Understanding the best time to Grubhub is one of the most important things you need to figure out if you want to maximize your delivery earnings. I’ve been delivering with Grubhub for years – more than 5 years at this point – so I’ve acquired a lot of personal experience on the best times to Grubhub.
In this post, we’ll look at the best time to Grubhub and how those times might change depending on what day it is. Hopefully, the information and tactics in this post can help you maximize your delivery earnings with Grubhub.
The Best Time To Grubhub
As with any food delivery or gig economy app, staying busy is the most important thing. If you’re sitting around doing nothing, you’re not going to be earning any money. That means it’s important to be strategic about when you work so you can maximize your time and your earnings.
As you likely expect, the busiest times for food delivery coincide with when people eat – typically during the lunch and dinner hours. That means, in general, the best times to Grubhub are from 11 am to 2 pm (during the lunch rush), and from 5 pm to 8 pm (during the dinner rush). These times coincide with the typical lunch and dinner rushes for most people.
While lunch and dinner are usually the best times to work, it can sometimes make sense to look at other hours too. This will mainly depend on your schedule and on where you live. If you have a schedule that only allows you to work during off-peak hours, you have to make do with what you have.
One thing to note is that, in my experience, working Grubhub during the morning hours usually isn’t worthwhile. I’ve rarely had busy mornings with Grubhub and most of the time, I find the delivery volume to be very slow in the morning.
Working during late-night hours could be worthwhile in some circumstances. However, there are downsides to working late at night – mainly that it’s not as busy and most of the restaurants that are open are fast food restaurants. Even worse, you often have to wait in long drive-thru lines since the lobbies for these restaurants usually close at night. The main reason I’d work late at night is primarily if that’s the only time I have available. Maybe you work all day and late-night delivery is the only option you have.
Best Days To Grubhub
In addition to the hours that you work, picking the right days to work matters too. Certain days on Grubhub are always going to be busier than others. And the best time and places to work will also differ depending on what day it is.
In general, here’s what I’ve noticed with my deliveries:
- During weekdays, the lunch and dinner rush is typically the busiest. For the lunch rush, I recommend sticking to busy urban areas, primarily in downtown areas with offices. For dinner, busy residential areas will usually be the best spots to work (think hip, young professional neighborhoods or college campuses).
- On weekends, I find that demand is generally steady throughout the day. The dinner hours will usually be the busiest, however.
- If you’re looking to do late-night delivery, you’ll want to stick to working during the weekends, mainly on Friday and Saturday nights. These are usually the days when people are up late and ordering food. Be aware of the downsides with late-night delivery, mainly that the restaurants are usually fast food places and might require you to wait in the drive-thru line.
- Mondays and Tuesdays are usually the slowest days of the week, in my experience. It’s not clear why, but I think it’s that people are starting the work week and aren’t “treating” themselves to Grubhub delivery the way they might treat themselves towards the end of the week.
- Big events where people are at home watching TV are typically good for Grubhub drivers. You’ll usually find things are busier during large sporting events (like the Super Bowl), awards shows, or similar types of events where people are in front of the TV and ordering food.
- Most holidays tend to be slow for Grubhub. The major holidays will be especially slow (Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc). Summer holidays like Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day also tend to be slow (people are either on vacation or are grilling food at home, rather than ordering delivery).
Final Thoughts
When you work is important. You can’t think of Grubhub like a normal job – you need to treat it like a business and be strategic about when you work. Only accept orders and work when it’s profitable for you.
I usually stick to working during lunch hours, mainly because I’m at home with my family during the dinner rush. On weekends, I can usually make solid money at any time, even during the middle of the afternoon (people seem to order more randomly during the weekend).
Hopefully, this post was helpful to you. For some additional strategies to maximize your Grubhub earnings, check out these other posts I’ve written on similar delivery services (the tactics and strategies there can be applied to Grubhub as well): How To Make $500 A Week With DoorDash and How To Make $1,000 A Week With Uber Eats.
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