How much you can make on DoorDash on a holiday weekend (Fourth of July)
My most popular article so far is 13 side hustles for graphic designers, but what about those of us who aren’t graphic designers?
I myself am a software engineer, but I know the last thing that I want to do after a long day of coding and looking at my computer screen is to code some more. Oftentimes, our side hustles are more enjoyable and less-likely to cause burnout when they’re a different activity entirely from our full-time work.
Well, if you’re like me and need to get away from your computer but still want to make some extra cash, DoorDash is a great side hustle. Not only do you get to drive around town, blast your music, and learn all the fun restaurant spots in town, but you also get to set your own schedule, starting and stopping whenever it’s convenient for you. You don’t have to take any orders that you don’t think are worth it, either.
This week is special though - it’s Fourth of July weekend and I’m hopeful that means larger than average orders (which would hopefully mean larger than average tips). This article will answer the question for new Dashers and veteran Dashers alike - is it worth it to dash on a holiday weekend? What would I earn?
I describe each dash for those who want to know what it’s like (and want tips to help make their own dashes smoother) and offer a summary of each day where I give the total earned, along with the net profit after subtracting the actual amount we spent on gas and an estimate for wear-and-tear and taxes. There is an overall summary at the end of the article.
TLDR? Type Control (or Command) F and search “Summary” for the numbers!
Sign up
It’s super easy to sign up as long as you’re 18 or older - just pass a criminal background check, giving your SSN and your driver’s license number. Since you can technically dash without a bike or scooter, there’s no proof of insurance required - although if you say you are driving a vehicle, they will ask you to at least confirm that you have insurance (but again, no picture proof is required).
This insurance part is valuable to me because, even though I pay my parents for the insurance and registration on my car, the car is not actually in my name and I’m not the primary policy holder, which has disqualified me in the past for other side-hustle apps.
I recommend signing up with a referral link since it’s free bonus money on top of your regular orders - I don’t have one to offer, but there’s a strong Dasher community on YouTube and they usually post their links in the description for $100 or more.
Location, location, location
We live in a nice suburb in Charlotte, not in the heart of the city. I imagine that delivering food in the suburbs is easier, since there are more houses and low apartment buildings than tall city apartment buildings with fob access to deliver to.
The downside is that orders in the suburbs often require long distances for drop-off, taking you a long way away from restaurants (too far out of range of more order opportunities).
There are three main spots packed with restaurants near our house, so our goal was to just bounce between those spots each shift and try not to stray too far from them with drop-off locations. There ended up being a fourth popular spot that turned our triangular ping-ponging between restaurants into a square shape.
Rules
Our rules were:
No tip, no trip
We made an exception for this one time because it was low mileage and the tip was covered by a high DoorDash “peak pay” - an incentive offered when demand for delivery outpaces the number of drivers available
The order must be a minimum of $1 per mile
Ideally, you would get at least $2 per mile… but if we stuck to this we’d spend a lot of time sitting in the car, making no money at all (which would reduce our per hour earnings). I always like to say that some money is better than no money!
Dash in 2 hour sessions at a minimum
Usually the first hour is a little rough getting started and the hourly wage is not great by the end of it. When you add the second hour, the total pay averages out to a better dollar per hour amount
Schedule
We dashed Friday, July 2nd after work into the evening of Sunday, July 4th, but we didn’t really decide on exact times for when we’d dash each day. Instead, we looked for when the map was red, indicating our zone was busy.
These busy times naturally lined up with lunch and dinner hours, so we ended up dashing consistently for 2 hours and 30 minutes each lunch session and around 4 hours each dinner shift.
Pro tip: the Dasher app is very glitchy! You will often need to force quit the app and reopen it to get it to work - don’t worry, you won’t lose your current order when you do this!
Story-time: I remember the first time the app froze on us (it was our first night dashing, before this article). We were on the way to the drop-off location late at night, food in the car, somewhere farther away than we probably should have accepted. I worried that, if we closed the app, we’d lose the address and drop-off instructions and that DoorDash would think we stole their food. When we worked up the courage to force quit the app (as we had no other option by this point) and reopen it, it went back to the current order! The relief was overwhelming - and now I hope that by sharing that story I have saved you from that first-app crashing, late night, middle of nowhere stress.
Friday
DINNER
We started at 6:18pm and quickly received an order. When we arrived for pick-up, the restaurant said it would be 10 minutes before the food would be ready and it didn’t feel worth the wait, so we unassigned it.
A different order popped up for the same place, $9 for 1.8 miles (which is an absolute dream order) and was further sweetened by an added $6 to double-up, picking up more food at a restaurant in the same shopping center. We happily accepted both.
Well, you know how it is with things that are too good to be true: it was the same story as earlier but worse - twenty minutes until it would be ready! We had to unassign it even though it was a great amount of money for the distance.
It felt like ages sitting in the car before we received our first real order that we could actually start on (in reality, it was only 14 minutes). For drop-off on this first order, we ended up driving precariously down a long single-lane gravel road, swiveling into drive ways on and off to let other cars going the opposite direction pass through, but it at least gave us momentum with an $8 start.
Next up was pizza delivery for $10 where we were offered a water bottle at drop-off - a little act of kindness that brightened our trip! Another pizza delivery for $7 later and we had earned $25 1 hour and 18 minutes into our trip.
We were excited about our next order because, at $7 for 2.1 miles, it was almost $4 per mile (can you guess what it was? Yep, more pizza!). We accepted an $11.25 order after that (which turned out to be $13 with a hidden tip) for around 7 miles, finishing off our 2nd hour at $46 earned (or $23 per hour before gas and taxes). Unfortunately, it took us out of our zone and we spent 12 minutes driving back to the shopping centers we had started at.
It took until 2 hours and 25 minutes into our dash to receive another (good) order, meaning we went 22 minutes without an order. When we stopped at the store to pick up the food, we were told by a cashier that another dasher had already picked it up (this happens more than you think).
We ended up with half pay for that order after calling DoorDash support, so we essentially made $4.50 total for showing up and placing a phone call. Looking back, that means we made $4.50 in 40 minutes, which was demotivating to say the least.
Having pulled up to our house at 8:58pm for a much-needed bathroom break (2 hours and 40 minutes into our dash), we were back out by 9:05pm. After 9pm there was a $3 bonus on each order, which made us more hopeful that we’d have better luck going forward.
We quickly received a $10 order for 5.2 miles and a $6 order for 2.6 miles after that. This violated our no tip, no trip rule (since $3 was the minimum base pay, and $3 was from the peak pay bonus), but the dollars per mile was good so we took it.
It was looking grim after we realized we had accidentally taken a wrong turn and ended up far from any restaurants but we were ultimately saved from ending on a bad note by an order of $8 for 2 miles.
We ended our first night of holiday weekend dashing around 10:20pm, roughly four hours of work.
Friday Summary
Gross total (DINNER): $74.50 (with reimbursement)
Total time: 4 hours
Gross total per hour: $18.62
Net total:
Gas: $6.66
Net total after gas: $67.84
Tax and wear and tear after gas (25%): $16.96
Net total: $50.88
Net total per hour: $12.72
Saturday
LUNCH
We tried to schedule ourselves for the “brunch” shift (10 or 11am) but the app would only allow us to schedule a 2pm start time due to the amount of drivers already scheduled to dash in our area. We kept checking back on the app throughout the morning and ended up being able to move our start-time up to 12pm, which was perfect for the lunch shift.
We left our house at 12:07pm with an order that we accepted before ever getting in the car: $6 for 4.2 miles. Not ideal, but it’s usually good to just get started.
Our next order was a double order for $13 total - one of which ended up being 6 pizzas! The people who placed the pizza order were having a birthday party and tipped us $15, so we really made $17.50 on that one half of the double order, which wasn’t even a far drive! This goes to show that the number DoorDash shows you is not always the true, final amount.
The other half of the double order gave us $5.50 at drop-off, putting us at $29 earned for 46 minutes of work.
While we cruised around looking for another order, we had the windows down and I closed my eyes, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air for just a moment - only to look down and see 6 seconds left on an $11.50 order!
Seeing only the dollar amount and roughly 6 miles of distance, I panicked and accepted it. 😅
The drop-off spot ended up being 13 minutes away from all the restaurants, leading me to my next pro tip: make sure your phone is on loud or vibrate so you don’t have to make any rushed decisions on orders! On the bright side of the long drive, I did get a close-up look at the beautiful houses in a neighborhood that I’ve long admired from afar.
Our next order that we accepted was $6 for 5.9 miles (which we only accepted after a string of bad order options made this one look at least halfway decent). This ended up being a surprise gift to someone which was heart warming… but also more time consuming from a work perspective to get in touch with the gifter to follow the instructions for drop-off and then to try to get ahold of an unsuspecting recipient who didn’t know why we were at their house knocking on the door (they never answered though we heard them inside the house - I can’t really blame them as I wouldn’t open the door either). This put us at $47 1 hour and 49 minutes into our dash.
We accepted a $6 Chik-fil-A order for 1.9 miles next. Despite the dollars per mile appearing good, it ended up not being worth it. At some Chik-fil-A locations you can go in the store and pick up food off a rack, but this time we had to go through the drive through (which was two lanes and pretty slow). There was also only one way out of the restaurant on a busy road with a median that forced us to go the wrong direction and u-turn down the street, which further slowed us down.
If I’m being honest, all of our experiences with Chik-fil-A deliveries have been pretty bad and not worth the usual $6 offered. The recipient also had a lot of specific instructions for drop-off, which further complicated the order.
We stopped at 2 hour and 26 minutes of lunch-time dashing (2:48pm) having made $53. We scheduled ourselves for the 5pm to 9pm dinner shift and went home to enjoy some lunch.
DINNER
My partner was feeling extra motivated and signed us up to start at 4:30pm instead of 5, but we really began driving at 4:44pm. It took until 4:56pm to get our first order - $6 for 2.4 miles. We took it because the amount per mile was good and we didn’t want to spend any more time sitting with $0 to show for it.
We drove around afterwards, receiving a lot of long distance, low-or-no-tip order options and declined them to stay in our zone. I’m not sure if this was a mistake or not, as we ended up parked outside some restaurants with no other orders offered to us 42 minutes into our dash.
We were finally offered an $11.25 order for 7.4 miles that took us a decent distance away from restaurants and deeper into suburbia, but we didn’t want to end our first hour with only $6 so we took it. We delivered it at 58 minutes into our dash, bringing our hourly wage for the dinner shift to $20 (thanks to a hidden tip on the order that brought it up to $14 total).
It took us 8 minutes to get back to the restaurants and until 1 hour and 17 minutes into our shift to get a decent order ($9.50 for 6.1 miles). It ended up being $13 at drop-off!
At 1 hour and 55 minutes into our shift, we were getting desperate for a good order. The last 4 orders up to this point wouldn’t show miles, even when the app was force-quit and reopened. We finally accepted one that was $8.50 for 2 items, without knowing the miles just because we wanted to close out our 2nd hour with a decent hourly wage.
The hidden mileage from the restaurant to the drop-off point ended up being 14.3 miles - so even more when you factor in the miles driving to the restaurant, making this an order we definitely wouldn’t have accepted had DoorDash not hidden the mileage. I read about this “hidden mileage” screen on Reddit while my partner drove. Some called it a glitch but others noticed, like I did, that it only happens after you decline a few orders consistently. I was disappointed in DoorDash after reading this and honestly wanted to stop dashing for the night, but, alas, the article must go on.
The drop-off was in a location that, as a woman, would have made me nervous to be in without my partner at night (dark, secluded gravel road off another longer gravel road surrounded by trees with double chain link fence - one around the property and one around the house itself beginning at the foot of the steps leading to the front door, adorned with countless “Beware” signs).
After we completed this order, DoorDash “magically” began showing the miles on each order again.
We picked up the first of two parts of our next order at 2 hours and 34 minutes into the dash, which meant we had spent 40 minutes total on our last order getting to and from the house. Finishing the double order gave us $14.50 and made it so we were officially 3 hours and 7 minutes into our dash at 8:05pm with a total dinner rush earnings of $56.
We began the trek back towards our zone and it was 3 hours 23 minutes into our dash when we got our next order - $4.25 for 3ish miles from Crumble Cookie. We actually wanted to order some cookies for ourselves before the store closed early that night, so we accepted.
There were a TON of people in line so my partner went to deliver the order while I waited for our cookies to be made. #teamwork
He picked me up at 3 hours and 38 minutes into the dash with $60.25 earned so far. We got an order for the same location he picked me up at worth $6 for 2.9 miles. Off we went with our own cookies in tow!
Side-note: it’s pretty enjoyable to mix your own activities and errands in with DoorDash - it feels like getting paid to be out running your errands and sometimes covers the cost of whatever you were out doing.
When we picked up the order and got back in the car, we noticed the straw was missing (which happened to us twice this weekend alone). This leads me to my next pro tip: keep generic, wrapped straws on hand. We finished this order at 8:58pm, with 3 hours and 56 minutes on the car trip timer.
Knowing it would take us the rest of the 4 minutes of time to get back to the restaurants, we were ready to end our 4 hour dinner shift at $66.25 earned. We ordered a pizza for our own Saturday night enjoyment at 9pm and saw it had a pickup time of 9:15-9:25pm. We decided to accept one last order for $8.50 that was nearby (3 miles to the store plus 1.2 miles to the house) to kill the time until our pizza was ready.
We officially finished our dash at 4h 34m, 9:18pm with $74.75 in earnings.
Saturday Summary
Gross total (LUNCH): $53
Total time: 2 hours and 41 minutes
Gross total per hour (lunch): $19.75
Gross total (DINNER): $74.75
Total time: 4 hours and 34 minutes
Gross total per hour (dinner): $16.37
Gross total (LUNCH + DINNER): $127.75
Total time: 7 hours and 15 minutes
Gross total per hour (lunch + dinner): $17.62
Net total:
Gas: $14.92
Net total after gas: $112.83
Tax and wear and tear after gas (25%): $28.21
Net total: $99.54
Net total per hour: $13.73
Sunday (the 4th)
LUNCH
We left our house at 11:46am to start looking for orders, not really knowing if anything would be open. If a restaurant is closed, you still receive half-pay, so we figured that out worse case scenario was getting 3-4 closed restaurant orders and half-pay on each before heading home.
15 minutes into our drive around, we received an order - $6 for 5.1 miles with the drop-off in a good location (read: still close to restaurants) so we accepted it. It took 15 minutes to get the order from the restaurant and until 7 minutes to drop it off at… wait for it… a pet store!
We were a little out of our zone with this one but not far - without the wait at the restaurant it maybe would have been worth it. 45 minutes in at this point with only $6 earned, we accepted an $11.86 double order for 9 miles.
We dropped off the first half at 1 hour and 2 minutes into our dash, bringing our first hour pay to $13.50. The second half of the order was less than 4 miles away and we dropped it off 1 hour and 12 minutes into our dash, receiving $4.36 plus our first ever cash tip of $5! In total, we were at $23.36 1 hour and 15 minutes into our dash as we cruised around slowly, looking for more orders in a large shopping center.
An offer popped up for $11.30 for a 3 mile double order at 1 hour and 24 minutes into our dash - great dollars per mile so of course we accepted! The first half gave us $8.50 and the second half was .6 miles (3 minutes) and gave us $4.63, bringing our total to $36.49 at 1 hour 46 minutes into our dash.
It took until 1 hour and 58 minutes in to start getting order options again, but they were all no-tip, small orders for long distances. At 2 hours and 4 minutes in we finally got an order for $6 at 3.3 miles.
We had accepted it right as we were pulling out of the parking lot - two u-turns later and we were back at the right spot. At 2 hours and 16 minutes into our dash we dropped the food off, bringing our total to $42.49.
Our next and final lunch order was $7 for 3.2 miles - we were really hoping for $8 to take us above $50 for 2 and a half hours but this was still a great option. The order was for two items but the restaurant only gave us one. Luckily, we caught the mistake before leaving.
This last delivery brought our total to $49.49 for 2 hours and 40 minutes of work, ending our dash at 2:24pm.
DINNER
We started the dinner dash around 5:20pm and immediately got a good order for $8 and 2ish miles. Our goal was to dash for 4 hours total (9:30pm) to wrap up our holiday weekend or to stop whenever the restaurants closed, as we suspected a majority would close early in observance of the holidays.
With a hidden tip, we made a total of $9 in the first 16 minutes. Unfortunately we lost WiFi walking up to the house and the app glitched. No amount of force restarting would fix it so we had to end the dash and start a new one.
We got another order for $10 and 7 miles. They offered us $13.50 to add an additional order with 17 extra miles that took us VERY far from our zone and to a town I actually used to live in during college - we declined the add-on. We then got another offer for a different add-on: $6.50 at the same restaurant for an additional 1.8 miles, which of course we accepted. When arrived at the restaurant at 5:49pm, the food wasn’t ready for either order. We waited until 6:07pm for the first order and until 6:16pm for the second part of the double order. 27 minutes of waiting for food later and one compliment on my shirt, we were off.
This would have been an order to let go in hopes of picking up something else that was ready, but every minute passed made us feel like we if gave up then, we would be walking away right as it was a minute away from being ready. If you’re social, you might ask the staff how backed up they are and how long it would take so you aren’t standing around (although we were told 4 minutes at one point, which became 10 minutes in reality).
We dropped the last of the double order off at 6:37, bringing our total to $25 for an hour and 17 minutes. Somewhere along the way, the app glitched and froze the map, which we noticed at 6:49pm when it showed us the 30 minute pause screen (we assume orders were being given to us which we couldn’t see due to the glitch, so it saw us not accepting orders and paused us). After a force restart, we accepted $11 for 7.3 miles. We dropped it off at 7:07pm, making our earnings near the 2 hour mark $36.
The next offer was $14 for 9.3 miles up into another zone that is usually busier than our own zone. $14 is pretty high so, while good enough on its own, we hoped there was a hidden tip (they’re usually hidden on higher orders). We dropped it off at 7:40pm in a neighborhood where the homes are worth above 3.3 million - stunning! The app glitched (again) because it picked up WiFi while walking the order up to the house.
If you don’t know, DoorDash asks you to take a photo at drop-off of the food showing where you left it (and as evidence you actually delivered it). Since the app was temporarily not working, we tried to take a photo from the phone’s camera and upload later from the photo gallery, but it wouldn’t work. We ended up saying we “handed order to customer” which wasn’t technically true but… that’s life.
That order brought our total to $55 (meaning we did receive a $5 hidden tip!).
Next up was a $9.50 for 4.9 miles pizza order when we reached our zone again. We were 2 hours and 50 minutes into our dash by drop off. It took 4 minutes to complete this drop-off as the app showed the wrong apartment building on the map and the building required a fob to enter - which meant we had to call the orderer to get in.
We headed back to town to try to pick up any orders for the few places still open until 9pm. We accepted $6 for 2.5 miles (at McDonald’s right across the street). It ended up being two sundaes, but luckily the weather wasn’t so sweltering hot by 8:16pm.
$71 was our total so far for 3 hours and 5 minutes of work.
We were offered $11.50 for a little over 13 miles far out of our zone. It was a ton of drinks and ice creams that any single dasher would likely have to pass on, but luckily we had me to hold things and keep them from spilling. This was honestly a pure risk and experiment in finding hidden tips on an order we knew most dasher wouldn’t accept.
We ended up delivering to the ER as our last order on Fourth of July (there was no extra tip, in case you were wondering), which is one heck of an order to end our dashing weekend experiment on!
We started our drive back home at 9:08pm, ending our 4 hour dash 10 minutes early (we were way out of our zone so the 10 minutes to finish a full 4 hour shift would have just been spent on the freeway getting back to restaurants anyways).
Sunday Summary
Gross total (LUNCH): $49.49 (with $5 cash tip)
Total time: 2 hours and 38 minutes
Gross total per hour (lunch): $18.79
Gross total (DINNER): $82.50
Total time: 3 hours and 48 minutes
Gross total per hour (dinner): $21.71
Gross total (LUNCH + DINNER): $131.99
Total time: 6 hours and 26 minutes
Gross total per hour (lunch + dinner): $20.52
Net total:
Gas: $12.93
Net total after gas: $119.06
Tax and wear and tear after gas (25%): $29.77
Net total: $89.29
Net total per hour: $13.88
Weekend Summary
A screenshot of our DoorDash weekend total
Note: this includes a Monday dash my partner did not included in the summary below
While these numbers weren’t as impressive as we hoped, it’s still a decent side-hustle for saving up for small items or in an emergency to make extra cash. It sure beats sitting around and watching Netflix!
Here is the final weekend total, as well as our determination on which day was the most profitable:
Gross total: $334.24
Total time: 17 hours and 41 minutes
Gross total per hour: $18.90
Net total:
Gas: $34.51
Net total after gas: $299.73
Tax and wear and tear after gas (25%): $74.93
Net total: $224.80
Net total per hour: $12.71
Best day: Sunday, July 4th