Thomas Nguyen began dashing in Orange Country, California in February 2019 as a side hustle to his job as a financial analyst. He now works five to six days a week on the weekends and during dinner rush hours.
For me, DoorDash is a great side hustle because I can work around my corporate fulltime job. I have the freedom to do my job in my own style, since I'm my own boss.The learning curve was steep when I first started. After dashing in southern California for a year , I compiled the most important tips that I wish someone had advised me before I began dashing.
Second, if the store is closed and you can't complete an order, select the reason "Store is Closed" and take a picture of the store's operating hours, in case you get any pushback on why you couldn't pick up the order. Before 10 p.m., I don't take any orders under a $5 payout that are over 6 miles away for apartment complexes, because it's just not worth my time during a busy dinner hour. If I do take an apartment job, I text the customer for the apartment's gate code in advance, to avoid more time wasted once I arrive.
If the customer's apartment complex has no guest parking, pull to the side of the road and put your hazard lights on. I've never had any issues with parking my car like this for a few minutes in order to deliver food to the customer.During the weekdays, I don't usually drive after 10 p.m. because the orders are mostly fast food drive-thrus. These late night McDonald's runs could have you waiting for 40 minutes at the drive-thru.
Whenever you see a ton of people waiting outside to pick up their food, you might as well unassign the order if you don't want to wait forever. Before you unassign the order, make sure you first ask the staff if the order will be ready soon. Restaurant staff are similar to Dashers in that they also rely on tips. Because of this, they tend to ignore Dashers during peak hours because they want to focus on dine-in customers to get their tips. Dashers don't tip the restaurant staff, and in turn restaurant staff don't prioritize our orders.
I plan my schedule to work in different cities based on DoorDash bonus peak pay. For example, DoorDash might have a $2 bonus in Anaheim, CA on Friday from 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., which means lots of Dashers will flood the Anaheim market. I'll stay away from Anaheim during that time, and work in another city that doesn't have an active bonus because there will be more orders available to pick up.
When approaching customers, I say something like, "Hello, how are you doing? Have a good one, enjoy!" or "Thank you for using DoorDash, enjoy your meal!" If the restaurants are non-partners and there are no Dashers who want to order the food, wait to pick up the food, and pay with the Red card, the orders might take 90 minutes to complete.