My Retirement Work Experiment With DoorDash, Uber Eats & Instacart Last Summer
This might come as a huge surprise for those who know me. I worked as a shopper/driver for DoorDash, Uber Eats and Instacart almost every single day (seven days per week) for four months last summer from June to October except for the week I was travelling in Latin America. I’m going to explain why I did it as well as what I learned from this experience. First some background history.
The Realities Of Retirement Phase
I’ve been in early semi-retirement for several years now and have been researching how I’m going to spend the next phase of my real retirement. I left corporate life many years ago and certainly don’t miss it. After years in the rat race where you are just an expendable company number, I realized that I don’t need to wear fancy business suits nor have a respectable management job title anymore. Funny how in my early working years soon after graduation, those were the exact things I wanted!
Returning to professional speaking which I also did for a few years after my corporate life is also not feasible since I’ve been out of the speaking promotional circuits for quite some time. I would have to invest both time and money into getting my name out on the professional speaker circuit again if I wanted to return to doing speaking engagements that pay well (US colleges paid me $2,500 US per speaking gig).
As for online internet businesses which I also ran, I retired my online native art gallery called Free Spirit Gallery since I didn’t want to deal with having to stock inventory and do shipping anymore. Income from my online educational products which were easier to manage including my biggest seller which was a dog training program, were also retired. This particular online product which came in ebook, online video as well as physical CD forms provided me with significant passive income for many years but since the passing of both of my dogs Chester and Roxie, I chose not to update the program. A new edition of it would required shooting brand new video with newer, higher quality video footage which I just don’t have the desire to do at the moment (maybe I’m still struggling a bit from the loss of my dogs).
My retirement income is going to be provided mainly from rental income from properties I still own as well as a newly created investment portfolio focused on dividend/interest income. I favour investing in mortgage investment corporations as they average about 8% annual returns. Both of these sources of retirement income are pretty well passive since I don’t have to do much active work with them other than monitoring and making adjustments from time to time. But I still have the energy and time to take on some additional side hustles.
Some extra retirement income certainly doesn’t hurt especially since I made a decision to travel quite extensively for the next few years as I no longer have anymore pet responsibilities at home for the moment. Unfortunately, I also had a really bad tenant at one of my rental condos who stiffed me $10,000 last year as he didn’t pay rent and utilities for six months.
So to continue with my world travel plans, I had to manage this temporary financial setback and find some sort of side hustle to help manage this cash crunch. This is when I came across gig work with DoorDash, Uber Eats and Instacart.
Enter DoorDash, Uber Eats & Instacart
I already had a car and thought it might be interesting to try this out. I’ll get to see the different neighbourhoods in my new home and surrounding areas as well as check out the different restaurants around town. Being an independent contractor, I wasn’t tied into any work schedule as I could come on shift whenever I wanted and go home whenever I wanted. I could work as few or as many hours as I wished. The weather last summer was nice too which was perfect for this type of side hustle.
Unlike typical drivers who deliver fast food for restaurants, I chose to do an expanded role. Food delivery for restaurants was only part of my time out there as I also served as a professional shopper for all three apps. This usually involved going into grocery stores to shop for groceries and other items on behalf of customers. DoorDash, Uber and Instacart provided me with their own special credit cards used for payment at stores. Also, I was one of the very few drivers willing to deal with alcohol orders.
Most drivers, even those who elect to do grocery shopping orders, do not touch alcohol orders because of additional steps required including checking for sobriety with customers and verifying their IDs. Many drivers do not want to deal with potentially intoxicated customers. Legally, customers must be sober and provide valid photo IDs that are not expired in order for us to leave any alcohol with them. I also had to get the Ontario Smart Serve certification (which was actually paid for by DoorDash in my case). Despite these expanded legal tasks, I gladly took on alcohol orders because to me they were quite easy to do, pay better than food delivery orders and I have never had any issues with any intoxicated customers.
Learning to work efficiently in my chosen areas which included Collingwood, Blue Mountain township, Wasaga Beach and sometimes Barrie and Mississauga whenever I ventured there helped maximize income during my shifts. Typically I worked two shifts of about three hours each per day, ie., over the midday lunch and evening dinner hours. On an average week, I took in about $800-$900. On a few occasions, I wanted to see what was possible so I worked longer hours and made over $200 per day but this involved three shifts per day (adding in a breakfast shift) as well as driving many kilometres. I decided that it wasn’t going to be worth busting my butt for so many hours per day if I was going to try and go out seven days per week all summer.
I worked seven days per week because I had to fund two separate trips to Latin America plus a long Asia trip covering multiple countries and included a pricey scuba diving liveaboard expedition to Raja Ampat in Indonesia.
What I Learned From This Gig Work – Attitudes Of The Public
One of the things I had to get over with for this particular side hustle is the image of being a delivery driver and shopper. I no longer had a big and respectable corporate management title. I was now ‘just’ a driver and that’s how the market viewed me. Yes there were perhaps 2-3 individuals I came across who viewed me as just a driver and therefore below them in social status. Although they never said anything specific, I could tell just from how they talked to me and that they viewed themselves superior above delivery drivers.
I felt like saying, “Hey bitch, how many rental properties do you own?”. Of course I never said this out loud but I was sure thinking it. Fortunately the vast majority of people out there both restaurant/store staffers and customers were pretty nice friendly folks. Those who saw me drive up in my Mustang were often quite surprised that this was my car and often complimented me on it. My friend in Mississauga who also drives Uber Eats often gets similar reactions whenever he pulls up in his Tesla.
Again, society often assumes that drivers for Uber Eats, DoorDash and Instacart are just low people with minimal work skills. It’s incredible how society often judges others based on their current work without really knowing their backgrounds. I didn’t really need to work as a shopper/driver as this was just a summer retirement side hustle experiment.
The Addictive Convenience Of Online Ordering
Another thing I learned is just how technology has created some really bad habits in some people. I certainly understand it when busy overstressed mothers having to deal with screaming toddlers and older seniors who have limited mobility turn to online shopping and home deliveries to make their lives a bit easier. I was glad to help such folks out. But I have shopped/delivered orders to some folks living in lower income areas who probably shouldn’t be ordering take out in the first place (and paying delivery service fees). These folks should probably be saving money but the convenience of online ordering is just too easy and addictive for them. Many folks would rather just stay home to watch TV rather than take the time to go out to do their own grocery shopping or pick up their own take out meals. Sometimes I got orders to shop at pharmacies for some customers and at first I thought these would be for health related item. Turns out that most of the time, these customers just wanted me to pick up some junk food like chips, candy and ice cream for them while they stayed home to watch TV. I did get paid fairly for such orders so I really didn’t mind taking them. It’s just that this addiction seems to be what really drives the market for Uber Eats, DoorDash and Instacart.
Why Our Society Is So Unhealthy
Related to grocery shopping is my observation of what people actually buy for their home groceries. I’m a pretty basic grocery shopper when it comes to my own personal groceries. Since I have always maintained a very healthy diet, most of my own groceries are focused on fresh produce as I try to stay away from much processed and packaged food items.
When I started to take on grocery shopping orders, I was amazed by the large amount of processed items and junk food that so many people buy. In fact at first I actually found it quite challenging to be a professional shopper because I didn’t know many of the packaged food brands and where they were located within each grocery store. Only over time did I become somewhat familiar with different food items and where they could be found in a store. I worked up to be comfortable with shopping orders consisting of a maximum of about 15 different items but I have met Instacart shoppers out there pulling two full grocery carts (for two different customers at the same time) for about 50 to 60 different items. Such large orders would be far too intimidating for me!
Although most of us know it already, my direct observation of people’s grocery shopping really shows just why our society is so darn unhealthy. With the amount of processed and junk food consumed out there, no wonder why our population in general is so overweight.
My initial challenges with finding where certain grocery items were within a store were the same with alcohol orders at LCBO. I had minimal awareness of the different brands of wine, beer and liquor because I don’t really buy them. Luckily for me, many store staff especially those at LCBO were extremely helpful in taking me directly to where each alcohol brand was.
Interestingly, alcohol orders soon became one of my favourite type of orders since they were relatively easy to fulfill and tend to pay a bit more than other types of grocery and restaurant food orders. Because of the reluctance of most drivers in my area to take on alcohol orders, I also became one of the most active for alcohol orders in my area and had regular booze customers all summer long. It was interesting to see which brands people buy for home alcohol consumption (brand preferences are not as spread out as you might think).
Some People Are So Cheap
Drivers doing gig work for Uber Eats, DoorDash and Instacart are not employees for these companies. Instead, they are independent contractors who can work whenever they want. The money drivers earn as delivery fees are not high though. Where it becomes financially worthwhile are when customers add in tips for drivers which are usually added online rather than by cash. Only with the combination of base delivery fees plus tips does it become worthwhile for some but not all order requests.
A good thing about the apps we have in our cellphones is whenever we get pinged of order requests, we can see the estimated total amounts we would earn from the delivery fee/tips combo for each request. As independent contractors, we do not have to take on each order request that comes through. Very quickly I learned to turn down all order requests that I considered too low to make it worth my time.
Since I can see the estimated amount I would earn from any specific order request along with the distance required to delivery the order, I could quickly determine if an order was worth taking. Usually a low paying order request indicates that the customer is either a very low tipper or is not going to tip at all. Experienced drivers learn to turn down such low balling order requests and the customer’s food order ends up staying at the restaurant for an extended period of time since no driver in his/her right mind would want to pick up and delivery that cheap order. We have to take into account the time and gas we are paying (since Uber Eats, DoorDash and Instacart does not pay for our gas and other automobile expenses).
If I felt that a specific order would not even pay for my gas, I would not take on that order. It’s funny how some customers out there wonder why their food orders took so long to get delivered. It’s probably because they were too cheap on tips so it took forever to finally find a newbie driver to actually take that order on.
So some advice for Uber Eats, DoorDash and Instacart customers = if you want your orders delivered fast while your food is still hot, don’t be cheap on tipping! Treat delivery drivers/shoppers like you would at sit down restaurants and tip accordingly.
You would think that in general, the folks living at higher income areas would be higher tippers than those in lower income areas. This is true most of the time but not always. I’ve had customers in apartment buildings and multi-unit housing who tipped really well and some others from giant custom mansion/chalets in ski country who barely tipped at all. One customer from one of the better neighbourhoods tried to tip 26 cents in an order request. Needless to say, I didn’t take on that order!
There Are Jobs Out There
One of the things I really liked about this side hustle is that for me, it was kind of social. Over time, I got to meet many of the restaurant and LCBO/Beer Store staff along with some regular customers. Since I was more social than most drivers in my area, I usually chatted up with many of the folks I met during my shifts.
Most of the staff at restaurants were ethnic and even foreign workers on contract. It’s astonishing how some locals say there are no jobs out there. The reality is that there are jobs out there. Many locals just don’t want to work and as a result, many restaurants (along with Blue Mountain resort) need to recruit foreign workers to staff their locations.
Was This Side Hustle Worth It For Me?
So the question many are probably wanting to ask me – was this side hustle worth it for me? Well in terms of money (since I know for sure most people want to know), I made an average of $130 per day (no tax taken since I was being paid as an independent contractor). As I mentioned before, on a few days I wanted to challenge myself with longer shifts to see what was possible and cleared $200 but they were really long days.
I did manage to make up for the $10,000 loss of rental income which I was quite proud of. Sure I could have just relied on a line of credit to help me get through this temporary cash crunch but I didn’t want to pay the interest costs. Instead, I did what I felt I had to do and did some honest work making some honest money. Besides, as I said before, this was a retirement side hustle experiment as I wasn’t the only retiree out there doing this same type of gig work. As planned, I worked until if was time for my Asia trip and did not do this work all winter as I didn’t want to deal with the winter road conditions.
Other retirees in my neighbourhood who are also not ready to just sit at home all day are doing other types of part time work such as driving school bus, working at Home Depot, working at Blue Mountain and doing side home handyman stuff. Most of these retirees were educated professionals in their former working careers. One Tim Horton’s location in town is staffed mainly with retirees.
The reality of retirement is that fancy titles and huge corporate incomes are things of the past. This is what I have to face but if I manage my budgets right, my retirement will be comfortably funded. However, I still have to determine how I’m going to spend my time while I’m still active, mobile and healthy. I don’t see myself sitting outside on the sidewalk just playing checkers with other retired dudes. If it’s a side hustle that brings in some extra retirement cash that is active rather than passive, at least I want to make that type of active income activity fun. Otherwise I probably won’t do it. I could still work as a ski instructor for one of the ski resorts here but I don’t want to deal with teaching kids anymore.
Being a shopper/driver for Uber Eats, DoorDash and Instacart for four months last summer served its purpose. It made up for the temporary loss in rental income and I learned some things about people and got to know my town as well as surrounding areas better. It was an easy job and a very flexible one too. I’m glad that I tried it. However based on the criteria as the type of retirement side hustle I want to do in the future, I won’t do it again at least on any regular basis.
I might go out for the odd shift when the weather is pleasant since it’s an easy way to make some extra money and to say hello to some of the nice folks I met at the same time. But the wear and tear on my car along with gas fill ups needed were too much for me to do this on any regular basis in the future. The fun factor also needs to be higher for me to keep it as a regular retirement activity. So I’ll search for other side hustles this year to fill my retirement time (which I’ll also post about here).
On the other hand, for people out there who has a car and needs to earn some extra cash including those who might be in between jobs, I think delivering for Uber Eats and DoorDash is a feasible way to do that. Unlike what I did, a driver does not have to be a shopper as most drivers just deliver. So Instacart does not have to be an option if one does not want to be a shopper since this app is all just about shopping. But if you like shopping, then you can certainly add that to delivering too.
If you have any questions about doing gig work for Uber Eats, DoorDash or Instacart, just contact me. By the way just to clarify it – I did not drive Uber Ride which is picking up passengers. Mustang cars do not qualify as Uber Ride vehicles and I didn’t want to have strangers in my car anyway.
