so you sometimes end up carrying for across the city when there's an equivalent place just around the corner from them. The worst average per drop I had was over 6km. That was a bad night.
If you work the evenings then I rarely easier more than 5min for a ping. I guess this will depend a lot on your location though. Day times I've had one ping in 2hrs before.
But if I ever end up using it I'll bear the 10% comment in mind as it's a legitimate point.
Too right - no more tips for waiters from now on.
Excellent write up egb81. I still remember my biggest tip as a 16yo pizza delivery guy, £4.50 from a kind chap in Twickenham (£1.50 more than my hourly rate)- and I still recall the stingy regular customers that never tipped - plus the guy who pressed 10p into my palm expecting me to jump for joy.
Over 20 years later it seems you never forget those halcyon days!
Interesting, I always wonder when I see them.
Strange that the rate of pay isn't dependent on the length of delivery, which can clearly vary massively.
I'm afraid I still don't understand tipping, but that's not to say I won't if I ever happen to use Deliveroo (to be honest I've never even considered it when ordering takeaway).
I wondered how some food fares in those boxes, but you've answered that partially with the pizza comment.
Most food is fine though spillages happen, usually if the restaurant don't seal the tops properly or well enough. Most of them are quite good though. My bag stank of Ramen soup for a few weeks after a Wagamama box emptied itself. Pizza, you're never quite sure about. There is a nack to make it slightly better.
The rates of pay have been messed with several times. It used to be a standard hourly rate + £1 per drop and some people were happy with that. Others prefer the drop rate but it's pretty risky due to unexpected quiet days. There are some 'guaranteed' times where you'll get paid for at least 2 or 2.5 drops per hour. When this was first introduced it killed the number of orders for each person stone dead so you had a lot of people getting paid approx min wage for sitting about doing nothing. They've scaled that project back to just peak times now where you're usually busy enough for it not to matter. They also guarantee drops per hour when the system crashes, which is a lot! If you don't have the address of the customer (sometimes it's stapled on the order, sometimes it's not) then you might get to keep the food. I've always managed to deliver it as I wanted the money and I know I'd be peeved if I were the customer. I never had much luck on the free food front though it's quite often shared amongst the riders at certain popular meeting points if there's enough on offer. Usually that's because the customer isn't at home or answering their phone.
Sounds great. If it wasn't for the miserable weather in this country I'd definitely be a bike courier or something.
I currently work for them a few evenings a week (student - supplementing my income) and what egb81 says about covers it. Miserable in the rain and I definitely would not want to rely on working for them full time, I don't think I've ever come across a more poorly managed or unethical company at management level upwards. It works for me as a student though, and I'm averaging £8.40/hr in Leeds which is more than I'd get working in a supermarket, and it keeps me fit. Pros and cons to it, as with any job.
I paint a grim picture but that's the worst of it. It can be fun and it's great for your fitness. It can be irritating and it's certainly not for everyone. I enjoyed it on the whole, it was a welcome respite from years at a desk but I was in a privileged position with some backup money from severance and skills to get cushier office jobs easily.
captainsasquatch - Member
What do you know of the Highway Code?
Well at least you shouldn't get caught speeding on a bike. 8)
I did it in Shrewsbury for a few months last year. my experience was pretty much the same as described above. conditions were variable but it was a really quiet zone (10-15 drops in 10 hours!) also not very hilly so my riding didn't improve. my street skills went up several notches as you have to deal with drunks, homeless, patronising rich people, shit resteraunts. we used to joke about doing it in Edinburgh or Bristol. the team spirit locally was good but there's no management structure - its run by investment bankers. I also think they're expanding too quickly. having said that, they'll hire anyone and you can make ok money, especially when its busy. I'd get a tip on 25% of orders usually.
25%! Blimey, I was lucky if I got 10% of people tipping. Agreed on the rapid expansion. According to the 'Roo group chat there are now 900 riders on the books in Bristol. The Brighton riders threatened to stop working if Deliveroo kept hiring. There was a story on road.cc.
tbf I have worked as a waiter in some posh resteraunts so you get to know people. its always worth seeing the job as food service rather than goods transport. Being nice / subserveant and obliging to everyone isn't easy but it seems to work.
2 lads on the bike bus recently, both deliver round liverpool for deliverooo, say its ok, cold weather and rain are a problem, also have an old bike,yet tonight saw a lad on a nice spesh road bike delivering stuff round the uni quarter.
Interesting, thanks for the insights.
How do they pay you ? Per shift, daily, weekly ?
Considering it as a way to earn a few extra quid alongside my regular day job which is shift-based meaning I have a fair bit of time off during the week.
Pay is on a Monday, every two weeks. For some reason they pay you at around 5pm. Very odd
On a side note, I managed a proper ride for fun today, without a bag on my back. I destroyed my friends and it felt lush to be riding a lightning fast carbon road bike for a change. I'll miss the fitness element for sure.
Presumably they pay you direct to your bank account and don't deduct tax etc. ?
Yep, direct to your bank, it's up to you to sort out tax returns as you're self employed.
I'm also lucky to get a tip 10% of the time. Sometimes not even a thank you!