As a gig delivery driver sometimes you have to take advantage of any offered opportunities as long as they can provide additional income for you. This opportunity includes registering with every food delivery service that has been launched in Australia. Not limited to food delivery platforms, whenever possible drivers can also be registered with a last-mile delivery or a rideshare platform.
To get the most out of earning potential, it is not enough for a driver to join only the market leader in the industry: Uber Eats, they also need to register with its competitors such as Menulog, Deliveroo or Doordash which is a new player in the country. Some of them even also work with on-demand last-mile delivery such as Amazon Flex, Sherpa or Yello.
Not only joining as delivery partners, but a delivery driver sometimes also goes online with all the on-demand delivery platforms, simultaneously. Yes, driving with multiple delivery apps is quite possible, many drivers did it without any major problems.
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Can you deliver Uber Eats and other apps at the same time?
Most of the delivery drivers in Australia work for Uber, and possibly you are also one of those drivers who are curious about one thing. Is going online with Uber Eats together with Doordash, Menulog and Deliveroo at the same time are allowed?
The answer is: absolutely yes, you may work with more than one app platform concurrently as long as you can handle it. This is allowed because the gig drivers are independent contractors, so the app platform cannot refuse this practice.
Running Apps Simultaneously
Commonly, multi-apping only works with two app platforms simultaneously, but sometimes they can work on more than two apps under certain conditions such as on weekdays when demand is less or during off-peak hours.
What about the acceptance rate? As far as we know, any delivery app platforms available in the country will not penalize drivers for low acceptance rates. Most companies currently only penalize drivers with low cancellation rates. Moreover, drivers are registered with these companies as independent contractors, so they can freely set their schedules and only drive when it works for them.
Why Working with Multiple Delivery App
For many drivers in Australia, the main reason for driving with many delivery app platforms is to maximize online time to earn as much as possible. Based on our observations, the following are some of the reasons why delivery drivers do multi-apping.
1. Choose the best offer
Drivers will have the option to choose a platform that offers them better pay. As we know the delivery pay for each platform is quite volatile every day. Sometimes drivers get good pay in one day, but not on another day. So by going online with two or more apps drivers can cherry-pick every given order and then determine which order gives the best pay.
Cherry-pick Order
For example, when you go online with two app platforms in rush hours. Two delivery requests popping on your phone’s screen. The first is from Uber Eats offering 11.1 km delivery for $5.93 (min earnings), and the second is from Doordash offering 4.8 km in total for $9.50.
Of the two offers, needless to say, you as a driver will choose the offer from Doordash since it has better pay with fewer kilometres travelled.
To help you determine which delivery platforms provide better pay. You can read our other article about which food delivery service pays best in Australia. In this article, we have compared how much drivers earn after completing an order from each delivery app.
2. More delivery opportunity
For some drivers waiting for a delivery request to appear on their phone screen is a very tedious thing. Especially if they have to do it for a long time which is sometimes a little frustrating. Driving around the city might be able to help but of course, it will also have the potential to reduce the drivers’ net income for that day as they have to spend more to buy gasoline.
Online with multiple delivery apps can be a solution to make the best use of driver time when on the road. After using multiple apps for some time you will be able to learn where and when the specified app works more effectively. For example, Uber Eats is very busy when you are in the CBD at lunchtime while Menulog or Deliveroo is more reliable when you are in the suburbs.
Tips for Multi-apping Uber Eats with other delivery apps
Many food delivery drivers work with Uber as their main delivery app, this is understandable because this platform has several advantages compared to competitors.
The first advantage is the larger delivery area in the city, while the other platform divides the delivery area in a city into several parts. In addition, Uber also allows drivers to go online whenever they want, in contrast to competitors who have to schedule in advance.
The following are some tips that may be useful for you to get the most out of your work with multi-app delivery platforms.
- Multi-apping is recommended only if Uber Eats is quiet, if you find a good and busy area, you don’t need to deliver multiple apps at the same time. You need to know, Uber has now introduced multiple pickups from different restaurants and also you might still get a lot of double orders from the same restaurant.
- More focused with one phone, many drivers do this without any difficulties. But if you are more comfortable with multiple devices, why not? But you need to remember that some apps only work with a primary phone, a device where your phone number is embedded.
- Once you accept an order while multi-apping, don’t forget to pause/offline the other apps. It is not recommended to keep it online to maintain your acceptance rate at a reasonable number.
- Whenever possible, you can online/unpause the other apps when you have picked up the food from the restaurant and you are on your way to the customer’s address. Before doing so make sure you’re minutes away from the drop off location.
- Try not to accept orders from two apps (or more) at the same time, even though the orders come from the same restaurant and are sent to nearby addresses. The first reason it will give a bad experience to the customer because the food will arrive cold and vice versa. Another reason, some restaurants have a policy of not allowing a driver to pick up two orders from two different app platforms at the same time, we’ve read about this happening at Maccas.
- When you are confused when two apps offer orders with a comparable pay rate, consider prioritizing platforms that have a running schedule, like Doordash, Deliveroo and Menulog. Because other platforms, unlike Uber Eats, allow drivers to be online 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
- In addition to multi-apping with other food delivery platforms, Uber Eats is also suitable to be used as a complement to the on-demand last-mile delivery jobs available in Australia. One of them is Sherpa which provides 2 hours, 4 hours and same-day delivery service. Drivers can take advantage of this considerable time to deliver food from another platform.
Disadvantage of Multi-apping
Even though driving with multiple apps looks quite profitable, it turns out that there are some disadvantages that drivers may get in the long run.
- Ineligible for driver promotions
It will be very difficult for a driver who does multi-apping to achieve the targets set by driver promotions, Uber usually calls it Quest. However, this kind of promotion also sometimes requires additional requirements such as a high acceptance rate.As we know, a low acceptance rate is one of the consequences of multi-apping. Most on-demand delivery platforms like Doordash even clearly state on their website that drivers won’t get deactivated because of this rating. Uber Eats even hides this rating from the driver app.
- It’s hard to become a top driver
Some app platforms offer driver perks and rewards to their drivers. An example is Uber Eats Pro, which allows its partners to unlock new rewards as drivers reach higher status. Drivers can unlock Gold, Platinum and Diamond rewards and have the ability to get priority support over the phone, discount on fuel and select auto stores.While at Doordash there is a program called Top Dasher, the company way of recognizing and rewarding the best Dashers. The main advantage is that drivers can be online 24/7 without the need to schedule in advance. In addition, they will also prioritize this type of driver to get new orders.
Delivery Platforms Rewards
By doing multi-apping, it will be quite difficult for Uber Eats drivers to achieve higher levels of Pro Rewards. Doordash drivers will also have difficulty becoming a Top Dasher because this program requires an acceptance rate of at least 70% which is of course impossible if you cherry-pick the orders.
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