Yeah, I'd be interesting to see it in percentage in addition to sum.

Probably correlates to whatever percentage people normally tip.

I don't know where you live but where I live there usually is a service fee and sometimes there's even an additional delivery fee, and a tip is expected on top of all that. That's how an $8 sandwich will end up costing $23

If you’re ordering food delivery, you have the means to tip at least $1. It’s only $1 to you after paying a premium to have someone prepare your food, and an app organize the delivery.

The grueling job is the delivery for so little pay. So the tip means the most to the delivery person. It adds up in a shift if everyone would at least tip something.

So little to the payer, adds up to a lot to the person working.

Just tip something.

Tipping delivery drivers is the only way they make a decent income. If you're ordering food, make sure to leave a good tip. Each company has its own model and are subject to local, provincial/regional, and federal laws, but by-and-large the breakdown is (numbers based on my local figures):

A service fee goes to the company. E.g., 1$ (Skip) to 10% of the order (UberEats). This does not pay much to the company, and exists mostly so that you think that they are only making a couple dollars per order.

A delivery fee goes to the driver. This is calculated vastly differently on different services. It's usually either distance-based or a flat fee. This is not meant to pay a living wage; if drivers were only paid this fee, they would actually lose money per order from gas and car degradation. This fee usually works out to 1-3$.

The order fee is where the delivery service makes most of their money. They charge usually 20-35% of the order fee as a commission from the restaurant. This is predatory as hell, but it keeps profits up and costs low for consumers. (Except that now restaurants are raising their prices so that they can make normal profits again, so the cost is invisibly passed on to consumers.) This is where the profits come from.

Finally, the tip. The tip is where the driver makes the vast majority of their money. On the standard tip on the standard order (15-18% on a 25-30$ order) this works out to around 4.5-5.5$.

So, on a 30$ order, a restaurant will make 23$, the company will make 8.5-10.5$, the driver will make 6-7.5$ from fee+tip before expenses, and the total amount cost to consumer is 43-44$.

---

All that to say: In tip-based countries, you need to tip your delivery drivers or they are getting totally screwed over (instead of just a bit screwed over).

The alternative would be to pay drivers a fair fee. But companies don't want to do that because: 1) they're afraid that will make drivers look like employees and that would cut deeply into their profits, 2) consumers don't like seeing big numbers on the order.

I'm currently working on developing an alternative for my local community which would be organized as a driver-owned co-operative and would pay a flat fee and charge restaurants less. But the only reason this has a change to work is that we can operate with little-to-no profit and we're still going to need to charge more than our competitors.

I work part time and pretty sparingly so this is data over around 19 months of delivering!

[deleted]

No, YOUSE a histogram.

19 months

Sankey diagram

Your cashier too. Your doctor too. Oh no, that's bribery already. Okay, do not tip your doctor, but tip your cashier.

Not sure where you are from, but in every country I have seen (including USA, where this post is likely from), you can tip $0 if you want. Where does Uber mandate a tip?

They usually default a certain % and there's a tiny button somewhere to change the tip. Yes, there are cheap assholes out there who go out of their way to tip 0.

It's crazy that you need to tip when there is a delivery fee anyway.

Conversely, people might not tip because the fees are so high.

Extra bullshit fees are there to make sure the company can still keep making the same kind of profit. They'll still pay minimum wage and expect the customers to kindly pay for the lionshare of the wages with tips. Who the hell wants to order food, let alone pay for a tip if the order for a single person comes to over $50? That's 3-4 hours of work for many people even in the west. That's someones internet bill.

If you can't run a business without extra "fees", you shouldn't be in business. Nor should you be in business if you can't pay a livable wage for your employees. But that could be several thousands of dollars when rents have skyrocketed so much. So I guess just shoot your landlord and eat it, instead of ordering pizza.

Do you tip your fedex/prime/ups guy or gal?

edit: remove UPS because their drivers are unionised and salaried.

Varies a lot as an independent contractor. Sometimes less than $10/hr sometimes more than $25/hr on holidays and weekends!

That's not wrong, only different. There are several countries where you can make a living as a courier without tip, so context matters a lot.

Also if a business cannot afford paying proper wages to its employees then it shouldn't be in business in the first place. It is sickening that people working in hospitality have to rely on the goodwill of customers to survive.

[removed]

Your imagination is quite limited it seems.

Curious as tipping delivery like this isn't a thing where I'm from - why not just tip a flat rate? What is the reason for giving less/more to the deliverer based off the price of the order? You're merely tipping for the travel and time, no?

[removed]