Deliveroo

In the main KFC I go to, the tablet is out front and as soon as the order come through they stick the ticket on a bag, get any drinks out and call it through to the back. They'll usually have someone who fills Deliveroo orders as their first line while one or two others do the instore customers.

Meanwhile, at the other KFC, the one I don't want to go to, the tablet is out back and only when you walk in the door and give them your order number(s) do they go and look for it and start making it up. Generally an absolute shitshow.

I think that the main one know's that we'll be nice to them, be paying attention when they call out order numbers and clear the counter area as soon as possible.

When I used to work for Deliveroo I had a meeting with our area manager (one up from the person who just managed Leeds). I was told that riders weren't required to wear any particular uniform or use any particular equipment. It's possible that it's because it was a meeting between a few disgruntled riders who were trying to create a union, the IWW and Deliveroo management and Deliveroo were trying to push the angle that none of their riders are actually employees, being forced to weara uniform would undermine that a bit. I'm not sure if that's still the case but I wouldn't worry about it either way, just wear whatever you think is the best thing for the job.

Sharing this because it's healthy for riders all over to have a good picture of what the company are working on.

I received this today:

“Restaurant wait too long” is the number one reason you rate an order as ‘thumbs down’. And we agree. Working as a fee per delivery rider means that time spent waiting is time that you could be earning.

Most orders run smoothly – but delays can happen. When these delays are too long, you should be able to unassign yourself.

From today, we’ll be testing a new feature for fee per delivery riders in selected zones across the UK and Ireland. This new feature includes:

Live updates of when a delayed order is expected to be ready, helping you to decide whether or not you want to wait.
A timer showing how long you’ve been waiting so far (because sometimes three minutes can feel like forever!).
The option to tell us how long you’ve been waiting.
The ability to reject the order in the app, straight away.
If you receive the update today, you’ll see the ? icon in the top right-hand corner of the order screen. Select the ? icon and then “Restaurant taking too long” to unlock new feature.

Any rejections made throughout this trial period will not affect your statistics or acceptance rate.

We’ll be testing this feature over the next month – gathering as much feedback as possible – so we can improve and update it, before launching to riders everywhere!

I am impressed they are looking for these improvements. And looking forward to using it.

Restaurant wait time in my area is the bottleneck here and is regularly the difference between completing two or four assignments in an hour - the difference between a waste of time and time spent earning well.

why don't they just charge wait time like every other courier company?

I don't know. That's probably a good idea.

Does anyone know ... when we get assigned, does the order go to the restaurant simultaneously? Meaning if we get to the collect in 5 mins, the kitchen only has 5 mins prep time?

I don't think so. I think the order is assigned to a rider who is the right distance from the restaurant to get there exactly as it's supposed to be ready. So if the restaurant has a 15 minute preparation time, 10 minutes after they receive and start preparing the order, a rider who is 5 minutes away will receive it. At least that's what I was led to believe by the manager for Leeds. He was later fired for being an incompetent, lying, manipulative fuckwit though so not 100% reliable. That seems like the most logical system though.

I think that we're supposed to arrive a couple of minutes before the food is ready for collection. However, as Deliveroo don't seem to like giving restaurants the prep time they want, i.e. 15 minutes to prep, cook and plate a whole chicken breast, this doesn't work. It also falls down if you're a faster rider and/or know a shorter/quicker route to the restaurant.

I think waiting time might be a bad idea, too easy for riders to try and milk the system and too much of a case of your word versus theirs that Deliveroo would have to spend a lot of money hiring people to mediate between claims.

I'm not to bothered about waiting 5-10 minutes waiting on an order, especially at this time of year. I've worked in kitchens and know how long it takes to get a dish up to service. It's when I turned up at a restaurant, the whole family is busy eating dinner and nobody is in the kitchen that I get annoyed. Of course I should have called too be unassigned as soon as environmental health turned up to carry out an inspection instead of waiting another ten minutes trying to get the front of house to tell me when it was going to be ready.

Of course I should have called too be unassigned as soon as environmental health turned up to carry out an inspection instead of waiting...

Haha wtf? The ebike riders here could use a health inspector. They’re even weirder than the rest of us.

Just bad luck. Environmental health will carry out unannounced visits at some point, I just happened to be there when it happened.

We've got one ebike rider, not too odd though.

The government says it is going further than the Review's recommendations by:
Enforcing holiday and sick pay entitlements
Giving all workers the right to demand a payslip
Allowing flexible workers to demand more stable contracts

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42959756

Still no indication from the government about WHEN this is going to happen. They keep seeming to talk about it but still no laws have changed.

“I think you’ve arrived too early”

— front of house staff, last night, said with zero irony.

:-|

Stupid question and i'll probably answer it as I write it out, Am I right in think that Deliveroo will only deliver in the area you live in, so I'm in SE19 and the place I wanted to get a deliverer from was in SE21 which is 3 roads away, but yet I can't. Is this due to post code I'm in?

Not sure really. I deliver to about 6 different postcode areas but not to the whole area covered by them. If you were to look at the S6 area you would be able to see why, some of it is fine but the far reaches would be difficult to ride to in less than an hour with a roo bag on your back.

Most of my collections are in S1 but most deliveries are S2 & S3.

You might be on a district border which could cause that problem. Sheffield only has one district.

Thanks have not been able to find out any info on this, spoke to the people in the takeaway and there are signed up to Deliveroo.

There seems to be some streets/buildings that are fully within delivery areas but are excluded for some reason.

My wife’s boss is in this situation, buildings on all sides get delivery coz they see the riders arriving, they go on the site and put their address in, nada.

They’ve tried contacting Deliveroo but get nothing back.

Cold fun in the snow last night but icy and dicey. I was impressed how many riders in my area turned out. The biggest hazard was probably pizza delivery drivers (what’s new).

Some novel approaches to getting the job done are emerging;

https://mobile.twitter.com/esmeyep/status/968856777113600001/video/1

And (this looks fun) ...

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/watch-hero-deliveroo-driver-defy-12107179.amp?__twitter_impression=true

Clear evidence of Deliveroo driver RLJing. Absolutely disgusting, ban them all.

Been out on the cyclocross bike. Absolutely brilliant on the snow and slush. It'll be a shame to go back to the hack bike.

.

Yeah, I've got a 26" monstour commuter thing already which I think would be perfect.

In fact I was about to sign up until my phone died and I had to "borrow" the derailleur off that bike to get another one working... soon™

"Onboarding" at 5.00, any last minute tips?

Got all my bike kit on, filled my bag with reflective stuff and extra layers, gave my bike a nice service, set off at 4.35 and did the 10 minute ride so that I arrived 15 minutes early... then sat in their office and filled out a bunch of forms for 20 minutes. I thought it was going to be a trial shift - apparently they don't do those any more. lol

Glad you got it all sorted. They stopped the trial shifts last June/July.

Was the kit free? I spoke with a few new riders who said that Deliveroo was giving out the “core kit” for free.

Yep, got the roll-top bag, jacket, small bag and a helmet all free. I imagine there must be some sort of minimum amount of deliveries in order to pay that off, but I didn't see anything in the T&Cs about paying for it if I never do a shift...

That’s new.

In Jan they were charging for kit, offering to take it out of fees.

The new rolltops actually look good.