It wasn't long ago that I took the plunge into "DoorDashing". There were many reasons for this but the short version is that I needed extra cash and thought driving was an easy 2nd job that was fully flexible to my schedule. In this series I am going to document things I have seen or learned along the way. Maybe even some insight into this industry.
Let me get something straight here, I have never worked in the Fast Food industry or really any customer facing industry. My entire adult career has been in IT so this adventure is new to me. I looked into a few services that are driving based and decided on DoorDash for a few reasons.
1) I can work when I want and for how long I want. I control the timeframe
2) You earn what you put into it. I could earn as much as I wanted so long as I put in the time. Which is nice because say I had something coming up in 2 weeks and needed a few hundred dollars for, I would know that i had to keep working until I made that amount.
3) I didn't want to deal with interacting with people too much. I didn't want to be a taxi service where I felt like I had to talk to people constantly or to be honest deal with people all the time.
4) Safety. Look I can take care of myself and am not afraid rolling up to houses or apartments and dropping off orders. But at the same time with DoorDash you are able to accept or deny each order so if it was going to take me somewhere I didn't want to do that was my choice.
Signing up for DoorDash was simple enough and I was approved the same day which was nice. You will need to basically KYC but since this is a real-legal job (not crypto) I wasn't worried at all. I was bombarded with numerous e-mails and notifications about tips and trick and additional account setup options.
It was nice because as a DoorDasher you have options to get paid. You can choose to get paid out weekly to your bank account (no fees with this choice). Or you can have it pay your after each "dash" but there is a $2 fee for this choice. You can also get a, what I call, DoorDashDebitCard which puts your money directly to that card and you can spend it like any debit card. It was nice to see the options as they have something for everyone. You can change this at anytime as well.
After this was setup I was ready to get off to the races. So without further ado I started a Dash and was off.
A "Dash" is the term used for a time frame where someone is DoorDashing.
"DoorDashing" is the act of picking up and delivering orders via DoorDash. (This is my term but I think is also generally accepted as the real term).
'Offer' is a single order request. A popup occurs with minimal details about the order and you can confirm or decline it.
When I first started it was mostly Fast Food places that I got orders for and the first time I dashed I had 4 orders in a 1.5 hour time frame.
Offer 1 $6.50
Offer 2 $6.00
Offer 3 $6.00
Offer 4 $8.50
Each Offer you get will have a "DoorDash Pay" and a "Customer Tips" section (you don't get to see the breakdown until after you complete the order though).
So a offer will come up and say something like "Order for McDonalds and the distance from the restaurant to the drop off is x miles away and you will earn X dollars for this order". It also gives you a map of where the pickup and drop off areas are. I truly wish they gave a breakdown of what is the base pay and what is the tip on the offer screen.
There is no real penalty for denying offers accept it will affect your acceptance rate. Why that matters is for a later article but just something to keep in mind for down the road.
So the breakdown of my first 4 orders/offers are as follows:
Offer 1 $6.50
DoorDash Pay: $3.00
Customer Tips: $3.50
Offer 2 $6.00
DoorDash Pay: $2.00
Customer Tips: $4.00
Offer 3 $6.00
DoorDash Pay: $2.00
Customer Tips: $4.00
Offer 4 $8.50
DoorDash Pay: $4.00
Customer Tips: $4.50
You can see that each of these first 4 offers had decent tip to Base pay ratios which was nice. But that being said earning $27 for 1 hour and 39 minutes wasn't the greatest given wear and tear on my car and gas prices. However for my first foray into DoorDashing I was happy with it.
When I first started out I didn't see the 'decline' button when an offer pops in so I thought you kind of had to take every offer that came to you. I learned later about declining and acceptance rate and all that. But again not bad for my first go at it. The 4 orders were simple enough. They were Fast Food places and the drop offs were not customer contact so I left the orders at their doors and went on to the next one.
What is interesting is that picking up McDonalds orders is different than any other restaurant order. With McDonalds you have to tell the drive thru person that it is a DoorDash order and give them the last 4 digits of the order number. No other restaurant that i have been too asks for a order number, they are all by the person's name.
Another thing I have learned and maybe this isn't new to you all but was new to me, was that a lot of Fast Food places shut down their lobby's/inside after dinner-ish time. Wendy's and McDonalds for starters do not let you go into their restaurant after 6:30pm at least around me. This was weird to me and I honestly thought it was a 1 time thing but time and again their lobbies are closed when I DoorDash.
My 1 tip to anyone who is ordering on DoorDash (at least near me) is to not order from Wendy's. I think all Wendy's near me are severely understaffed and around dinner time you can only use their drive through. The all appear to only take 1 order at a time as well. So you pull up to the drive thru and wait until you get up to the speaker. You place your order or inform them you have a DoorDash order and they tell you to go up to the window. They will NOT take anymore drive-thru orders until you have your food and left. It makes it incredible slow and results in DoorDash orders being delivered way past the estimated time of arrival.
I have noticed too that a lot of people who DoorDash are not very nice to the staff at restaurants as well. They are all seem to be in hurry and get noticeably angry with the staff if the order isn't ready when they get to the restaurant. I can understand that they want to do as many Dashes as possible in the shortest amount of time because that equals more money but they don't have to treat the staff like shit in the process. I don't know if I am too easy going or to laid back or maybe I am just someone with compassion IDK but I never rush then because honestly they person we talk to about picking up the order has nothing to do with making the order faster lol
That sums up my first Door Dash diary entry. I hope you come back for more and I bring you along this journey. Believe me when I say I already have some good stories that I will share on next entries.
