My Recent Return to Food Delivery with DoorDash
No matter where you travel worldwide, the one common feature that rings true for me every single time is the desire to enjoy great food whenever the need arises, and to have it readily available anytime of the day or night. Having been fortunate to travel all over the world for well over 20 years, seeing this basic fact of life played out contantly while at the airport, train station, tourist destination, or any other major gathering place that’s intended to welcome people from all walks of life is an inescapable reality that never ceases to impress me.
In recent years, the existence of on-line food delivery platforms like DoorDash, Skip (formerly Skip the Dishes), Uber Eats, Grubhub, and other competitors have made this desire even more convenient than ever before. Whether it’s an instant craving for a simple burger or pizza by the slice from the local street vendor down the road or sampling the best of fine dining cuisine from a Michelin star restaurant, it’s now become possible to simply use your smart phone to contact the venue of your choice—and within a matter of minutes see a delivery driver arrive to present your favourite meal while you’re at home, the workplace, the park, or anywhere else on planet Earth.
At the time of posting this article on Substack, I’ll be in Louisiana in the middle of a week-long visit to New Orleans and Baton Rouge for the first time, no doubt experiencing some incredible food that I’ll certainly write about in a future contribution to Scientist World Traveller. What’s not so obvious, however, is the underlying question of how I manage to afford the real and ongoing financial costs that always come with the level of enjoyment that’s to be gained whenever I travel. Addressing this relevant issue is what motivated me to make a return to doing part-time food delivery with DoorDash whenever I’m at home.
How and Why Did I Become a Part-Time DoorDash Driver?
To give you some context, I first entered into doing food delivery with DoorDash back in May 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to make some extra money during that difficult time for many people worldwide. Since all academic conferences were being held on-line instead of in-person due to the pandemic, I saw no reason to travel anywhere during that two-year lockdown period. In so doing, I made the decision to become an independent contractor with DoorDash during a time when the service was in particularly high demand for understandable reasons.
While it was certainly possible for me to do food delivery every day of the year, I deliberately chose to treat this opportunity as seasonal work and only make deliveries during the spring-to-fall season when it’s warm outside. The harsh winter weather and icy road conditions to be found in Regina, Saskatchewan where I live were unnecessary risks that I had the option to avoid as much as possible.
Even back then, my financial goals with DoorDash were relatively modest—I only needed to buy physics and mathematics textbooks to grow my library for pursuing future research projects. While such academic materials certainly aren’t cheap by any means and are necessary expenses for the purpose of doing physics research, when compared to paying for basic life necessities like rent, utilities, essential groceries, and transportation costs, such academic research materials are rightfully regarded as luxury items. With that in mind, I have nothing but high respect for the fellow food delivery drivers and all others who operate taxis, buses, courier and moving vans, etc. and have no choice but to function at all times of the year and under all weather conditions in order to make a decent living.
By the start of November 2022, I made the conscious decision to no longer do any food delivery for the sake of reclaiming my time to focus on other things. While it’s certainly possible to make a six-figure annual income when living in a large city with a high frequency of food delivery requests to meet the supply of available drivers, it does require a willingness to commit the necessary time to drive, be available when the demand for food delivery is highest (i.e. breakfast, lunch, and supper times) and also develop the optimization skills to choose the best deliveries when offered on the DoorDash platform.
Where I live in Regina as a mid-size Canadian city, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect that income objective for what most food delivery drivers are willing and able to invest concerning their time and personal energy. Nonetheless, the flexibility of running your own schedule and working only as much as you want within your unique framework of employment and family obligations makes this opportunity very attractive for the type of income level I want to attain in a relatively short time.
How Does Doing Food Delivery Relate to International Travel?
While the purpose of my first and second years of doing DoorDash food delivery was primarily to make as much money as I could, for this year my strategy is only to make as much money as possible while also driving as little as possible at the same time. In addition, I’m also actively choosing to only drive outside of rush hour traffic hours as a means to minimize stress and still effectively provide me with large blocks of unstructured time to focus my attention on physics research, travel writing, and planning out future travel endeavours. What this means is that I won’t pursue the option to do deliveries during the breakfast and supper periods on weekdays, which are understandably two major times for making money this way.
However, by targeting my opportunities to other times of the day when there’s less demand for DoorDash, whatever money I’m able to earn would go towards relatively low-cost spending needs while travelling, such as meals, entrance fees for ticketed events, and ground transportation costs for taxis, buses, and subways/trains. In so doing, I intend to create a reservoir of funds that can continually be replenished over time by doing food delivery at times of my choosing and for whatever duration I wish to maintain on a given day. Even during my second year of food delivery, I was aiming towards having a more targeted and strategic routine to find the right level of commitment.
Now that I’ve finally made my return to DoorDash as of May 4, my objective is to simply satisfy that balance every day. So far, I’m reasonably happy with my level of progress with food delivery, but always with an eye for improving my performance whenever I can to optimize for maximum time-savings, while also generating a steady income.
How Optimizing for DoorDash is Great Training for Planning Out International Travel Itineraries
It may seem strange to suggest that developing local driving and navigational skills via food delivery can help people to minimize their stress levels when planning out and executing an international travel itinerary. However, upon some reflection it’s not as strange as it might seem on the surface. In both scenarios, you need to be ever-conscious of your immediate surroundings and respond accordingly with a sense of situational awareness.
For example, if the path you would normally take to reach a restaurant for food delivery is blocked because of unanticipated heavy traffic or road construction, you need to know immediate alternative paths to reach your destination with a minimum of headache. The same principle applies when planning out an optimal path to navigate while travelling internationally, only to discover some unexpected roadblock requiring a detour.
Having a reasonably detailed understanding of a foreign city’s public transit system will certainly go a long way in figuring out where you would most likely want to stay for the night and/or visit tourist attractions with a minimum of time and effort required to navigate on foot or by car. Be mindful of the fact that the shortest distance to travel to an international destination or while travelling within a foreign country isn’t necessarily the fastest one in time, and vice versa.
Another major skill to gain from food delivery experience is to figure out the shortest possible time to go from Point A to Point B that also involves the fewest number of steps to take. For example, if within a given day of doing deliveries you know which restaurants function quickly in preparing orders for pickup and which ones don’t, then you can choose to decline the bad offers when put in front of you by the food delivery platform, saving yourself a lot of unnecessary trouble in the process. The same can be said when visiting a foreign destination for a second or third time, in which you can rely upon past experience to know which tourist attractions and restaurants are worth the time and effort to visit—and which ones are best avoided.
One general tip worth sharing about finding a “stress-free” approach to travel—both locally and internationally—is to take the time to gather as much information as possible in advance of your travel plans. For example, when I did my first year of DoorDash, I was very surprised at how much my home city had grown and changed in certain areas where I hadn’t normally visited for many years. So while I wasn’t put into jeopardy necessarily with this level of unfamiliarity while doing a delivery in that area of the city, it was still a whole new experience for me to go there, such that I could have anticipated finding better routes to reach my restaurant and/or final delivery destinations.
As well, I strongly suggest that you make a point to actively seek out the opinions of people with past experience visiting whatever destinations you happen to be interested in visiting for yourself. When I travelled to Amsterdam on my own for the first time just over a month ago, I got some very useful advice from an experienced elderly couple from London to use the city bus instead of the train to reach the city centre from the airport hotel where we stayed. I ended up getting there just a few minutes longer than with the train, but in turn saved myself a lot of money and also a number of logistical steps to take in the process of returning to my hotel safe and sound.
Some Final Words on My Journey with DoorDash
While I’ve only just started doing DoorDash to gain some extra money for my small cash travel fund, it’s only taken me a few minutes in completing my first delivery to be completely comfortable with my return pursuit of this opportunity. Although I cannot expect to earn the type of money I did when I started out in 2021, so long as I’m able to get a small number of deliveries consistently completed each day, I will undoubtedly have ample spending money available for whatever enjoyment I can gain while travelling internationally. It remains to be seen how far I can take it this year and beyond!
Addendum
Just two days before flying to Louisiana on May 14, I discovered that I was mysteriously locked out of my DoorDash driver app immediately following a food delivery I made. Of course, this was a very disturbing and frustrating experience to have suddenly thrust upon me. For technical reasons, I also had a difficult time reaching a driver support agent to help me get this situation resolved. That said, when I finally spoke with someone the next day, he stayed on the line for over a half-hour to assist me and was extremely helpful throughout the whole process of figuring out what went wrong.
As it happens, it looks like there was an unauthorized hack of my app because my e-mail address and phone number corresponding to my account had been changed without my consent. Therefore, the case was referred to DoorDash’s anti-fraud division and a technical support team was dispatched to work towards restoring my access to the driver app by the time I return home on May 21.
Besides expressing my deepest thanks to the driver support agent for his dedication and high professionalism in responding to my situation, I also expressed to him from my perspective as a STEM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics) professional some detailed feedback on the enormous technical challenges involved in accurately maintaining an international communications network involving an incredible number of simultaneous information transactions every second to process correctly.
Writing to you now in my capacity as a theoretical physicist, it’s not even remotely a simple matter to deal with and repair technical breakdowns of this scope and magnitude. Therefore, it’s my sincere hope that both customers and food delivery drivers who encounter frustrations of this kind will take due consideration to express patience and co-operation with the support personnel for DoorDash and other delivery platforms when attempting to resolve these types of issues. As for my own case, I’ll be sure to write a progress report as a future contribution to Scientist World Traveller for your awareness and appreciation.
Postscript: An Invitation to Become a Paid Subscriber to Scientist World Traveller
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