Can You Make Money Doing Uber Eats In A Major Metropolitan Area (St. Louis, specifically).

In My Humble Opinion
1

Can it be done? Assuming your car gets decent mileage, you take as much work as you can get, and put in the long hours?

2

I would turn the question around.

“Could restaurants make more money by offering their own delivery service?”

IMHO, the ‘Gig Economy’ is a way for companies to get cheaper labor and services than otherwise available.

3

There are sub-reddits on Reddit for Uber drivers which would give you better answers than here. My impression that after taking into consideration your complete automotive costs it’s not a great deal more than minimum wage.

4

Are there drivers who just do Uber Eats? I was under the impression that it was the same drivers who were moving people and food around, and that you’d just take whichever jobs were more convenient for you based on location.

5

“Can you make money?” or “Can you earn a living?”

I’m certain the answer to the former is “yes,” while the answer to the latter is, “maybe, but there are probably easier ways to make the same money.”

6

That’s what I thought. And is Uber Eats still that weird system where people are driving around with certain dishes, hoping that someone will want it? (Most of these food delivery services will fetch whatever you order from a restaurant.)

7

It would seem to me that it would depend on how many restaurants are in your area.

Our neighborhood has plenty. All of them non-chain. The two Mom-and-Pop burger joints started doing Uber Eats within the last year and I’d say their sales have at least doubled. When I’m there, which is more often than I’d like to admit, there are always drivers coming in to pick up orders. Say, on average, one every five to ten-ish minutes. And that’s what I’ve observed during the off hours, when I tend to visit.

I haven’t really watched to see how many times I see the same driver. It might be interesting to start paying attention to that to get an idea of how profitable it might be for them.

We’re also not far from a mall, however, with all of the attendant chain restaurants you might expect, so I can imagine an Uber Eats driver here might do better than in some other places.