GrubHub: Guide for Delivery Drivers

What is GrubHub?

GrubHub is a food delivery app that enlists freelancers to use their own cars and gasoline to deliver restaurant meals to customers.

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How it works

Like other food delivery apps, GrubHub drivers sign up online, answering a few questions to ensure that they qualify. These include your age. And, if you’re planning to deliver with a car, your driver’s license and insurance information. (You can deliver on a bike with a state-issued ID.)

Once you’ve answered the initial questions, the site will do a background screening before accepting you onto the app. The process could take up to two weeks.

Once accepted, you can turn on your app at any time and start to take deliveries. There’s no guarantee that there will be deliveries in your area when you sign on. If there are, you can accept or reject them, based on where they require you to go and what they pay.

The site tries to encourage drivers to take all available shifts by giving drivers with high acceptance rates access to larger orders, which presumably offer larger delivery fees and larger tips. However, the larger orders also may require that you own more purchased supplies, such as insulated bags and cupholders.

GrubHub Review:

When we first reviewed GrubHub, it was one of the better food delivery apps for drivers. It combined brisk demand with some pay guarantees and better-than average delivery transparency. Only the most basic pay guarantees remain and those require that you accept most orders.

And GrubHub appears to have lost marketshare to DoorDash. That said, the best way to use delivery apps like this is to sign up for them all — GrubHub, DoorDash, UberEats and whatever else happens to be operating in your neighborhood. That allows you to bunch your deliveries to make better hourly rates.

Pay

Average hourly pay for GrubHub drivers is just over $15 an hour.

Drivers are paid once a week through direct deposit.

Recommendations:

The best way to make decent money in the delivery space is to sign up with multiple apps and cherry pick the jobs that pay best or that you can pick up and deliver at the same time. You can sign up with GrubHub here.

These are usually available only during meal rush hours — around noon and dinnertime. If these are not hours you can work, you might want to consider another type of delivery side hustle, such as delivering packages for Amazon Flex. (You can learn more about Flex here.)

Other food delivery apps to consider: DoorDash (sign up here), Uber Eats (sign up here) and Postmates.

You may also want to check out Dumpling, which helps personal shoppers and drivers set up their own independent personal shopper operation.

And, if you like to drive, Uber is an option that allows you to drive at any time of the day or night. (You can sign up with Uber here.)

What their drivers say (from Indeed):

Would recommend to someone with reliable transportation that needs a flexible schedule job. Not much trouble/time spent waiting for new orders. But gas is a factor to take into consideration.

GrubHub is a solid temporary job. While it does not offer the typical employee benefits as a “real” job, it makes up for it in its spontaneity. Allowing users to work whenever they want and the app is pretty user friendly.

Flexible, but low pay

Waiting around for orders, even when you drive to a hotspot. Minimal tippers. A lot of wear and tear for little pay. But you get to work your own schedule. But good blocks are hard to get. It’s good for a stay at home mom like me that takes her kids to and from school tho.

Able to make a bit of money on the side, but too much wear and tear on a vehicle. After taxes and depreciation the pay isn’t much more than minimum wage.

In the current year (2022) the company has taken a drastic fall. Low order volume in NYC. I been online for 8 hours and didn’t make any money. Nothing is guaranteed unless you’re lucky enough to schedule a block. Even if you do the most you’ll make an hour is $12. I do not recommend working for a company that will not pay you for your time in the field. Scheduled or not I feel that all drivers deserve a minimum pay. Time is money and with Grubhub you’ll likely be gambling each day because there is no more consistency

Low pay

I really have enjoyed working for grub hub the pay is kinda low and it sucks but as long as you don’t care about your acceptance rate being low you can weed out all the low deliveries

“I work 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday thru Saturday. I made $17 an hour the first year. The last few months I am down to $12 an hour. Getting priority shifts is almost impossible. They are under new management now and it has gone down hill with all the competition coming to town.”

“There are good paying days as well as bad paying days, where lots of mileage is used and not enough money made. It will get you by in hard times or to make some extra money.”

“I have been an Independent Contractor with this company since September 2016. I like that I can schedule a 3 hour shift but they change the “blocks” (shifts) every few months. ”

*Updated 1/9/2023