Shop, drop and onward
Food delivery drivers have Santa Claus’ one-night stint beat, even without sleigh
Santa Claus makes his rounds one night a year.
Roger Allan has been bringing awaited items to homes on multiple days a week since March. Casey Maddalla’s laden arrivals have excited people thousands of times over the past 14 months.
Just try getting hard numbers out of mysterious Mr. Claus. Meticulous Ms. Maddalla has them: more than 2,800 total homes visited, sometimes nearly three dozen a day, putting 17,500 miles on her car in the first 11 months of this year alone.
Allan, 50, shops and delivers for customers of Instacart, one of the most dominant companies in the grocery-delivery business. (It also delivers from other types of retailers, from Sephora and Christmas Tree Shops to Petco.) Allan started work in the field at the beginning of the pandemic, when Instacart was on the verge of a
hiring explosion that would bring aboard 300,000 new shoppers/drivers in barely more than a month this spring, with more added over the summer.
Maddalla, 34, delivers restaurant food for people who order through Mealeo, a locally founded, Latham-based delivery app that says it generates driver, customer and restaurant loyalty by paying drivers better and charging businesses lower fees than big national apps like Grubhub, Doordash and Uber Eats.
Both have primary jobs — Allan for a chamber of commerce, Maddalla as an aide to people with disabilities — and both say that their side gigs have been essential to their financial well-being during this difficult year. They also say they feel appreciated by most customers as they provide what, during the coronavirus pandemic, has come to be seen by growing numbers of Americans as an essential service.
“The (Mealeo) job is always fun, but it gets even more fun during the holidays,” said Maddalla, who put on spooky costumes during Halloween and for this month has Christmasthemed accessories including deer antlers, Santa and elf hats and candy-cane-striped leggings. She also carries snacks for a home’s residents, human and canine.
“I usually remember which addresses have dogs, and I always have dog treats on me,” Maddalla said. “People are always happy when I have a treat for their dog and I’m not afraid of their dogs.”
Food delivery is not a recent development, of course, either for groceries or restaurant food. What’s different in 2020 is how many people are using one or both, especially for groceries. More than a third of American households ordered groceries online for delivery or pickup within the past 30 days, according to industry publications, and the market sector, jump-started by pandemic-related converts to online ordering, is expected to double by 2025, accounting for a full 20 percent of the $1 trillion annual U.S. grocery market.
Mealeo, which grew by 28 to 30 percent annually during each of the first nine years after its 2010 launch, boomed by 120 percent this year, said founder and CEO Blake Hanan. It has more than 200 “delivery partners” (i.e., drivers), and a waiting list of another 150, Hanan said. A slower day, early in the week, sees Mealeo dropping off about 3,000 orders, Hanan said, with Fridays and Saturdays pushing past 5,000 deliveries. “The company has accounts with about 300 restaurants, from Slingerlands to Queensbury.”
Maddalla started delivering restaurant food in fall 2019, initially with one of the big three national companies. The particular one does matter, she said: Mealeo is far better.
“They said they would double my money, and they did” compared to the national app, Maddalla said. She estimated that the 25 to 30 hours per week she delivers for Mealeo makes her more than she brings home from her “real” job.
“The reason I was able to get a new car this year is definitely Mealeo,” she said.
Maddalla lives in Cohoes, delivering in her Honda HR-V throughout northern Albany and southern Saratoga counties. She usually drives Wednesday through Friday evenings and afternoons and nights on weekends. She often heads for Clifton Park as the beginning of her shift approaches, confident that a Mealeo dispatcher will have something ready around the time she arrives.
“When it goes right, and it usually does, I’ll have two or three (orders) that are all right nearby, and I can get it all dropped off in 10 to 20 minutes,” she said.
Hot meals seem more anticipated than groceries: Maddalla said she is greeted at the door, or at least sees someone through it, about 90 percent of the time, while Allan said his customer sightings are rare, with bags left outside and the customer notified via the app.
“I’d say 50 percent of the people have masks on,” said Maddalla, who is required to wear one. She said. “It used to be higher, but it’s gone down some.”
Customers’ happiness level at her arrival wanes if delivery times stretch on, a devolution Maddalla understands.
“If a kitchen is backed up, I’ll text the customer to let them know what’s going on, but they still seem to blame the driver, not the restaurant,” Maddalla said.
Her suggestion: Order ahead of time for delivery outside the peak window of 5:30 to 7 p.m.
Maddalla said, “Do you want to eat a little earlier or later and have it on time and hot, or maybe be waiting?”
Allan, who lives in Hadley, shops in supermarkets for Instacart customers from Warrensburg to Saratoga Springs. In the early spring, after his job with Lake George Expedition Park vanished along with the 2020 season, he decided to expand his presence as a contractor in the gig economy, having enjoyed three years as an Uber driver. (Instacart embeds some of its own employees in stores to shop orders; drivers, who are independent, may do only delivery or shop and deliver.)
“In April, it was just screaming along — probably 50 to 60 hours a week,” said Allan, who estimated his weekly Instacart income during the period at about $1,200 to $1,500, depending on factors including order size, time of day and tips.
“The tipping is so much better from Instacart” customers than Uber riders, Allan said. “There’s not even a comparison.”
He shops less often now, having a new job as a manager for the Lake George Chamber of Commerce and given less demand from Instacart after its massive hiring spree, But, he said, the work during the 15 to 20 hours a week he shops remains largely the same.
Allan logs on to the Instacart app from home to see what’s available. If the Saratoga area looks promising, he heads that way to start shopping batches, as they’re called. (A batch may be an order for just one address or a few close together than can be delivered on one run.)
Skilled at analyzing orders after nine months, he tries to choose those that can be shopped expeditiously and not onerously, which is to say he’d really rather you get cat litter yourself.
“I swear some of those bags weigh 3,000 pounds,” Allan said.
Also to be avoided, if has his druthers: exact quantities of, say, eight meats and cheeses sliced to order from the deli counter, especially if you’re one of those folks who specifies the slicer’s thickness setting.
“I’ve had people say they want the house-brand, bone-in ham, with the slicer on No. 2,” Allan said, adding, “It’s absolutely incredible what you can tell about a person based on what they order.”
Orders still surprise him regularly. He once brought 12 gallons of whole milk, and only that, to a place needing it for mass quantities of hot chocolate. A bar on Saratoga’s Caroline Street ordered 10 bottles of the same kind of juice. He’s taken an order consisting solely of milk, bread and eggs — in other words, somebody forgot to stop at Stewart’s — to a home, even though doing so probably cost three times as much in tip and fees as the items cost, and his biggest tab ever, for $900, went to a mobile home that appeared minimally occupied.
“I’ve definitely learned about a lot of different foods,” Allan said. “Like hearts of palm. I had no idea what that was or where to find it.”
Shopping for Instacart customers has also improved his diet.
“I’ve done a lot more with fresh seafood,” he said, “and I’m eating more fresh greens. No more iceberg lettuce.”
For Allan, an Instacart trip is like a game to strategize.
“I like to see how many of the items I can get spot-on, how well I can do with the substitutions and how many seconds it takes me per item,” he said. All are factors weighed, by Instacart and/or customers, and can affect what he’s paid, even if only fractionally.
As much Instacart work as he’s done, one thing hasn’t changed, even during the holiday season. That’s this Santa’s secret.
Said Allan, “I hate grocery shopping.”