What’s It Like Delivering Grocery for Doordash in Australia

At the beginning of its arrival in Australia Doordash only provided on-demand food delivery service, but along with the continuing pandemic which forces some people to stay at home, the company now trying to expand its product and service so that the customer not only ordered food but also every day needs from their favourite stores.

Introduced starting around June 2021 Doordash grocery delivery in Australia has served customers in several big cities around the country who want their daily essentials delivered from several local supermarkets and grocery stores. This kind of service had been carried out by Doordash in its home country a year earlier and received a positive response because it was considered very helpful for its customers and offered new opportunities for local businesses at this difficult time.

For Dasher or the company’s delivery partners, this is a nice thing because they will get a new opportunity to get grocery delivery requests. They can expect more requests because there should be more supermarkets and grocery customers in addition to orders from restaurants which sometimes only happen occasionally during mealtimes.

Where grocery delivery available?

The Doordash grocery and supermarkets delivery opportunity is currently accepted by delivery partners in several major cities such as Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. To be able to further confirm whether this service in your area is available or not, you can see it via the customer app. You’ll be able to find a Convenience icon in the app’s top menu.

If there is no icon, it is possible that the on-demand grocery delivery is still not available in your area, or is still in the process of integrating the store into the platform which might take a long time.

Which grocery stores are available at Doordash?

On-demand non-food delivery service is a new service for Doordash in Australia. That’s probably the reason why currently only a few grocery stores and supermarkets are listed in the app. Some of them are big names in the country such as Woolworths, Coles, IGA Supermarket, Reject Shop, QuickStop, PETstock, etc.

The number of grocery stores is likely to continue to grow rapidly over time. It’s not a difficult thing to do, because they have experience in adding a lot of restaurants in a short amount of time on their platform. Maybe in the future, every grocery store in Uber Eats can also be served by Doordash.

How to pick-up grocery order

On the DoorDash platform, there are currently two types of grocery delivery orders offered. The first one we can just name it as regular delivery order and the second one is a Shop and Deliver order. Even though they have similar job descriptions, there are some differences between the two types of delivery orders.

In the following, we will explain in a little more detail about both of them to avoid confusion to the delivery driver when receiving this kind of order.

1. Regular Grocery Order
   In this grocery order, there is not too much difference when compared to the restaurant order. However, every store has its own pick-up preference and makes sure to follow any given instructions in your Dasher app.

   As an example, the following is an overview of the process:

   • Accepting requests: You will receive requests that will say “This is Doordash Drive grocery order” in your Dasher app, similar to when you receive food orders as usual.
   • Navigating to the store: Dasher app will navigate you to the store location, inside the app you may also see additional information about where to park your vehicle once arrived at the location (e.g. Click and Collect bay for Coles order).
   • Arriving and picking up the items: Experiencing difficulty finding the pickup location? you can always contact the store with the provided number. Besides that, delivery partners can also go directly to the store and leave their vehicle to collect the groceries from the service desk, take it and securely place the items inside the vehicle.
   • Navigating to the drop-off: Start the delivery in the Dasher app and follow the navigation as usual just like when you deliver food items from a restaurant.
   • Dropping off the items: Follow any drop-off information provided by the customer, hand it to them or leave it at a safe place.

   When it’s a “hand it to me” order and you can’t find the customer, it is recommended to follow every “Customer is Unavailable” step to properly complete the delivery. Failing to follow the steps may get you in trouble because you will receive an order never arrived report from the customer.

   Some drivers even say that grocery order pick-up is easier and faster to complete than pick-up food from some restaurants since some of them only start preparing the food when the drivers arrive at the location.

2. Shop and Deliver Order
   There are some differences between the shop and deliver orders with the regular one. However, the most significant difference is in the pickup. Besides that, everything is almost the same as the regular order.

   The following are additional tasks that must be carried out by the delivery driver as soon as they arrive at the store:

   • Shopping for customer items. After arriving at the store, you will be able to see a list of items ordered by the customer in the Dasher app. Look for each item outlined and then proceed to the checkout process.
   • Pay with Red Card. Because this kind of order is not a prepaid order like in a restaurant. So when all the items have been collected, the delivery driver will need to use the provided Red Card at checkout. Whether it’s a virtual card or the physical one.

So basically, what distinguishes regular DoorDash grocery orders from Shop and Deliver orders is in the pickup process. The delivery driver must shop for customers’ items and pay with a red card, while the regular one does not need to do that step.

Doordash grocery delivery order pay

As we explained earlier, delivery pay depends upon various factors including the driving distance, estimated activity time, traffic, etc. In addition, drivers also get the opportunity to earn more per delivery when there’s a Peak Pay promotion that applies when you receive a request. The following is an example of a driver who received a grocery delivery request from Coles.

Those pay structures also apply to on-demand grocery delivery. So, if you were previously satisfied with how Doordash pays you for delivering food, chances are you will not be disappointed with this kind of order. After all, you can still see how much they will pay you on the driver app when they offer it, you can still refuse if you think it’s not worth it.

Regular vs Shop Order

However, as mentioned before, there are two types of DoorDash grocery orders that can be accepted in Australia. The Shop and Deliver (S&D) order and the regular grocery order. Of the two, the Shop and Deliver orders certainly have better pay, sometimes up to two to three times higher than the regular one.

This is understandable because this kind of order certainly takes longer to complete. But as far as I know, many delivery drivers are happy with this order and are always looking forward to it. You can also see our other articles about Grocery orders and is it worth your time and effort?.