Greg's Corner

Your delivery tips may not be going where you think!

In today’s immediate response needed society, many of us use food delivery services like UberEats or DoorDash to have food delivered to our home. These services became popular once consumers found out that they could have food delivered to them from restaurants that don’t normally deliver. Can’t get out of the home and need to get a decent meal delivered for dinner? Just use the app for one of these services and you can have dinner delivered to your home in no time. Now, while it may be convenient for you this convenience comes at a cost. Is that cost burdened by the restaurant? No. Is it the platform itself? Sort of. However, too much of the cost may be burdened by the delivery drivers themselves.

A recent report from the New York Times had one of their writers and go out and work as a delivery driver for these gig economy platforms. In order to make any decent amount of money, many of these drivers have to work for several different services while trying to comply with the rules and demands of each. trying to juggle all of those demands increases the likelihood that they could lose out on deliveries. Meanwhile, they’re not really employees of any of these companies and are seen more like independent contractors. This way these companies don’t have to provide many benefits to their drivers.

To make matters worse, according to the Times report, some of these platforms consider tips as part of the drivers’ base wages. For example, if you tip your delivery driver through the platform’s app, that tip may just be taken off the top of whatever they were going to make for that delivery. In essence, tipping just reduced their pay. Not all delivery platforms are like this, but The Verge has a list of companies that do and don’t count driver tips as base pay. So the next time you order lunch to be delivered, try to keep in mind the person delivering your food and what they’re going through as well.