In August, we announced that we would be implementing a new pay model to better serve Dashers and consumers alike. As part of our announcement, we pledged that on average Dashers would earn more money from DoorDash and more money overall under our new pay model – and that we would be holding ourselves accountable to that pledge. We began rolling out the new pay model to Dashers in September. As of October 1, all Dashers had been transitioned to the new pay model, so we now have a complete month of data and feedback from Dashers to help us assess what’s going well and where we can improve.
Today, we’re providing an interim update to the Dasher community and the public on our earnings commitment and sharing additional ongoing steps we’re taking to make Dasher pay work better for everyone.
Under the new model, DoorDash is paying more and Dashers are earning more
We’re pleased to report that Dashers are earning more money on average under our new model. To vet our own internal analysis and provide public accountability, we opened up our data to an independent third party. The economic research and consulting firm Beacon Economics has now conducted an initial descriptive analysis of the data by comparing average hourly earnings for Dashers in August 2019 (the last full month when all Dashers were on the old pay model) to average Dasher earnings in October 2019 (the first full month when all Dashers were on the new pay model). Beacon determined that the amount that DoorDash pays U.S. Dashers increased by 12.5% on average, and overall Dasher earnings (including tips) increased from an average of $17.24 per active hour in August to $18.54 per active hour in October.
The number of low offers is going down
Still, we know that our new model is not perfect, and we are continuing to make changes in response to Dasher feedback. Even though overall earnings have gone up, we know that initially, earnings were less consistent from one delivery to the next, and we’ve heard from Dashers that some offers are simply too low. We’ve made changes to reduce the percentage of offers where DoorDash would pay less than $3 to under 4 percent of total offers as of the end of October. This will continue to be a top priority for us in the weeks and months ahead to help ensure that every delivery is worth doing.
More ways for customers to tip
When rolling out this model, we shared that customers would be able to tip before or after their delivery based on their preference. We’ve since enabled this feature for 100% of orders. When a customer leaves a tip after the delivery is completed, the Dasher will receive a push notification to alert him or her of the increased earnings. The Dasher will then be able to see the earnings breakdown in the app, as shown below.
We know that many Dashers deliver on DoorDash to meet their financial goals, and we take that responsibility to heart. We will continue listening and speaking to Dashers every day to understand how we can make their experience better. While we hope that we’ve made some progress, this is not the end and we look forward to continuing to build a better platform for Dashers, consumers, and merchants in the coming months.
*We anonymized the data to protect the identities of Dashers and consumers.
