I did Uber eats pre pandemic to supplement income and it was fine for the most part. I bought a food insulator from Sam's that way the hot food stayed how and the cold food stayed cold. This also keeps your car from smelling like what ever food your carrying. People seemed to tip more when they saw that you went out of your way to protect their food. Food delivery is very time intensive if you deliver in a spread out area like Katy or Sugarland. On of the reasons I stoped doing Uber Eats to make extra money was because I started to teach online courses part time. This helped me make more money with less time spent. Which is key for something that you only want to do part time.
It would be tough to impossible to stick with 2 mile maxes. It's rare to get those in H-Town. But $100 to $200 a month is easy. That was basically a normal 3 day weekend about 4 to 6 hours an evening for me. I was getting around $17.50 to $20 an hour with most of that time chilling waiting for good orders. There is a learning curve. All of my negative reviews were in the beginning. I mixed up orders and would forget to double check drinks. Then, I got the hang of it and got organized and planned. That hot bag is important, but I had multiple sized coolers, too, for the smaller orders or the drinks. I ended up not picking up any multiple orders unless it was going to the same place. I didn't pick up an order while already on an order unless it payed better than the order I was already on. I basically delivered the food as if I was delivering it to myself. That delivery guy fantasy is a real thing. I saw things, but declined. Safety... I was careful when selecting orders later into the night, my wife had my location, and I had a weapon in the car just in case, but never had to use it. Good luck and be safe. Oh, and I stuck with Uber Eats. No other apps. I talked to some drivers that were on multiple apps, but they were truly grinding.
I had some extra time on my hands when my daughter was born so I did a few delivery gigs. Here is my wisdom. 1) Dining delivery is generally dogshit. Doordash is the best of a bad bunch, but it's still awful and should generally be avoided. The only reasons you should do dining delivery are if you are between Uber/Lyft gigs and perhaps are fishing for a gig to take you out to a POI (point of interest, e.g. Airport, downtown, or your own home), or if you live in a downtown area and can bike to destinations (generally faster throughput and less money out of pocket). 2) Transporting people is the most profitable, but it depends on you hitting places where demand is high and supply is low. That means late nights, weekends, big events, bad weather, etc. Not ideal. Can be fun, though. 3) If you can't transport people (for example, I couldn't most of the time because my car was riddled with kid crap), item delivery (Walmart Spark, Amazon Flex, Veho, Roadie, etc) can be a worthwhile alternative. You will have to fight to both get into the program and other drivers to get the best gigs though, and there is a learning curve to each program that you have to master to truly maximize your return. The sweet spot I found was with Roadie doing Rx deliveries from CVS. Those were the plentiful and underserved, and the fulfillers (pharm workers) and recipients were WAY nicer and easier to work with than dining delivery. You'd even score the occasional crazy profitable delivery on either a large item from a big box store (home depot usually), a bespoke item (custom cakes was common), or an urgent letter etc. The system relies heavily on reputation of the driver so you actually get rewarded for being on time and providing good service, unlike DD/UE where they just rely on steady churn and burn. 4) Do not do Instacart under any circumstances. Biggest pain in the ass and least profitable by FAR.
UE's gamification crap is the worst. Their payouts are so low I have no idea how they stay in business. Their whole model is built on tricking you into thinking that if you just get your acceptance score high enough eventually they will send you well paying gigs. Never happens.
