My Secret Stint As A Skip Driver: Observations, Insights and Results

One day last Fall, with the second COVID-19 wave under way in Ontario, I was on a call with one of my RadioMogul crew about how to use the “down time” to better understand our current and potential customers, and thereby generate better quality leads when things picked up again.

Besides a bit of cold-calling and cold-messaging (that’s a word, right?), our usual pre-COVID process for lead generation for our in-store radio business was that I or one of my team would head into a restaurant or retail space and:

1. listen to what (if anything) was playing in the space, and
2. ask a staff member who had chosen what was playing.

Retail wasn’t too bad - we bought stuff sometimes but it’s pretty normal to be just browsing - but with restaurants you really should order something to avoid being a jackass.

That tended to add up - a few hundred bucks a quarter - not terrible, but hey, times are tight. Was there a better way? Or an even cheaper way?

For me personally, there were really only a couple conditions, so that I could continue to do my job properly:

• I need to be always listening to music
• I needed ultra-flexible scheduling to accommodate running a business, serving my clients, and managing a busy home life.

While we were deliberating, one of those great Jon Hamm commercials for Skip The Dishes came to mind.

What if I became a Skip driver?

• Get an "on-the-ground" understanding of a critical channel (ie. restaurants) of our business. Check.
• Listen to music all the time: With my decent car stereo, Check.
• Find out what potential clients were doing for their in-store radio, without cold-calling them: Check.

Would it be safe, my wife wanted to know?

All the restaurants we’d been to, or ordered from, since COVID hit were meticulous about hygiene. Two of our kids had been working for months already in restaurants offering take-out, so our family was already out and about, being very careful, with no ill results.

But what about elevators, in apartment buildings?

• 3-ply mask with filter, and buckets of hand sanitizer. Check.

So, after a bit of convincing, I did my background check, figured out the insurance, got accepted, ordered my bags ($75 yikes!) and hit the road.

What I Heard

Turns out people will tell their Skip driver quite a bit.

I'll leave the personal stories from customers for another time and place.

From restaurants, I heard everything from:

“This has literally saved my business in this pandemic! I just consider Skip’s percentage as a marketing fee, which I’d have to pay to someone anyway to get the word out. This is measurable and has introduced a ton of people to my restaurant. I get orders from 20 km away that I never would have seen otherwise.”

to:

“Delivery service fees are criminal. There’s no profit margin after the fees, and in some cases customers who would otherwise pay full fare (eg. regulars) use Skip because of the convenience, forcing me to take a big haircut there.”

And from drivers, everything from:

"There are many positives to this. You can schedule your own hours, learn a lot about the roads and restaurants in your city, and you meet all kinds of friendly, helpful people."

to:

"The pay sucks. You can't possibly make any money after expenses, and it kills your vehicle. The drivers get treated like second-class citizens."

Observations & Anecdotes

• #1 in Customer Service: Of the 200+ restaurateurs whose establishments I picked up from, the most consistently impressive was Harman at the Mr. Sub in Clarkson (Mississauga), who, with his team, understands that every moment of interaction with every driver and every customer is an opportunity to make a connection. As Harman himself says "I want everyone who walks into my store to feel special." Mission accomplished.
• People really really like McDonald’s, in spite of all the options available.
• 80% of my driver fraternity were male, brown, and most that I spoke to had at least one other hustle going. The other 20% were a mosaic crossing ethnic, gender and socio-economic boundaries.
• Tipping varies widely, and there is little to no correlation between how much money people have (at least based on the size of their condos/houses) and how much they tip.
• Most awkward moment: Showing up as the food delivery driver to the owner of a multi-location restaurant business who I had pitched multiple times over email. Don’t think he made me, but I’m not sure.
• Did I do pickups at any of my clients' restaurants? Yes.
• How did that go? None of your business. That’s for my clients to know :-)

Business Insights

Presentation & Packaging: Presentation matters, and the restaurants that do it right use creative packaging and personalized messages to really connect with their customers. The simple act of writing a personal "thank you" or a customer's name with a little heart, goes a long way. I'd say 75% of restaurants just throw the food in a nondescript plastic bag, with some of the packaging being truly atrocious, and way too many non-reusable, non-recyclable items. This suggests to me an opportunity for eco-friendly packaging, as not all customers notice or care but some do, and, from comments I heard, will even choose or un-choose a restaurant based on this.

Environmental Impact: I cringed often at the environmental toll of the delivery business from a transportation perspective. Yes, the customer wasn't driving to get the food, but I was frequently mystified at how the mix of customer preference and Skip's algorithms calculated certain deliveries. With some orders, there could be 3 or 4 locations of the same franchise restaurant closer to the customer, but the furthest conceivable option would be chosen. Perhaps Skip (or a local tech solution?) could improve on this by figuring out a way to minimize travel distance and create some kind of environmental calculator, while still providing good customer service. My own small give-back as a driver was to purchase carbon offsets, but I'm under no illusion that I was saving the planet while doing so.

Ghost Kitchens: Ghost kitchens, where multiple restaurant "brands" operate out of a single location, are a real and very vibrant phenomenon. Franchisors in particular need to be wary - there are franchisees out there in the world with multiple successful brands running out of a single location, and, from what I could gather at least, unbeknownst to the folks at head office. Of course, there are also some smart franchisors who identified the trend early and offer ghost brands and support to their franchisees.

Results

Total leads generated: 34

Leads currently warm: 5

Cost of Leads: Zero. Ok, maybe not $0, the average of about $18/hour (after expenses) that I made was quite a bit less than my standard hourly rate…

Shazams: 358 new songs to add to the music library, and the glory of re-discovering non-commercial radio (special shout-out to the superb 89.5 CIUT-FM).

And perhaps the most important result?

This was all great for my mental health. There were some difficult and frustrating situations to be sure, and having to make my living doing it all day every day would have certainly made me feel differently, so this is only my personal experience as a "front line worker tourist", but I’m a social guy and like everyone else I was getting stir crazy. Regular, meaningful interaction with people was a blessing.

Parting Shot

This marks the end of my career as a Skip driver, but I leave with a newfound appreciation for front line workers, and a much deeper understanding of certain operational issues for my current and potential clients in the restaurant sector.

My parting shot, with thanks to Skip for the opportunity, and all due respect to my fellow drivers:

If you're craving takeout tonight, and it's not too inconvenient, do your favourite restaurant a favour and go pick up and pay for the food yourself :-)