Yeah—I have over 15,000 deliveries under my belt; this has been my FT job for 3 years now since the pandemic. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that no driver worth a shit is taking your order until it has mold growing on it if that’s your MO.

The apps pay less than the IRS deduction rate per mile. Drivers have zero guarantee that your word is good that you’ll tip afterwards, and zero recourse if you lie (other than to blacklist you—which we will). You can argue all you want that it’s not your responsibility to pay us, but guess what? We’re all independent contractors—none of us are required to take any order we don’t want to, and none of us are doing this as a charitable endeavor.

The restaurants are guaranteed their money once the order is marked ready for pickup, so they have no incentive to do anything. And while the apps themselves will raise the base pay after a certain number of declines, it’s a stair step slow as hell process that guarantees your food will have been sitting out well past the time it was fresh.

So really, it’s up to you. Sure, you might get a n00b every now and again who will jump on that $3 for 9 miles during the lunch rush because they don’t know any better. But more often than not, you can either tilt at windmills on principle and get cold ass stale food (which you’ll then stiff the driver out of a tip for anyway because it took so long and it’s no longer hot), or, you can recognize that you are partaking in a luxury service of convenience and pay the person responsible for providing it accordingly.

You get what you pay for.