Unethical Structure of Food Delivery Platforms

by Min Young Kim

Globalization has allowed people, goods, and ideas to move more easily across borders. In addition, technology has allowed more cultural exposure, and it helped boost people’s interest in different cultures. As a result, trying new food has become many people’s routine. Thus, the food service industry has enlarged; According to a global management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company’s article, “Ordering in: The Rapid Evolution of Food Delivery,” the food delivery global market size has tripled since 2017 and more than doubled during the Covid-19 pandemic. The market is now worth more than $150 billion (Ahuja, 2021). Food delivery platforms have become staple commodities in people’s lives. However, the people who profit from the industry and those who are exploited for their assets are distinctly segregated. For instance, online food ordering companies make a fortune by developing such platforms; however, restaurants and food drivers are marginalized by big tech corporations. Mainly, food drivers are being taken advantage of in this capital-driven hierarchy every day.

I interviewed my friend, Ethan, a food driver in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to hear what he experiences daily at work. Ethan is a transgender 30-year-old Myanmar refugee. We met in New York before he moved out to Indiana with the hope of finding a better chance to survive in the States as a refugee. He works more than 110 hours a week. Before he starts he tries to look at the different food delivery applications to plan his route for the day. He uses almost every platform available in his city: Uber, Doordash, Grubhub, and more. Out of them, he prefers to log in to Uber first as they often offer incentive services. One of the promotions he mentioned was its driving rewards program. The program allows drivers to collect points from each order, which can later be redeemed as discounts on their service fee. Ethan said that many platforms offer some promotions, but the incentive rates are so low that he needs to limit himself to only a couple of applications to start noticing a small reward. However, he also added that he needs more than one or two platforms to get enough orders to deliver. He has specific criteria for choosing orders. First, he looks for restaurants located nearby to start delivering as soon as possible. Next, he checks if the customer’s address is close to his current location. However, it is rare for these to align well, so he often ends up traveling further from his home city to make deliveries.

After confirming the order, Ethan drives to the restaurant to pick up the food. He prefers either busy restaurants with a large number of customers or very quiet restaurants. This is because popular restaurants are adequately staffed to prepare large orders quickly, while unpopular ones can start preparing the orders the moment they receive them. It results in fast preparation and helps him save time. However, average restaurants are mediocre businesses and understaffed. So most of the time he has to wait for the food to be ready. He said that he expects to wait for at least 20 minutes for every order, and sometimes waits even 30 to 45 minutes. On every weekend and during the holiday season, the average wait time even increases to 45 minutes to an hour. The longest time he has waited for a single customer’s order was one hour and 20 minutes. He explained that the “preparing time” feature on apps usually does not indicate anything. When I asked him why he did not cancel the order, he answered that canceling an order could penalize him by getting a bad rate and eventually having less chance to get matched with orders.

After the anxious wait on the restaurant pavement, worrying about being noticeably late, Ethan drives to the customer’s home to complete the delivery. Some delivery apps allow the user to choose food delivery preferences, whether they would like the driver to hang the food on their door, to call when they arrive, or leave it on their driveway. He mentioned that he makes sure to pay extra attention to check their preferences before leaving his car because fulfilling the customers’ needs is very important to avoid getting a poor tip on the order. As accumulating tips become the basis of his pay, one poor tip can hurt his weekly payment. He learned this lesson after getting a terrible review and tip from a customer. This customer made a note to leave the food on their door and send them a text message because they had a baby sleeping, but he was in a hurry to finish their order and pick up another order and did not see the message and knocked on their door. After the delivery, the customer called the company to request a return, so he not only did not get paid but also had a hard time getting assigned to new orders because of the one bad review. Thus, once the delivery is complete, he logs into the app multiple times to check whether the customer left a review and an appropriate tip rate.

Interviewing Ethan revealed some inhumane aspects of the food delivery system for freelance drivers. First of all, there are distinct demographic groups of drivers. They commonly share socioeconomic intersectionalities. They are often Latin American or Asian male immigrants. One reason is that this job requires only a few communication skills with the employer, the platform companies, and the users. Due to the language barrier many immigrants face, fluency in English is not required for food delivery driver positions, which makes it a more accessible job to start with. It is also why Ethan works as a food driver in a remote city. Since he did not study English in Myanmar, did not go to school in the States, and communicates in Burmese with his friends, his English is very limited. Despite living in the States for five years, Ethan still feels extremely nervous when speaking to others, especially his employers. While he appreciates the fact that he doesn’t have to speak much English in his current job as a food driver, I worry that it isolates him from the wider community. Unfortunately, the grueling hours and meager pay make it hard for him to break free from this cycle and pursue the education he needs to achieve greater financial stability. As it stands, he has few options beyond driving and few chances to improve his circumstances.

Another problem with the food delivery system is that drivers’ performance is constantly monitored and questioned. Food delivery platforms allow users to view the transportation the driver uses and the route they take and estimate the time for their food to be delivered. It even shows the pauses and turns the driver makes at each corner. Ethan explained that this feature makes him feel like his customers’ drones are watching him. He realized that people actually watch his real-time location when he did not receive a tip because a customer claimed that he did not drive the way the customer thought was the most effective and fast. As his payment primarily depends on tips, rapid delivery is essential. Because he is aware of this, he attempts to speed up more. It demonizes the public narrative about immigrant drivers, as they are portrayed as outlaws and speed maniacs. Ethan expressed that the intense time pressure puts him under endless stress. Thus, the system that constantly watches drivers’ productivity is problematic and unethical.

The tip-based livelihood is also very unreliable. It is hard for Ethan to anticipate his pay as his performance is subject to ambiguous measures. The disconnectivity between all platforms amplifies the difficulty of his weekly payment prediction and budgeting. He says his pay-per-order ranges widely from $8 to $20, including a 25% Uber fee and gas money. Considering the wait time into an account, the pay drops to below $10 on average, which is less than minimum wage. He struggles to afford his $1500 one-bedroom apartment near the city, and his job as a food-delivery driver barely covers his bills. As an uninsured immigrant, each doctor visits for his hormone therapy costs around $300. The food delivery job is inadequate to provide him with economic independence, but it allows him no time to develop other skills to improve his situation as a minority refugee.

While Food delivery platforms offer people convenience, there is a group of people risking their livelihood to deliver the orders and are often oppressed and isolated from society, despite the immense effort they put in to improving other people’s lives. Although drivers may be overlooked in the food service industry, their contributions to people’s lives cannot be ignored. It’s important to acknowledge their hard work and address their working conditions. Additionally, I hope Ethan can achieve his dream of studying to become a special effects makeup artist at a Los Angeles film school one day.

Works Cited

Ahuja, Kabir, et al. “Ordering in: The Rapid Evolution of Food Delivery.” McKinsey & Company, McKinsey & Company, 22 September 2021 https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/ordering-in-the-rapid-evolution-of-food-delivery.