Uber Eats vs DoorDash (For customers, drivers and restaurant owners)

Ordering food has never been easier. You can have your favorite dish from your favorite restaurant to be delivered to your home effortlessly. Food delivery is so useful saving a lot of people from cooking at home or taking a trip to a restaurant.

There are many companies offering food delivery apps but a few of them are having the lion share. In this post, we will be covering Uber Eats and Doordash only.

We will mention different aspects of these companies by looking as an eater (Eating customer), restaurant owner, and a delivery driver perspective.

Here are a few things we will specially talk about:

• Which company has a bigger service network? (Works with more restaurants)
• Which app is more user friendly and offers a better user experience?
• How long does it take for ordered food to be delivered?
• How much money can you if you have worked as a driver for these companies?
• Which company is a better option for the eater, driver, and restaurant owner?
• How these companies partner up with the restaurants?

Let's get started.

Uber Eats

Uber Eats is a food delivery company founded in 2014 with the original name of “Uber Fresh”. In 2015 the company rebranded itself as Uber Eats. You probably already know Uber Eats owned by its parent company Uber.

Uber Eats allows people ordering food using their smartphones through their own app (available on both IOS and Android Market places). By using the app, people can access hundreds of Uber Eats partnering restaurants, see the menus of those restaurants, and order their food.

When an order is placed, a driver accepts the job, visits the restaurant, and picks up the food to bring to the delivery address. It is that simple.

Users are allowed to track their drivers and contact them via their app. They can tip their drivers directly in the app if they want to.

Delivery Fees

As a person ordering food online you usually have 2 main concerns.

• How fast your food will be delivered?
• How much extra will you pay than if you would eat in the restaurant?

Uber Eats applied a flat $4.99 delivery fee until 2018. In 2018, the company changed its delivery fee structure from being flat to a distance-based charge.

How much a delivery fee should you expect using the service?

You will be paying a fee that can range from $2 – $8.

However, the company applies a different delivery fee system in different countries.

For instance, in the UK and Ireland, the delivery fee is based on the value of the order. By 2019, Uber Eats declared the reduction of its delivery fee from 35% to 30% on the value of the order. Delivery fees are transparent, and it allows you to benefit from many reduced or free delivery promotions.

Customer Support

Uber Eats as it is owned by Uber shares the same customer support with Uber. Any time you have an issue you can visit help.uber.com. The support platform helps drivers, riders, and eaters(Uber EATS customers).

Cons of Uber Eats (For the eater)

Here a few drawbacks of using Uber Eats if you order your food from Uber Eats.

Delivery drivers may be just taxi drivers.

We want our food to be delivered by the people working as food delivery drivers. However, Uber Eats can assign the food delivery gig to a Uber taxi driver who is not primarily working as a food delivery person. It is also common to see communication issues between Uber and restaurants.

You cannot rate drivers.

Uber Eats doesn't allow people to rate drivers. You cannot share your experience with the driver if you want to publicly mention.

You may have an unpleasant experience with the driver. If you leave a negative review on the platform it has nothing to do with the driver. It is related to food and restaurants.

No chat function.

Uber Eats has no chat function which in my opinion a major deficiency. You may need to call agents that are not very skilled in communication.

DoorDash

Doordash is a San Fransisco-based prepared food delivery service and a major competitor of Uber Eats. It is founded in 2013 and expanded its service area nationwide very rapidly.

As of May 2019, Doordash has been serving in more than 4000 cities and offered a 340,000 selection of stores across the US and Canada.

Cons of Using Doordash (For the customer)

Late deliveries

One of the common concerns I hear often the order is delivered late or messed up by the individual drivers. That is said it to happen more often today than when the times DoorDash has just started.

Driver reliability

The drivers' reliability still a varying factor. However, a lot of things like traffic jams and restaurant delays are not under their control.

You should know the time of day and the popularity of the restaurant placing an order. During peak times, your food might get longer to be delivered to your address.

Hence, set up reasonable expectations. For instance, I don't order meals that I want to eat hot and fresh during peak times.

How Do DoorDash and Uber Eats Work with the restaurants?

You may be thinking, why to partner up with these companies as a restaurant. You could employ a team of your own drivers and bank more profits, right?

It is unfortunately not that simple for the restaurants. We will talk about why working with Uber Eats or Doordash can unburden the restaurant's business management.

Brings Exposure

Working with a food delivery system brings more eyeballs and exposure to your brand. These food delivery companies raised millions of dollars and spent millions in marketing budget just to get folks using their platforms.

So for them, they are much more incentivized to get people to spend and to get people using their apps. If your restaurant listed in those apps, it will get exposure from a lot of people who may otherwise never heard your restaurant.

Leverage delivery app companies' customer database.

Working with food delivery companies like Uber Eats and Doordash you are leveraging their customer database. This is one of the main reasons why would you want to partner up with delivery apps.

No need to employ drivers.

The other reason, working with these companies you don't need to hire your own driver. Dealing with human resources is a very unpleasant task for many businesses.

No need to deal with in house staffing.

Dealing with your in house staffing may be already such a big problem.

Why would you want to have your own delivery team as well? You may have a more simple business management process if someone else is taking care of the delivery part for you.

It leaves you more room to focus on more important tasks.

Yes, there is a fee involved using these delivery apps, but you don't need to worry about your own driving team benefits, their wellbeing, the culture none of that. Just pay the fee and focus on your more important tasks.

This is going to save you a lot of time, the trouble of dealing with your own driver.

Saves money when the economies are bad.

Another reason why you want to be partner up with delivery apps, during the slow times you already paying for rent, for your cook.

Why wouldn't you want to utilize these apps and fulfill these orders although you might be profiting as much, although you may not have enough margins or as big margins as your dining customers?

This is still a very good way to offset sunk cost which is your rent and your labor and everything you have already paid for. So these are the reasons why would you consider becoming a partner to these delivery apps. So, how much these delivery apps charge?

How much money do restaurants pay to delivery apps?

Food delivery apps charge a percentage of the total order value. Most restaurants pay from %25 to %35 depending on the agreement they make with the app companies. Restaurant size and reputation, bargaining power, and restaurant location will define how much a restaurant will pay the delivery app companies.

For instance, Uber Eats charge %30 to restaurants from the order value. However, a lot of times restaurant owners can negotiate this cut to be reduced a few more percentage points.

As a restaurant owner partnering up with these delivery apps you will acquire new customers. The customers that wouldn't have a chance to know your restaurant otherwise.

Is working with these delivery app companies are always good for the restaurants?

Obviously not, everything has its own plus and minus.

In my research, I have found most restaurants seem to hate Doordash. When Doordash launches into a region and decides to pick up a restaurant they make a courtesy call the restaurant if they want to be part of Doordash's program.

It is definitely a “Yes” or “No” question.

For the restaurants say yes, there is no issue. But for the restaurants say “No” the situation gets complicated.

What Doordash does is doing some homework by looking online. They find some prize sheets, some other guides, old websites, they patch together a menu as best as they can, and that menu is the menu of the restaurant which refuses to join their program.

You may be thinking what's the problem there?

What happens next, these dashers going into these restaurants and they are mad because they don't want to be a part of Doordash. Doordash is overcharging the customer for every item, and there are items that customers cannot get they used to have.

These customers are coming to the restaurant they see the prices are cheaper and they see there are actually not the items they saw in Doordash they came in for. These restaurants are taking heat and losing customers.

For this reason by itself In-N-Out Burger sued Doordash. There is really no law that governs third-party delivery apps. Hence as a restaurant owner always be cautious with what is going on.

How Do They Compare for the Drivers?

Both Uber Eats and Doordash work with drivers to deliver orders. If you plan to start as a delivery driver I have some valuable information that will save you a lot of time.

Both companies have advantages and disadvantages for the drivers.

If you are just starting, Uber Eats is a little faster to sign up for. It is because they don't send you anything in the mail. Once you sign up for the Uber Eats, and your background checked and approved you can start driving.

The main advantage of Uber Eats over Doordash, with Uber Eats you don't have to schedule any of your hours. You can simply open up the Uber Eats app, click the “GO” Button and you are good to go.

Here is the thing you may not like with the Uber Eats.

When a trip comes in, the app displays you a little job icon telling that there is a restaurant at a certain distance ( say 3minutes or 9 minutes distance).

Once you accept the job you drive all the way down to the restaurant, and once you get to the restaurant you can find out people live at very far distances.

Don't get surprised if you have to drive 15 miles to deliver your order. Needless to say, you will need to another 15 miles back which is quite a lot of driving distance. Gas is not cheap and if the person you deliver the order doesn't tip you, you'll get only $7.

Most trips will make you $7 or $8 dollars. With Uber Eats the lowest paying trips are about $3.25. Considering the chance of having no tip, why the heck you drive for it.

Uber Eats doesn't tell you if the person making the order tipped you or not. You will learn if you have got any tips usually 30 minutes after. Well, there are times it takes a few days to get your tip after delivering an order.

Maybe the guy who made the order took it slow or the Uber Eats. But there are times tips can arrive with a little delay as I have mentioned.

The main driver issue with the Uber Eats, they don't tell you where the person lives before you accept the order. That can be enough reason for many people not to drive for Uber Eats.

Let's talk about Doordash by looking from a driver's perspective.

The main disadvantage of Doordash, you have to schedule driving hours. There is a scheduling portion of the app that shows you different areas that are nearby you can go ahead and schedule your hours for.

You can reserve a 30 min schedule which is equal to one delivery. However, a lot of times 30 min is not enough time to actually get a delivery done.

What times are best to drive?

Usually, dinner and lunchtimes are the best times to schedule your drives. Because people at those times go out for eating.

The problem with the driving scheduling system, sometimes all peak demand times are taken by the other drivers. If you have to schedule from 12:30 AM to 2:30 AM a time period there are going to be hardly any orders.

If you cannot really schedule any driving, you can go to the dash portion and you can see all the areas that are currently not available for scheduling.

You will see gray areas on your map, if it is gray you cannot start dashing unless you have already scheduled. If you see the red color you can go ahead and drive to that area and start dashing.

Here is the unpleasant surprise that maybe waiting the Doordash drivers. If you drive to a red area to start working by the time you get there the area can turn to gray. This will allow you no longer to dash.

Doordash has an advantage Uber Eats doesn't offer. It offers a peak pay until 2:20 PM.

If you want to drive there for the next couple of hours, every single delivery you do, you are going to earn an extra dollar from it. This can be particularly good during holiday times because everywhere during those times are quite busy.

If you will drive during the holiday times definitely drive for Doordash.

The minimum Doordash order usually is $3.50. The way Doordash does their payments is they give you $1 and the customer tip. If the customer tip doesn't meet their minimum, they will give you a little bit more to meet their minimum which is $5.50.

This is a major advantage of Doordash over Uber Eats that it guarantees you to make a minimum amount. The bare minimum with Uber Eats is $3.25. You can make more money driving for Doordash for smaller deliveries.

Also, Doordash looks a little better overall. They tell you earnings upfront, they tell you where the person located upfront, and you don't have to wait for those tips coming in. Being a Doordash driver you get them right away.

Working with Doordash, you know where to pick the order up where you have to drop it. Scheduling with Doordash is based on neighborhoods. Also, the neighborhood areas are divided quite small.

If Doordash used the same neighborhood system as Grubhub it would be better. Grubhub uses the same neighborhood system but creates larger neighborhood portions for the drivers. But anyways, the scheduling system is not good at all.

For instance, if you have given the Tustin area to deliver, you can only deliver the Tustin area. If you drive from Tustin to Irvine you have to come back to Tustin again to pick another delivery. You cannot pick a delivery from Irvine and bring it back to Tustin.

Uber Eats doesn't have many deliveries and when they have they will pay you less than Doordash. Also, people who order from Uber Eats tend to tip less often. This is a common complaint delivery drivers are really dissatisfied with.

How much money do delivery drivers make?

How much Uber Eats drivers make?

The amount of money you can make as an Uber Eats driver depends on a few factors.

• The density of orders (on your area of delivery)
• The time of the day
• The actual amount of hours you spend driving.

Smaller cities mean longer driving distances while bigger cities will offer more pings and more orders. You can expect to have more orders on the weekends, therefore, making more money.

Taking into account your car expenses like gas, insurance, maintenance, etc. you can make somewhere $8 to $12 for an hour of delivery. Obviously, this price may go up to $20 in metropolitan areas.

I have taken the above screenshot is taken from Glassdoor to give you an idea about the pay range of Uber Eats drivers.

However, there are many variables and making a “one fits all” calculation is not possible. Denser cities may not require you to travel around a lot. Also, the denser cities also can work for your favor since all people packed in those places that will eliminate long trips.

If there are many restaurants around and they work with Uber Eats that is great. Uber Eats serve from the local neighborhood that makes riding less necessary.

If there are not many other drivers, you can get plenty of jobs that can make you more money spending less effort.

Can you make $2,000 a week driving with Uber Eats?

No, you will likely never achieve it. Uber Eats sets a limit of 12 consecutive working hours being online and 15 hours of mixed hours before the app goes offline. They don't want drivers working very hard and causing problems due to the high level of stress. It is also due to preventing accidents and keeping quality of service up.

If you cannot rest you cannot drive right?

Let's say you work 7 days a week and 12 hours per day. That means you work 84 hours per week. This is an intense working schedule but for the sake of example, let's say you do that.

If you make a $15 to $18 an hour (which is very decent to be realistically made from driving for Uber Eats), you are going to make $1200 to $1500 a week.

Also, this assumption is made considering you have a good boost. If you don't have it, you will practically not get orders, and will not make anywhere close to that.

How much Doordash drivers make?

Let”s take a loot at Doordash this time. Below screenshot is taken from Glassdoor again. Keep in mind, the pay range may change a few bucks up and down. But don't let that information fool you since Glassdoor just complies with user-provided data.

If you plan to start as a delivery service and wonder which company as a better choice you may benefit from the below table.

What do you need to start as a delivery driver?

Uber Eats drivers

Let's say you have already decided to work as Uber Eats driver. Here is what you need to start with:

Delivery requirements

Car delivery

• Meet the minimum age to drive in your city
• Have a 2-door or 4-door car made after 1998
• Have a valid driver's license, registration, and vehicle insurance
• Have at least one year of driving experience

Scooter delivery

• Use any make or model 2-wheel scooter
• Must have motor of 50cc or less that travels no faster than 30 mph

Bike delivery

• Be at least 18 years old
• Have a government-issued ID
• When signing up, be sure to choose Biking under transportation method

*Delivery varies by city. In many markets, proof of residency is required. You’ll also need to pass a background check and other things as well.

DoorDash drivers

You will need to visit Doordash sign-up page. You will need to provide basic information like email, phone number, and zip.

After that, you will go through a background check. This job is done by a company called Checker. They are going to give you your identifying report information. Name, date of birth, social security number how they are going to find records on you. Those are the 3 main identifiers.

They will do a social security number trace, a sex offender search, a global watch list search, and a national search.

After you got accepted into this program they will ask you where you would like to receive your activation kit. The next thing you will do is fill out a W-9 form.

Here are other requirements:

• Any model year is acceptable
• No vehicle inspection
• A normal functioning car is fine
• Motorcycles and scooters are eligible
• No cosmetic requirements drive your car as it is.
• Bicycles qualify but only in select cities

That is pretty much it.

The Final Verdict

Although both companies have flaws they are in general great companies. However, they can create a really different experience for the eater, driver and restaurant owner. Let alone each individual person in one of these three categories can have entirely different experiences.

In the end, Uber Eats more friendly option for the eaters while Doordash seems to be a better choice for drivers since its pay structure allows making more money. If you are a restaurant owner both can work good provided you create a good bargain for your business.