In this day and age, driving for one food delivery app is no longer a nice-to-have option. Gone are the days of making consistent, efficient, and predictable income with one single delivery app. There may be a few people that can do it with one app but for the majority driving just for UberEats or DoorDash isn't cutting it anymore. Here's why.
One Delivery App Isn't Consistent Anymore - Hard To Earn Predictable Income
When you're working on one of these gig apps, your main goal is to make money and that can be through the volume of orders, high-paying orders, or a mixture of both. That was attainable with one app maybe before 2019, nowadays it's very hard to get that consistency doing any of these apps solo. DoorDash for example, as of 2022 when you're driving for DoorDash you're dealing with so many factors that DoorDash controls that you don't get to see that affect your pay. The consistency of pay is skewed by DoorDash because of the lack of tip transparency. DoorDash doesn't show you the full payout on the offer screen to the driver or Dasher when there are tips behind it. If a customer leaves a big tip on an order that they've confirmed before ordering the food, the delivery driver does not see that full tip amount. The driver only gets to see the full payout once the delivery is made. As an example in my market in Seattle, whenever I see an offer that has a payment of $9.25 or more, then it is likely the pay would be higher with a tip behind it. If I'm able to see the item count and maybe even the check total then I can take a hard guess of the order having a bigger tip behind it. In most cases, I'm right with this outcome, but the issue is the consistency of the tip and tip amount. For instance, the below order had a higher customer tip, but DoorDash showed the expected payout as $9.25. Could I have guessed this higher tip?.... No!
This inconsistency also applies to the DoorDash item or item counts, as some orders don't even show you what the customer ordered and you're in the dark. To solve this transparency issue with DoorDash you could use the Para app to see those features that DoorDash should always be showing you. But, even with using Para with DoorDash, it's still not consistent as that's only just one app. If you use just Uber Eats or even just Grubhub, you'd face the same issues of just not having full transparency and consistency. None of this transparency and pay predictability matters if you're just not getting orders working solo with any of these apps. You can't rely on just one app to give you all the orders or business. What if DoorDash goes down? What if Uber Eats slows down? That itself is an inconsistency issue. You'll need to multi-app in order to get business and volume of orders. If one app is slow, you can use two or three other apps to fill in that gap. One app won't cut it.
Multi-Apping Brings Efficiency and Options
If you were to multi-app, you can be more efficient than working on one app. Now, in some cases, if one single app is hot and is bringing you a lot of good orders then you should definitely roll with that. However, it's highly likely that you're better off having multiple apps to choose orders from and to fill in gaps. Regardless if you're Doordash multiapping or Uber Eats multiapping, you'll have more volume of pings to look through and you can decide what's best for you financially. Multiapping becomes efficient when you can fill in gaps and stack orders from multiple apps from one restaurant or a couple of restaurants. Efficiency comes in the form of the idea of queuing the next order with another app. It is usually very hard to queue up orders on just one app as there are cons with it. For example with Uber Eats, when you get another ping to queue while you're doing a delivery, the Uber Eats app doesn't show you the full map of the drop-off or not map at all and just gives you the address and basic text info that you'll have to decide if it's worth it. If you multiapp, you wouldn't have to rely on just Uber Eats to queue an order, you can just be more efficient by queuing an order from DoorDash or Grubhub instead. The efficiency of multi-apping gives you the option so you're not forced to take unprofitable orders. This allows you to work smart, not harder.
Best Practices For Multi-Apping that Maximize Profits
In our article Multiapping Strategy That Can Help Drivers Increase Monthly Earnings by 25%, we discuss a strategy that usings delivery driver tools like Para alongside multi-apping to help you get the best orders. We suggest drivers who decide to multi-app use the Para driver utility tools as it can make multiapping much easier and more predictable. Gig work on multiple apps can be a headache, especially with apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats not being transparent with the trip information. The Para app gives the driver trip prediction, the tool Accept Decline with Para and other Para driver utility tools that takes all the guesswork out so you can be more efficient. Para works with the Uber Eats, Uber, Grubhub, and DoorDash platforms. All you have to do is connect your accounts and you'll be able to multi-app with Para.
Keep one main app like Uber Eats or DoorDash (more details in our article above) on your main screen and have the other two apps on as you accept or decline orders. Para's Accept/Decline feature can take the hassle out of your fingers so you can focus on driving and analyzing the metrics of your order. As long as you set the parameters of the type of orders you'd want to take then the Accept Decline feature will take care of that for you. When you work on multiple apps, the constant fidgeting with your phone to look at apps can be dangerous. The best practice is to pull over when driving to look at your pings. Use the Para app to make it just a bit easier. Fewer phone touches, the better!
The Top Gig App Combos to Multiapp With
So what are the best apps to multiapp combo with? That really depends on your market actually. If you know your market you'll get a better sense of what apps are hot and what apps are usually cold in your area. For me in Seattle, I know that Uber Eats and DoorDash will always get business and Grubhub is the slowest. I'll focus mostly on Uber Eats and DoorDash and have Grubhub on and in the background on my phone. I'll take Grubhub orders when it's slow or if it makes sense. When you're doing gig app combos, you don't necessarily have to do only food delivery, you can expand it out to other sectors of gig work such as grocery shopping delivery apps like Instacart and Shipt. Not only do I use the three food delivery apps but I also have Shipt and Roadie in the background on my phone just in case I can fill in some slow time with an offer that makes sense. My gig app combination consists of 3 food delivery apps (Uber Eats, Grubhub, Doordash), 1 package delivery app (Roadie), and 1 grocery shopping app (Shipt). This gig app combo is considered my most efficient way of making money. There isn't one top gig app in this combo, they all work in synergy to help me achieve efficiency, consistency, and predictability. In your market, your gig economy you may have a different gig app combination that works for you. Remember that not all gig apps are popular or available in all markets of the US.
Using Multiple Delivery Apps to Make Money Just Works
There are just so many benefits to multiapping that it becomes a necessity to do it now if you want to make more money in the gig economy. Solo apping just isn't going to cut it for the majority of gig workers. If you're new to gig work, especially on the delivery side, you're almost forced to multiapp the moment you realize it may be too slow on one app like DoorDash. Remember as a gig worker you have the right as an independent contractor which means you should be allowed to choose what work you want to accept or not. Multiapping gives you more options to accept or decline. Multiapping with the best possible gig app combinations in your market will give you an advantage, so why not use it?