GoPuff

What is GoPuff?

Like Instacart, GoPuff enlists freelance delivery drivers to cart customer groceries from stores — in this case GoPuff warehouses — to the customer’s door.

How it works

The driver gets a minimum delivery fee, which varies from market to market, and, sometimes, a tip. How much are the tips? GoPuff’s “pre-set tips” range from $1 – $3, according to the site’s blog.

So, not a lot. Particularly when you recognize that you’re using your own gas, paying for your auto insurance and maintenance and may only be delivering one set of groceries at a time.

In states where there are minimum hourly earnings for independent contractors, including California, drivers will receive that minimum. However, they are not reimbursed for expenses.

GoPuff vs. Instacart

For drivers, the big difference between GoPuff and Instacart is that you don’t have to shop for the groceries. Customer orders are assembled in the GoPuff warehouse. You simply pick up and deliver. Instacart has this model for some stores — such as some Costco warehouses — but not all.

Both sites mark up the cost of the groceries to produce a profit. The mark-ups are not transparent to customers, nor do they appear to benefit drivers.

Driver reviews

Notably, the site tends to get great reviews from drivers when it first enters a city. At that point, the site gives not only a base pay, but a “guaranteed pay” based on the region. Drivers also are likely to get several deliveries at one time, which makes the site’s delivery fee far more palatable.

But as the site gains drivers, drivers get less and become far less enamored with the jobs.

Recommendations:

If you drive for GoPuff or Instacart, we recommend that you also sign up with Dumpling. Dumpling helps you launch your own personal shopping and delivery business, where you set your schedule and terms. With Dumpling, you build a regular client base and don’t mark-up the cost of groceries. That makes the cost more reasonable for customers and makes it more likely that you’ll get a bigger tip.

However, if you want to sign up with GoPuff, you can find them here.

What their drivers say (from Indeed):

“Around February this year the company managed to significantly reduce our income (about 30 to 40%). We are suppose to get subsidy payments (compensation when there’s not enough deliveries) through blocks ( scheduled hours). They company substantially lower the amounts of hours available. So now we only get paid the commission ($4.25 per deliveries) plus the tips (and you cannot be sure about those because the app is providing them at the end of the delivery.”

“It’s just like a lot of gig jobs. Log in and wait for a delivery, praying you’re not taking a single item across town. no matter how many deliveries you do, unless you’re scheduled it’s not going to make a difference unless you did a whole lot of deliveries.”

Changing terms

“I’ve worked for this company for over a year and a half now so I’ve seen many changes. At first it wasn’t so bad, they had a core program for the good drivers who showed up on time and provided timely deliveries. You would get 4 orders at a time so you would receive tips and a subsidy if your tips weren’t very high. Slowly they’ve taken things away and made conditions worse for drivers. Pretty soon we’ll all be independent contractors working for scraps.”