Everything You Need to Know About Multi-Apping (Driving for Multiple Delivery Apps at Once)

Have you ever thought about multi-apping? In many cases, multi-apping can offer many benefits, and this makes it a potentially appealing option. However, to ensure that you're getting the right solutions for your delivery-driving goals, it's important to consider the different options available. Luckily, this is where our experts come in. As such, today, we're looking at the key things you need to know about multi-apping, including how it works, the benefits and drawbacks, and how to use the Para delivery driver app to make multi-apping easier and more profitable than ever!

WHAT IS MULTI-APPING?

Multi-apping is a relatively simple process to understand: it involves driving for multiple food delivery apps simultaneously. Often, we tend to work on just one food delivery app at a time.

That's not to say that we don't have accounts with several different delivery apps, but many of us choose to deliver with just one app at a time. For example, you might start out delivering for GrubHub during the lunchtime shift, then round out the day by delivering with Uber Eats or PostMates. However, what if there was an alternative here? Well, there is: you can deliver for both at the same time through multi-apping.

With multi-apping, you work on several apps ' in this case, GrubHub and Uber Eats ' at the same time. This allows you to take on multiple orders at once, streamlining your workflows, reducing downtime, and potentially allowing you to earn more with gig work.

However, it's important to consider that multi-apping isn't an ideal solution in every scenario. With this thought in mind, we strongly recommend that you take it slowly when getting started with multi-apping; otherwise, you could find yourself actually doing more harm than good to your account.

HOW DOES MULTI-APPING WORK?

Multi-apping is a very simple concept; you sign into several food delivery apps simultaneously and take on multiple delivery offers. Then, simply complete the deliveries as normal ' but with the stipulation of trying to streamline the delivery routes to keep delivery times low while increasing your earnings per hour.

#1 Accepting the First Delivery

Multi-apping starts as normal with delivery driving: accepting a delivery. Try to look for a delivery ideally that offers a fair rate of pay and covers a longer distance for multi-apping; choosing a short delivery for your first option will make it much harder to streamline your deliveries.

#2 While Waiting for Delivery Collection

Once you have accepted your first delivery, you'll need to head to the restaurant as normal to collect the delivery. You may need to wait temporarily for the food to be ready. Uber recommends a fifteen-minute waiting time for collections, so it's easy to see how this can add up.

However, be prepared to wait around a little, as pushing time to arrive 'just in time' may result in the food being collected late. This is especially risky if you're collecting a quick meal, such as fast food or a sandwich.

While waiting to collect a delivery, we strongly recommend considering where you are delivering and the route you will take. Roughly working out how you'll get there makes multi-apping and choosing suitable second deliveries much easier.

#3 Look For New Collections en Route

Once you've quickly remembered the route you'll take to collect the order, you can log into your second delivery app and look for another collection that roughly follows the same route. In other words: you'll want to look for a restaurant that's within a few minutes from your current delivery route. A short detour is ideal!

#4 Accept Second Orders

If a new order offer collection is just a short distance from your current delivery route, accept the offer and begin the journey to the restaurant. Collect the second order, then proceed to deliver to the closest customer before continuing your journey to the next customer.

CAN I EARN MORE WITH MULTI-APPING?

One of the great benefits of multi-apping is that you can earn a lot more from a single delivery run. Since you're aiming to complete multiple deliveries within a single journey, you'll substantially boost your earnings potential. However, to earn more with multi-apping, staying on the ball is important. It's also worth remembering that good multi-apping opportunities may not always be available; the most effective way to multi-app is to drive during peak times.

Creating a scenario is the best way to demonstrate how much more you can earn with multi-apping. Imagine first logging into your Uber Eats account and accepting a 10-mile delivery. The average Uber Eats trip pays around $9, while base GrubHub orders start from $4 but potentially pay higher.

Base Earnings with GrubHub Deliveries

Let's assume you take an order for a 15-mile trip from GrubHub for $6. With waiting times, this trip takes you around 30 minutes to complete. In this scenario, you would make about $12 per hour.

It's more than the minimum average wage on GrubHub of $8.65. However, it's still massively less than the average hourly wage of around $29 for US residents.

Base Earnings with Uber Eats Deliveries

Based on a similar scenario, imagine taking a 10-mile trip from Uber Eats for $9, and it takes you about 30 minutes again to complete this delivery again. This would equate to much better earnings of around $18 per hour. This figure would be great for many people, as it's slightly higher than the Uber Eats average pay of $14.90 per hour. However, it's still over $10 less than the average US income.

Earnings When Multi-Apping with GrubHub and Uber Eats

Now, let's consider that you can streamline your deliveries to combine these two orders. If one collection restaurant was just a two-minute detour each way from your chosen route, and you spent two minutes waiting to collect the order you would have a six-minute detour on the original drive time. However, this could substantially increase your earnings.

Now, because of the six-minute detour, you're looking at a total delivery time of around 36 minutes. But you're now making $15 during that time, before accounting for tips as well. Over an hour, this would equate to an hourly rate (before tips) of $25. That's a much healthier figure and means you could earn $100 in just four hours of working time.

Plus, don't forget, the general consensus for a fair tip is around $4v. So, across two completed deliveries, that would take your total pay to $23, or $38 over the course of an hour. Now we're talking!

The most crucial aspect of successful multi-apping is effective route planning. If you can streamline your orders so that taking on an additional delivery doesn't require much more than a five or ten-minute detour, you can make substantially more per hour. Indeed, multi-apping allows you to complete around 150% of the number of deliveries that you usually would.

THE BENEFITS AND DRAWBACKS OF MULTI-APPING

Benefits of Multi-Apping

There's so much to love about multi-apping. Some of the main benefits of multi-apping include:

• Multi-apping reduces downtime. Idle time is unpaid time as a delivery driver. Luckily, with multi-apping (and Para's 'food ready by' estimates ' we'll get onto that later), you can significantly reduce the time spent hanging around doing nothing.
• Multi-apping allows you to complete more deliveries. You're paid on a piece rate as a delivery driver. As such, more deliveries equals more income!
• Streamlining routes saves fuel. Gas prices are through the roof, so streamlining your routes can help save fuel. This spares your wallet and the planet; it's a win-win scenario!

Drawbacks of Multi-Apping

While multi-apping can offer great potential for your earnings, it's not a perfect solution. Indeed, if you want to make the most of multi-apping, it requires a great deal of concentration to pull it off successfully. Some of the main drawbacks here of multi-apping include the following:

• Multi-apping requires more focus than traditional drives. To make multi-apping work, you need to be on the ball to accept new orders more closely than with traditional deliveries. You'll almost always make more than normal with multi-apping. However, if you choose too long detours, you may cut your earning potential to just a few extra dollars per hour ' which isn't worth the extra effort.
• It can put your account ratings at risk if not done right. Apps such as Uber Eats allow clients to rate your performance. However, if your multi-apping efforts result in food being delivered cold or late, this can severely lower your ratings.
• Poor management may stop you from getting paid for deliveries. Multi-apping requires a great deal of careful management to ensure that you're making more deliveries without compromising the quality of your services. Some delivery apps may not pay the delivery driver if the food is refunded due to being cold or late; so prioritizing good service is vital.

MULTI-APPING WITH THE PARA APP

If you now think multi-apping is right for you, it's worth considering how you could overcome some potential drawbacks.

Of course, the trickiest thing is managing your orders, since you only have a very small window of time to accept or reject a delivery offer. For example, GrubHub allows around 90 seconds to approve a collection; if you take longer than this to decide, it will automatically be marked as a rejected offer. This can severely impact your delivery account, and may result in changes to your program level ' not what you want!

Fortunately, the Para app is ideal to help you earn more gig work through multi-apping. Indeed, Para gives you the information you need there and then. So you don't have to waste a large portion of the countdown trying to determine whether an order is worth it.

What Features Can Para Offer for Food Delivery Drivers?

Para is an exceptionally versatile tool for food delivery drivers and is committed to helping drivers earn more through their gig work. Some of the key, amazing features that Para offers for drivers include the following:

Auto Decline filters (new and existing!):

• Estimated total payouts, so you know what you're actually likely to receive for your work, rather than having to guess and gamble all the time with potentially poor returns)
• Dollar per mile, Dollar per hour estimates, helping optimize your drive times and ensuring you're getting the most for the time you spend on the road
• Total drive time, so you know how long a job is actually likely to take. After all, a 10-mile delivery at 20 mi/hr will take the same time as a 30-mile delivery at 60 mi/hr, so knowing this information can substantially help strengthen your work efforts.
• Flagging systems, so you never have to worry about delivering to a bad customer, restaurant, or apartment again!
• Pickup and drop off addresses - yes! you can see a customer drop-off address even before you pick up!
• Apartment vs house comparisons ' so you can avoid those hefty climbs with a heavy bag of food on your back! Because let's face it ' none of us like those orders unless they come with a hefty tip to compensate us for the hard work, that is!
• 'Food ready by' estimates, so you won't have to worry about hanging around for half an hour waiting for a meal to be ready on a $5 delivery!

Along with your multi-apping efforts, these features are excellent solutions to help streamline the delivery driving process. So, why not give them a try ' you might just find that Para can help transform the way you work. Or, why not visit the Para FAQs to learn more about getting started with Para.

FINAL THOUGHTS

If you've been looking for great new ways to bolster your earning opportunities through GrubHub and UberEats, multi-apping could be your solution! While it's not the easiest trick to learn, once you've got to grips with judging whether an order is 1) worthwhile and 2) en route, you'll very quickly be able to optimize your earnings and make more with your gigs. But remember: to further push the income boundaries when you work on multiple apps, be sure to give the Para driver utility tools a try.