Making a living is tough with Uber Eats
A La Presse journalist signed up with Uber Eats to find out what it’s like trying to make a living on the fly. Well, it isn’t easy. Drivers know which trips won’t pay, but the system forces them to cover trips at a loss to keep their active status. The issue of the SAQ adopting Uber Eats for its new quick delivery service is also critiqued.
jeather 11:53 on 2026-02-02 Permalink
The food delivery services are an impressive level of scam, but they’re only able to be so scammy because the government lets them.
Uatu 12:13 on 2026-02-02 Permalink
Only order from places that have their own delivery drivers. Why should I have to pay some middleman that’s based in Cali?
Kate 12:46 on 2026-02-02 Permalink
The main edge that delivery services have is you’re paying them seamlessly by credit card, and don’t have to hand over a wad of cash at the door.
Or do most places with their own drivers also give them a card machine these days? I’m out of this loop.
Jim 13:27 on 2026-02-02 Permalink
History has shown this pattern before. Early factory workers carried the cost of industrial growth, and society benefited while rules for the workers caught up slowly. Now it’s the delivery drivers that are enduring the system, I hope they’re shaping what will eventually become a fairer one. That doesn’t make it acceptable, but it does give their role some weight.
roberto 14:09 on 2026-02-02 Permalink
Drivers have portable POS for card payments (I haven`t paid cash in years for food delivery). Many take out places even have websites that let you order and pay online. The only convinience to Uber would be the common platform for that endless scrolling of choices.
Joey 14:39 on 2026-02-02 Permalink
Much easier for a restaurant to deal with Uber Eats etc rather than set up their own delivery system – it makes lots of sense to simply outsource all the logistics. For years there were a few dozen Montreal restaurants that used A La Carte Express, long before Uber showed up. Then the big multinationals arrived stacked with venture capital funds that allowed them to operate at a loss. I’m sure I recall discussions here about how Uber drivers earned more than cabbies for a time. Once the Ubers of the world gobbled up a majority of the market they turned the screws on drivers (and restaurants!) – IOW, it’s just predatory capitalism in action.
Anyway, the SAQ is partnering with Uber Eats because it ‘has no choice’ – meanwhile, Mayor Mamdani today announced that Uber Eats and two competitors will pay a $5M fine due to wage theft. We have been walloped into complacency in this province…
Last, why is it urgent for hard liquor to be delivered to your door anyway?
Kate 15:08 on 2026-02-02 Permalink
That’s a good question. Right now, I seem to be getting a scratchy cough, and I can imagine ordering out so I could make hot scotch and lemon, but I don’t see any delivery date sooner than February 5.
Joey 17:22 on 2026-02-02 Permalink
Also, the SQDC already does same-day delivery. When cannabis was legalized, one of the public health recommendations that I think pretty much everyone agreed with was that weed and booze shouldn’t be ‘colocated’ – you should have to go to different stores to buy ’em. I suppose there’s some logic to that but I suspect the health benefits of distinct operations is pretty minor. Funny to see that the upstart SQDC managed to get same-day delivery up and running quick while the established SAQ had to go through some elaborate process, though I guess delivering containers of cannabis isn’t the same as bottles of alcohol.
Hope your cough heals up soon!
dhomas 15:18 on 2026-02-03 Permalink
I refuse to use the delivery apps. UberEats, DoorDash, Skip. Skip is especially irksome to me as they maple wash pretty hard. Their ad campaign’s current slogan is “Born in Canada, serving Canada”: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCspnBbuz5iyHAB5H0-KbOiQ/videos
It’s not technically false as SkiptheDishes did originate in Canada. However, they are no longer a Canadian company. They were acquired in around 2017 by JustEat, a Danish company (at least they’re not American, I guess).
When I need takeout, I rather go to a local restaurant and pay them directly. They will often charge me less if I do this and they get to keep more of it since they don’t need to give a pound of flesh to the delivery apps. Those apps are predatory and should 100% be regulated. There was a Reddit post about how the delivery apps are rigged in such a way to give small orders to “desperate” drivers in order to leave the better orders for more casual drivers, in the hopes that they eventually keep chasing those higher paying orders while moving down the ranks to “desperate”. It was later claimed to be a hoax, but if it was, I bet you the companies have some new ideas to test out now.