If you’ve been toying with the idea of signing up to drive for Grubhub to make some extra money but are wondering, “Will driving for Grubhub be right for me?”, you’ve found the right article.
While demand for delivery drivers is outpacing supply and working for Grubhub can be a fantastic option for someone who wants to join the gig worker global economy, it’s still important to understand what being a delivery driver for Grubhub will be like.
This article will walk you through everything you need to know about working with Grubhub, including how it works, how Grubhub calculates driver pay and how they pay Grubhub drivers, how to increase your earnings, and how to apply to drive for Grubhub.
By the time you’re done reading, you’ll understand everything you need to know about your earning potential as a Grubhub driver.
How Grubhub Works
Grubhub is the biggest food delivery service in the United States due to its merger with Seamless in 2013 and its voracious acquisition of other delivery service companies.
The Grubhub portfolio of brands includes Grubhub, Seamless, MenuPages, LevelUp, AllMenus, Tapingo, and Eat24.
Hungry diners can order from over 105,000 local restaurants in over 2,000 U.S. cities and London by using Grubhub’s website and mobile apps.
Grubhub has the largest diner base, processing over 467,500 orders on a daily basis, which means there is plenty of work for delivery drivers like you.
How Grubhub Calculates Driver Earnings
The basic formula Grubhub uses to calculate driver earnings is:
Per order rate + $0.50 per mile from the restaurant to the customer + 100 percent of your tips = your driver pay
The first piece of the formula, the per order rate, is the part of your pay that can vary quite a lot and that is determined by where you’re working.
Bigger cities with a higher cost of living like Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City will have a higher per order rate than smaller, less expensive cities like Phoenix, Seattle, and Austin.
No matter where you live and work, as a Grubhub delivery driver, you can expect to earn above the local hourly minimum wage.
Your per order rate is not impacted by the size of the delivery order or whether the customer used one of the many Grubhub promo codes or an e-gift or physical gift cards.
The only part of your pay impacted by the order size is your tip.
In some markets, Grubhub guarantees an hourly minimum base pay.
If your market is one of those, Grubhub will inform you of that fact during your driver onboarding and let you know how much money they are guaranteeing on an hourly basis.
On a good day, you should be able to earn well above that hourly wage but it’s a nice way for Grubhub to ensure you’re earning a liveable wage.
How Grubhub Pays Drivers
While Grubhub customers are offered a range of payment methods (credit cards or debit cards, Grubhub gift cards, PayPal, Venmo, Apple or Android Pay, and American Express checkout), Grubhub drivers are limited to weekly direct deposit payouts from Grubhub and the occasional cash tip.
Despite being an independent contractor, Grubhub will not pay you through your PayPal account (on the plus side, no PayPal fees for you!).
You will be paid on Thursday by direct deposit in your bank account.
The payment will include everything you earned from Monday through Sunday of the week before.
Depending on your bank, you may be waiting between 3–5 days to access your money.
If you need access to your Grubhub earnings faster than that, the best solution is to open another bank account.
If you haven’t gotten your money by the following Monday, you should contact a Grubhub driver specialist at [email protected].
How to Increase Your Earnings
The fastest way to increase your hourly pay is to ensure you’re getting as many orders as possible.
You can do this by ensuring you’re working at busy times (dinnertime has many more delivery orders than breakfast time) and accepting as many orders as you can.
Paying close attention to your mobile device and quickly accepting order offers will increase your base pay per shift.
You can also increase your tips by being friendly and getting to the delivery address in a timely manner.
While traffic is beyond your control, taking direct routes and only making gas station stops between deliveries will help you be more efficient.
As you complete more deliveries, you will have the ability to become a Pro or Premier Grubhub driver.
At these levels, you can access additional perks and benefits, like early access to scheduling blocks and the ability to deliver catering orders, which are larger and will earn you more, both in base pay and tips.
To become a Pro or Premier driver, you’ll need to maintain high attendance rates, high acceptance rates, and low block drop rates.
Another thing you can do to fill your schedule and maximize the amount of extra money you can earn (although it isn’t officially Grubhub recommended) is to fill your downtime with other delivery or ridesharing apps.
Food delivery apps like Grubhub, Postmates, DoorDash, and Uber Eats may very quiet in the morning on business days but ridesharing apps like Lyft and Uber have commuters who need to get from their home to their office.
Similarly, the commute home tends to happen before the dinner rush.
Don’t try to work for multiple mobile apps at once, but you can easily fill a full-time schedule by working part-time for different apps during their busiest hours.
How to Apply to Drive for Grubhub
The Grubhub driver application is a multi-step process, but it’s not hard.
Open your web browser and navigate to driver.grubhub.com and complete the initial sign-up form you see on the page.
You’ll need to provide some basic contact information.
You’ll have to enter the required documentation — a driver’s license or valid state ID, your bank account information, and your car insurance paperwork — and then you’ll need to accept the Grubhub terms and conditions.
Make sure you have your required documentation handy when you’re ready to apply to drive for Grubhub.
Once you’ve filled out the form above and tapped “Start Earning,” you’ll be sent to a six-question survey.
This survey is to ensure that you meet the Grubhub driver requirements and that you are able to deal pleasantly with restaurants and people.
After completing the six-question survey, you’ll receive an email confirmation from Grubhub and be expected to complete an online onboarding session or an in-person interview.
The in-person interview and the online onboarding session are both just driver training.
The only difference is that at the in-person interview, Grubhub will give you your Grubhub delivery bag and uniform.
If you choose to complete the online onboarding instead of the in-person interview, your Grubhub delivery bag and uniform will come in the mail.
You won’t be able to start working for Grubhub until you have the delivery bag and the uniform, plus have the Grubhub driver app downloaded to your iPhone or Android phone.
So if it’s possible to attend an in-person interview, choose that option.
You’ll be able to start earning money with Grubhub faster.
Go Forth and Earn!
Working with Grubhub won’t give you the same sort of income predictability as some other gig jobs but, as a result, the income potential is much higher and your hours can be much more flexible.
For many Grubhub drivers, the flexibility is well worth the unpredictability.
And you will still get paid weekly by direct deposit and may earn cash tips, so you aren’t waiting around for a monthly paycheck.
If you’ve been thinking about applying to Grubhub but aren’t sure the money will be worth it, there is only one way to find out – apply.
Use the tips above to maximize your earnings and if it still isn’t worth it, quit and do something else, but many Grubhub drivers stick around for months or even years.
You just might end up being one of them.
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