Episode 49: Is Doordash Top Dasher Worth It? Should You Pursue Grubhub Premier?

Is Top Dasher Worth it? Is Grubhub Premier Worth Pursuing?

At the start and end of every month, the whole topic of being Top Dasher moves to front and center in Doordash forums. People are close to achieving their status. People did or didn’t make it. 

But the question is, is it even worth it? Let’s talk about incentive programs like Top Dasher for Doordash, or Grubhub Premier or Pro status, or even Uber Eats Pro. 

Understand what the real benefits are that are offered. Understand if the company will even GIVE you those benefits after you pursue them. And understand the cost of pursuing them.

Visit the companion page on Is Top Dasher and Premier Status Worth it? on our website.

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Transcript

0:02

Hello, Courier Nation. Welcome to the Deliver on your Business podcast where you are the boss. Each week we talk about how to make the most of your business as an independent contractor, as a Courier delivering for gig economy apps like Grubhub DoorDash Postmates, Uber Eats and so many others. Well, Hello, Courier Nation and Happy December. Hard to believe the years gone by this quick already, folks, just as a kind of a programming note for upcoming episodes. I'm going to be kind of scaling down to the end of the year. I still be planning on putting out an episode each week, but I'm probably going to go a lot more basic, a little more. Probably not as involved, at least for the last few weeks of the year. And then we'll get rolling again. Kind of full blast again with the start of the new year. So this will be the last really full episode of the year. And this week I'm asking the question is Top Dasher for DoorDash worth pursuing? What about Grub Hub, Premier level, or even Uber Eats pro? You know, at the start of every month, Top Dash is kind of a hot topic, especially in the DoorDash forums on Facebook and Reddit and everything, because it's all about all the people that made it, all the people that are kind of in those last days trying to get to whatever it is you need to achieve by the end of the month. And so all the people that either are or aren't. And then, of course, there's all the arguments about whether or not it's even worth bothering with. You made it. You didn't make it. What do I have to do? And the ultimate question on all of these is, is it really worth it? Is it worth pursuing? Let's talk a little bit about incentives with these gig companies. Now, the first question is going to be, why are these incentives even necessary for them? The bottom line is it all comes down to the fact that they're using independent contractors. And when you're using independent contractors, you cannot force people to say yes, you have to take this delivery and that delivery. All you can do is offer an incentive. All you can do is offer a bonus. That's kind of what all these different programs are like. And especially now Top Dash or didn't use to have an acceptance rate component about it this a month ago. They added that. But too often the delivery fee on its own isn't going to be enough to make it worth taking a delivery, at least not for a lot of us who pay close attention to that kind of thing. And so if the customer is not tipping, well, how do these companies make sure that that food still gets delivered and they can do one or two things, they can hire employees instead of using contractors. And then they can tell you that, yes, you have to deliver this. You can't do that with contractors. You can pay better on lower price delivery, or you can offer incentives. And I'm going to tell you that these companies are not going to go the employee route unless they're forced to by the law that was just passed with AB5. New Jersey is trying to kind of force them to hire people as employees now. And I'm going to tell you that I think that some company could probably figure out that they could be a lot more efficient with employees than into the current model. But that's a whole different story altogether. Now, DoorDashes under their old pay model. They designed it so that they paid more on lower tip deliveries. But the problem with that was that customers were figuring out that, you know, what, the Dash is not making any more money if they paid a tip than if they were. And really, there was a lot of controversy around that pay model, so they were forced to change it. And so now we see especially Grubhub and DoorDash kind of opting for that third option, really relying on incentives. And especially with these program incentives, they can't make you take any offer they can't make you take a percentage of offers. Doordash got sued here a couple of years ago. They paid out a huge settlement based on doing that. What we now have are things like TopDasher with DoorDash. And you got your Premiere pro and partner status with Grubhub. I want to talk a little bit about DoorDash and kind of the struggle with their new pay model because as I mentioned, under the old pay model, they could pay a little extra on deliveries that the customers didn't tip. Well, now what happened was they paid you next to nothing on the ones that the customers did tip well. And I think that was the problem more than the way that tips were structured. But anyway, anyway, one of the reasons, though, that I think DoorDash really searched to the leading market share was they were doing a better job at getting orders completed. But they're struggling now with their new pay model because all of a sudden now they rolled out. These people were used to getting$5.50 or somewhere in that area as the minimum amount. And all of a sudden, DoorDash is offering $2 for a delivery, and people are looking like, no, I'm not doing that right now. I said way back in the beginning that I think when all is said and done, they're going to eventually kind of gravitate back to the same thing that they were doing. I see them already starting to do that. They're just not going to be obvious about it any longer. I'm starting to see higher delivery fees now when the tip is low. But I'll also be fair that, hey, I'm rejecting the heck out of two and $3 delivery offers. So my sample data is probably not the best to make a true comparison on, but it brings out this issue. That DoorDash is struggling a lot more than I think they expected to in getting orders fulfilled. And I think the acceptance rates across the board have tanked so badly under the new pay model that they had to figure out another way to get people to take orders. Now they rolled out the Top Dasher program, and originally it was based on your completion rate and the number of deliveries you did and your customer rating starting with deliveries in November, which affected top Dasher rate for December, they started requiring a 70% acceptance rate. So I don't think there's any coincidence in the fact that they have started doing acceptance rate as part of this. I don't know if it's something they planned on when they first rolled it out, but ultimately they now have top dasher an incentive to take the vast majority of your deliveries. And so, like any of the others, as a matter of you meet certain requirements and you get certain rewards. Well, what are the rewards for Top Dashes now? Based on the language in their description, it says that the rewards are really not necessarily set in stone from one month to the month. Next, they could change. Now. In the email that I got when I got Top Dasher back in November, the rewards were basically two things that you could dash at any time, which means you could go in and just dash now anywhere. Whether or not that region was filled up and then you get more deliveries is what they said. And in my understanding, nothing has changed in December. Yet whether or not things change in the future, I don't know. The question is, are these rewards really anything? And I got to tell you, I'm very skeptical as far as what they say about getting priority on deliveries because I did not notice any difference. You know, in fact, I think I probably got fewer deliveries in November. The offers didn't seem as good in November as they did in December. And in fact, I know my hourly rate, my hourly profit dropped by about a dollar and a half, so I don't know. That's a good question. Do they really offer more? There are a lot of things that could be now that there were more people that were Top Dash, or maybe that just meant that there were the market was that much more saturated. And that's why the offers didn't look as good, and it may have had nothing to do with status. I just didn't notice an improvement, but I can't tell without really seeing exactly what they might have offered or how many times they supposedly break the tie in your favor between when the it could be you or somebody else in your top Dash or and they're not. You know what I mean? Now the Dash now feature, though, being able to dash at any time. That can be a good benefit. And it all has to do with the way that DoorDash only makes so many slots available in any given region. So it used to be that on any particular day at any particular time, you could only have so many people scheduled to deliver in a particular region on your delivery map. It would show up as pink or red if there was room for somebody to go in and deliver in that area, and if it was filled up, that area went Gray and you could not deliver in that area, there was no way to kind of go off schedule with DoorDash that way. And what they did with top Dasher is they said you can go in and you can just go available anywhere no matter what the status is. And that can be good, especially in areas where I think ultimately what that feature gives you is that it makes it a little bit more like Postmates and Uber Eats where you can just go available anywhere at any time, not worry about schedule or anything. And I think that's a good feature. The question is whether it's worth it, right. But I'll tell you, in my market, it's probably not as big of a deal, especially between the rush hours, the dinner and the lunch rushes. Usually, you can log in at any region about any time, so it's only kind of those times in between the two to five or just those slower periods that it really makes much of a difference. This is the kind of thing that is going to vary based on where you are. It's going to vary based on either whether there are a lot of restaurants in your area or if they have to too many Dashes competing for those slots. Now, what do you need to qualify to be a top Dasher? Originally, the requirement was you had to maintain an average score of 4.7 out of five on the customer rating. And honestly, that's not that hard to achieve. And then you have to complete 100 deliveries for the last month, you had to have at least 200 lifetime deliveries, and then you had to have a completion rate of 95%, which meant that if you accept an order, you had to complete that order 95 times out of the last $100. So basically you could not reassign or unassign yourself on an order that often. Now I've never had a problem with any of those things. I thought those are reasonable. Those are not asking too much, and they're not that hard to obtain. You got to be a little more thoughtful about some of the orders that you accept. Realizing that. Okay. You're definitely making more of a commitment now. But, you know, here's the deal. I think when you're accepting a delivery, you're making commitment. I think customer service is an important thing, whether you're an independent contractor or an employee. In my opinion, those things were fair. But like I mentioned earlier, starting in November, then they added this 70% acceptance rate. So by the end of November, you had to have accepted 70 out of the last 100 offers. And now the thing with DoorDash is that they based their ratings only on the last $100. So you could have been at zero for three months. It doesn't matter. But then if you took your last 70 delivery offers in a row, you were at 70. All that other stuff didn't matter. Now, that was a game changer, I think as far as Top Dasher, I went ahead and went after Top Dasher and got that in November. I didn't even bother with it when they added the acceptance rate thing. And it didn't surprise me a whole lot when they added acceptance rate. And it may have been something that they were planning all along. They probably wouldn't have had as many people going for that acceptance rate are going for Top Dasher when they first rolled it out if acceptance rate was part of it. But here's the deal now that a lot of people have been Top Dasher, and then they introduce the acceptance rate component. You probably have a lot of people that go ahead and chase that 70% that if when they originally introduced this program, they probably wouldn't have bothered with it to begin with. You see what I mean. They kind of do this in increments, but personally, for me, it just wasn't worth it. So we talked about Top Dasher. So let's talk a little bit about Grub Hub and their Premier and pro and partner levels, because I think this may have been some of the inspiration that DoorDash looked at what they were doing. I thought, okay, maybe we should try something like that when they're having trouble having orders, accept it, they got to figure out something right. So Grubhub has had this, you know, at least in the two years that I've been doing this. And to understand the impact of that program, though, you've got to understand how they do their scheduling. If you're not a Grub Hub driver. As with Grub Hub, you have two options. You can just go available at any time and accept orders, or you can sign up for a block of time. And the blocks are usually like one to two hour increments. In my market, they're almost always 1 hour increments. But anyway, you can expect that you're going to have a lot better and much more consistent offers when you're on schedule. So they do give a very high priority to being on schedule. When I'm off schedule, I'm seeing a lot more of the fast food orders that are several miles away and not paying very well. And so the exception being really busy periods. And then at that time, it's just kind of a free role. But the bottom line is your best chance of being profitable on Grubhub is to schedule yourself. What they have is they've got these program levels, they have Premiere, they have Pro, and they have partner. Now, the qualifications for each market. I think they vary. I'm going to give just as an example of what they do in my market. So for Premiere, you have to accept 95% of all offers, which is basically everything you can reject, maybe one or two in a week or something like that. You've got to drop less than 10% of the blocks that you have scheduled, and you've got to show up for every single block that you scheduled, you can drop it, but you can drop it ahead of time. But if you haven't dropped it, you've got to work that schedule. And so to get Pro level, basically, it's 85% acceptance rate, and you got to drop less than 20% of your blocks and you got to have 100% attendance. And if you aren't either of those two levels, then you're considered a partner. Now Grub Hub States that Premier level gives you first access to new blocks, that it gives you eligibility for catering orders that give you access to referral programs, and they give you perks, whatever perks are. I've never seen the perks. Honestly, the rewards for Pro level are basically the same. Except for that, you get second access to scheduling new blocks. And here's the thing, though, with all the stuff that they're listing, there's no such thing as a referral program they've never had. And I've been on Premiere is kind of more of a technicality, but there was never a referral program. There was never anything related to that catering orders. I think maybe I saw two. And the problem with you could have maybe the next access to being in part of their catering program, which is something that they've really scaled down. And I've seen a lot of things where I'm not even sure that was really worth it. I couldn't tell you, I guess yes or no without having been part of it. But ultimately, the only real reward was schedule access. And the way that works with Grubhub is Premier drivers. They get the first access, they open up the schedule on Thursday, and so Premiere drivers can all go in and try and schedule themselves, and they grab those. They get their first shot at all those different blocks that are available. Pro drivers get access on Friday, and then everybody else gets access starting on Saturday. Now, the other program that we could kind of talk about, it's quite a bit different, actually, is Uber Eats Pro. They've just recently been rolling this out in some markets now because they're just starting to roll it out. They could be doing kind of like what DoorDash did right now. Acceptance rate isn't a part of it. I wouldn't be surprised to see that rolled into it, but really, they don't even track acceptance rate anymore. So what Uber each does, though, is basically what they do is it's all based on how many deliveries you accept and when you accept. Them. They give you points for when you accept an order or when you complete an order. And the points vary. So during the peak times generally they give you six points. During kind of semi peak times, they give you three points and every other time is one point and you've got to get to like, 100 points for what they call gold level. And then they also have platinum and diamond levels. And those are different based on markets, as far as how many points you've got to get in those areas. But the rewards there, those are really true perks kind of like what Grubhub says. They give perks, but they don't. But what they do, there really are more perks. They're kind of extra things that you could do. You have like, for example, at gold level, you get 3% cash back on buying gas with their Uber Eats Debit card, you get free roadside assistance, you get some discounts on bike helmets, and there's some tuition coverage with ASU online. And as of this moment, really, it looks like the only difference between platinum and diamond is you get a little bit more. You get up to 5% cash back on those gas purchases. And the question when you look at all of these programs, are these incentives even worth it? And ultimately it comes down to this question is, are the rewards worth the trade off? And here's the deal, folks. I think for DoorDash and Grubhub, the only real reward with any substance is just better availability for delivery times. Everything else is just kind of a virtual carrot on the stick. That's pretty meaningless. Now. Doordash says that they offer more deliveries, but I don't see it happening. It's not noticeable. But if you're in a market where it's harder to get a schedule thing, those might be a little more substance than in some other areas. And the question becomes, what does it cost you to qualify for these things? And really, with the DoorDash and Grubhub programs, the only real qualifiers really cost you is your acceptance rate. I don't see any problem with keeping your schedule or only dropping so many blocks on Grubhub. I don't see a problem with having to complete an order once you accept it. And you should be good enough in your customer service to maintain that rating. So with those things, you're not really giving up. But acceptance rate, I think, can really cost you a lot. It could be very costly. Folks, I'm starting an experiment here for the month of December. I decided I'm going to go ahead and try and shoot for Top Dash and just track see what it cost me. How is it different? So essentially what I'm doing is I'm rejecting the Walmart orders and I'm rejecting to pay, order and pay. And then maybe just the really ridiculous orders. And that leaves me right around about 70% of the orders that I'm taking. Now in October, I profited about $21.90 an hour on DoorDash deliveries, and in November is $20.57. So both of them up over $20. And now I know I'm only five days into December, but so far I'm running at $14.18 when trying to get 70%. So in other words, when I'm trying to take 70% of the offers, I'm making about two thirds of what I was making before when I was more selective. Put another way, being selective is earning me more than what I was doing, what I wasn't. And that is huge. That's huge, guys. And here's the deal, I think, is when you're weighing the benefits, I can afford to not be Top Dash or where I'm at and I can afford to be partner on Grubhub. My market is busy enough that I can still grab plenty of blocks on Saturday with Grub Hub, and I can sign in most of the times that I want to sign in on DoorDash. But the question is, what if your market isn't? Well, then you've got to ask your question is, is it enough? Because let's say for me, if taking 70% means now, I'm only making 14 an hour, is it enough? And for me, that's not worth it. Not to me. Anyway, here's the deal. I can make a lot more money. I can make more money doing other things right now. But I choose this because of the flexibility that gives me, you know what I mean. But if I'm now making significantly less, all of a sudden, it's no longer worth doing. And you've got to remember this, folks, that you're not making what you think here when I mentioned that $21 an hour or $14 an hour, that's my profit. That is, after taking into effect my actual cost per mile on my car, which for me, runs about $0.25 a mile. And if you're accepting every order, you're driving a lot more miles. And if you've got a newer car, your cost per mile is a lot more. So don't forget, folks, that if you're making $14 an hour gross and those kind of numbers, those are reality in a lot of markets. When you're doing Top Dasher or Premier in those places where those are so important. And guys, you got to ask yourself, is that enough money? And that becomes the question is, if you have to have those levels to make it, then you got to just start asking yourself, is that enough? Is it still worth doing? Here's another question to think about are these programs violating the independent contractor relationship? You know, I think in places like mine where I can do it, okay, whether or not I'm that no, it's not a problem. It's an incentive. Whether or not that incentive is worth it or not, I can make that choice. But if it's something that if you're in a place where you're kind of forced into being one of those to even make it. I think that is I think that that's crossing the line to them requiring you to take orders. And once again, I think that's kind of a market dependent thing. Now, I haven't evaluated Uber Eats yet, and at this point, I think it's hard to compare them, because on one side, the acceptance rate doesn't matter all they want you to deliver so many orders. Like I said, I think that may change. I don't know. It kind of depends on how badly they are struggling at getting orders accepted. But I think because they have Uber drivers that can switch into it. It's not as big of an issue for them as some of the other places that are delivery only. But with Uber Eats, you could deliver as few as 17 deliveries in a month and get most of those perks. That's not hard to do at all. And like I said, those things are really more like those are true perks. But there is something really there. But the question is, is it really anything much at all? Think about all these things that they're giving. Now, I haven't dug into the ASU online tuition thing, and I got a feeling it's not as great as what it is made out to be here's. The thing is that tuition is not a month on a month off thing. So I'm not sure how they're doing it. That's good for a future post or episode. Maybe is to look into that a little bit. So maybe there's something here, but I'm just not sure how that works. But here's the thing. The main thing of any real substance. You get a helmet discount, who maybe $5 that you save. There's a lot of places, folks where you can save $5 on a helmet. What about the cash back, though? And I think some people will really latch on to that. But guys do the math here. Seriously, add up your gas costs for the month. I'm averaging right around $300 a month. Well, 3% of that is $9. That's one average grub hub delivery. So it's not like that's really adding a whole lot to. And the thing is that you got to ask about something like the Uber Eats program is what's the opportunity cost. Because the deal is for me. I make more on delivering for other people than I do for Uber Eats. You know, how much more would you get if you're delivering for somebody else? Is it a dollar per delivery? For me, it's probably more like two to $3 of delivery, to be honest, but 17 deliveries at a dollar each. Well, that's already paid you double that$9 cash back that you're getting? It's a whole question. Are you getting back more than what you're giving up? So let's talk about real quickly. Maybe some of the other kind of incentives you got peak pay with DoorDash or Uber has got their boots or they've got their quest, I think, tend to be more substantive and they're a little more tangible. But the thing is, I think with these is you can deliver them on. You can evaluate those on a delivery by delivery basis. Now, I'm going to tell you right up front. I don't trust Grub Hub, and I don't trust Postmates on any of the offers that they make because they've pulled the plug too often or they just haven't come through. Grubhub is constantly pushed out notifications that they're offering bonuses, and I've never received a Penny. So when it comes to time that they really need drivers, it happened already in a snowstorm recently. And guess what? I'm not doing any extra deliveries for Grub Hub. I will do the deliveries for Grub Hub if it pays well enough. But I'm not chasing anything because they're promising, I think because I don't believe they're goin to do it. Postmates. What they do is they'll give you a bonus. You complete so many deliveries in a time frame. But I've had way too many times where I'm getting about one or two deliveries away, and all of a sudden the offers from them dry up as busy as I'll get out with everybody else. And I know it's busy as they'll get out with them, but it's like they quit offering it so that they don't have to pay that up. And so trust goes away. So that's one of the questions. Do you even trust them to come through on what they're dangling in front of you? Now I'm going to make one quick note about boost on Uber Eats a couple of weeks ago, they came out with some really high boots when they rolled out their new pay model. But he is still on that now a boost with Uber Eats, they'll have it as a factor. So they'll offer a boost of 2.0, and that means you get double the delivery fee. Well, that's great. Right under their new pay structure, they've done is they've cut the delivery fee in half and then they add in a trip supplement. And of course, the trip supplement isn't as much as what they dropped. But the deal is, though, with those boosts, they only apply those to the delivery fees. They do not apply those against that supplement. So basically, that boost is now about half of what it was before. So those are some of the things that you got to think about on those things. Now, quest when they offer so much for so many deliveries, the way I think you evaluate that is what does that add? And generally, if you're getting two to two and a half deliveries in an hour, that means that let's say, if a quest is paying $2 per delivery, that's adding four or $5 per hour to those deliveries. And so that extra $5 an hour kind of offset the difference between what you normally make between Uber Eats or anybody else, then maybe it's worth pursuing. You see what I'm saying? Here's the deal. I think finally, when you're evaluating any of these incentives and you just got to ask these questions, is it achievable? Is it something that you can even expect to accomplish? I've had some where basically they're requiring you to do almost like three deliveries in an hour. And it's like, yeah, there's no way. It's just you can't do it. And so it's not even worth trying. What does it really give you? The second question? Is it something that you really use? Is it something that really makes a difference? You know, I'm never going to use the ASU tuition with Uber Eats. And and is there actual value in what they're dangling in front of you? The big question, the third one that you got to ask is, what does it cost you? Like I mentioned when I'm running 70% acceptance rate, I'm making $7 an hour or less than when I'm just extremely selective. And so that's a very real cost. If you're measuring all of your deliveries, you can figure that part out. Now, maybe the question is about opportunity cost, because, for example, I average about $21 an hour on Grubhub and about 14 on Uber Eats would focusing on Uber Eats pay enough to make up that difference to make up what I could be making if I'm not spending my time on that delivery with Uber Eats and delivering for somebody that's paying more. So all of those things you got to evaluate, what is that costing you to go after that? And then finally, the main question is, is the cost greater than the benefit? Now here's my thoughts. And this is all based on my market, my way of doing things. But maybe it helps you kind of figure out some things that you can do to try and evaluate it. It's definitely not telling you this is how you should see it, but it is how I see it to me. Top Dasher isn't worth it. Premiere and Pro with Grubhub, they're not worth it because they don't give me enough to make it worth those lower earnings. And even with the Uber Eats Pro, now, here's the deal. I would probably always make Uber Eats Pro, and I'm probably going to deliver enough on Uber Eats mainly because I do just enough to kind of be able to stay familiar with them. It's probably more about being familiar with them than it is about really making money with them. I don't have to accept a percentage on them, but the bottom line is I make so much less on their deliveries that it's not worth that extra $10 of tangible benefit and quest of $2 per delivery. They're still not enough to offset the difference between what I make between them and everybody else. So generally it's not worth taking an order that I normally wouldn't take. You know what I'm saying? There now your market could be different. It could be very different. Your access to schedule might be much more difficult. And at that point, you just got to ask, is it enough if you pursue those, maybe are you still making enough to make it worthwhile and you just got to ask if it is. Now, one way I look at it is I do primarily Grub Hub because they are more steadily good paying well enough and paying what I need to make to make it worth doing them. But if I've got to do access and my earnings per hour go way down. So then I've got to ask, are they still the better one? You know what I'm saying? Are they still better than DoorDash or Postmates or Uber eats? Now, maybe Uber eats with their quest and their greater flexibility might actually make more sense, especially the flexibility. But then that question becomes with that flexibility, is it still enough? Is it enough to make it worth continuing to do this? And for me, if it's a question between having access to scheduling and having access to going, I think what's usually going to happen is either I'm going to shift to somebody else, or I'm just going to quit driving all together. And at that point, when it's moved away from incentive and moved away from being a bonus, and it has moved instead to being more like a pay cut or a punishment. And that's not what incentives are supposed to be. Here's the bottom line, Courier Nation, you got to know what the benefit really is, understand what you're doing well enough to know what it is really costing you. Now your answers are going to be different than mine because your philosophy, your approach, your market, all of those things are going to be different. But I think the guiding principle remains the same when you're looking at any of these, whether it is quests or individual delivery incentives or whether it is programs like Top Dasher or Grub Hub Premier or anything like that. And that question becomes, is the benefit greater than the cost? And if it is go for it, if it's not run away, folks, I want to thank you for listening through to another episode here. And if the podcast or the website or anything like that is bringing you any kind of value, could you do me a favor and spread the news, let people know about us? Because if I'm helping you out, I'm hoping that I'm able to help other people out as well. In the meantime. But one thing that I'm going to ask is I always ask when closing is whatever the situation, please go from here. Continue to take control of your life, your career, your earnings, your business. Go and be the boss.