This is a resounding question that seems to be on everyone’s mind in our American culture. Being able to quickly hire a shopper and delivery driver to bring you food is a huge convenience. The question is: Do you tip your Instacart food shopper and delivery driver?
Everyone will come face to face with this decision at some point in their lives. Inherently, tipping a worker is not a bad thing, yet controversy and debate still remain about tipping delivery drivers: how much to tip Instacart, Grubhub, and Uber Eats and other delivery services.
Tipping Delivery Drivers Vs. Restaurant Servers
Societal pressure and good etiquette teach us to tip service workers to help them earn their pay for good work and above-average effort. Within the restaurant food industry, this makes sense since waiters, servers, and employees make minimum wage and most of them interact with customers.
There’s also a general consensus that there’s no need to tip when the customer places an order online or calls it in, and then makes their way to the establishment, and picks up the order. On the other side of this, consumers are still divided about whether or not to tip takeout orders when a driver delivers your food to your front door.
And now there is an entire industry focused on shopping for and delivering food, which makes tipping almost a forced requirement. With this in mind, consumers need to learn how much to tip Instacart drivers.
Criteria For Calculating How Much to Tip Instacart
The issue is, consumers can gauge their tip for a waiter by whatever criteria they choose, and many consumers’ opinions coincide with one another. Most customers decide on tipping amounts based on whether their server was:
- Friendly
- Rude
- Attentive
- Social
- Expedient
- Did they go above and beyond?
- And more
Some people just want to get their food, eat, and be able to call a waiter if they need anything else, otherwise, they prefer being left alone. As long as their meal was a good experience in these regards, they tip. And currently, 15% is the average baseline tip, with anything 20% or more being given for standout service, or additional gratuity fees if you have plenty of people at your table.
Why Tip Food Delivery Drivers From Instacart, Grubhub, Uber Eats, and Shipt?
Why do we pay extra just for someone to deliver food? We don’t tip post office workers or FedEx and UPS drivers, right? Although there are similarities here, these industries are completely different.
In a restaurant or food service environment, a delivery driver usually does more than just drive an order to a customer. They might also be working the counter, taking calls, cleaning, maintaining the store, and doing other forms of upkeep.
And while postal and package delivery carriers are provided with company vehicles, food delivery drivers use their personal vehicles and put increased wear and tear on them, along with having to pay more for gasoline.
Another counterpoint exists here, however, since Amazon Flex offers delivery driver jobs for people who are willing to use their personal vehicles to become contracted employees. According to this logic, consumers might start to wonder if these contracted Amazon delivery drivers should be tipped because there is nothing on Amazon’s site that says the company will compensate drivers for gas or vehicle wear and tear.
At this point, customers are expected to tip delivery drivers for the following reasons:
- The delivery driver makes minimum wage
- Increased use of gas
- Wear & tear to the delivery driver’s car
And customers should also take these reasons into consideration when having food delivered by Instacart, Grubhub, Shipt, Uber Eats, and other food delivery services:
- The convenience of saving your time
- Less wear and tear to your car
- You remain comfortable at home
- Avoiding going out in bad weather
- Not having to get dressed and prepared to go out
- Avoiding inconveniences like traffic, going out at night, etc.
It’s also important to point out that generally, delivery fees or delivery charges that customers are required to pay are not given to the driver. Drivers still need to be tipped directly in order to receive more income.
How Much to Tip Instacart When Prompted by the App
This is becoming more common with food delivery apps in the way they provide options for tip amounts, almost forcing you to choose an amount. Instacart has recently removed their “no tip” option, so now customers have to choose to enter a custom tip and enter a zeroed out amount, if they don’t want to add an extra tip.
Customers should never be forced to give a tip, because there could also be important reasons they refuse to do so. Perhaps the customer is barely making ends meet or might have a disability making it easier for them to opt for food delivery over going to the store. A customer might have recently lost their job and be on a tight budget. These are just examples but they illustrate the point.
Arguments Against Tipping Shoppers and Delivery Drivers
With all this talk of tipping, the meta question remains: Shouldn’t all of these expenses and work duties be factored into every employee’s pay? Many people believe all employees of a restaurant or a food service establishment should be fairly compensated with a set wage they can count on. This might mean increasing food prices or delivery fees, but these customers are also on board with that because they wouldn’t have to worry about calculating and paying tips.
Employees, on the other hand, will have varying opinions because some might be in industries or positions where their tips are constantly putting them in a higher income bracket. An yet others might welcome the stress-free change of not having to play income roulette every day. But then again, similar to taking a sales commission job, some might say that getting tips comes with the territory and is an added perk or bonus of the job.
Conclusion – How Much to Tip Instacart
The future of Instacart shoppers and delivery drivers, along with the entire food service delivery industry, is always up in the air. But at this point, it’s readily apparent it’s going to hang around indefinitely. And in order to stay relevant and to continue improving, Instacart decided to enter the in-store scan-and-go model. This signals that a food delivery service might need to do more than just deliver food in order to survive.
But there are many positives as to why food delivery services like Instacart, Shipt, Uber Eats, and Grubhub need to exist in a modern world burdened with limited time. The future will shine bright for these companies when their innovations not only help consumers but can also help businesses. Such is the case when Instacart decided to help devote more ad space for fresh produce farmers and brands. And that explains a wealth of knowledge about what you need to know when tipping delivery drivers: how much to tip Instacart, Grubhub, Uber Eats, and other delivery services.
