© Provided by Business Insider Food delivery drivers and riders make most of their income from tips. Getty Images

• An Uber Eats driver told The New York Times that only accepting high-value orders is like “gambling.”
• Brantley Bush, 56, said he spends about 40 hours a week driving his 2000 Subaru to deliver food.
• He told the newspaper he felt delivery drivers were now considered “the bottom of the barrel.”

Some food delivery drivers try to complete as many orders as possible on a shift to boost their earnings, but Brantley Bush takes a somewhat different approach.

The 56-year-old, who drives an elderly Subaru, told The New York Times that he focuses on affluent parts of Los Angeles such as Beverly Hills and Pacific Palisades, where high-value orders are more common. So are big tips – in theory, at least.

He recalled waiting in an alley next to a dumpster in Pacific Palisades one Saturday evening when he nabbed three orders from a high-end sushi restaurant, with one worth $388.

Bush was hoping for a tip of between $50 to $70, he told The Times. After delivering the orders, he waited an hour to learn from the Uber Eats app how much his tips were worth.

The $388 order tipped just $20, or about 5%, $10 from the first delivery – and nothing from the other order. “It’s hard to fathom how people could have so much money and tip so little,” he added.

Some customers have been more generous. “It’s like gambling,” Bush told The Times about his “very exciting” big tips. They’ve included $130 from the former Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers, or almost $200 for two deliveries during the Academy Awards in March.

However, tips are not as lucrative or consistent as he’d like. “When it’s a bad day and you have to drive 60 miles to make $100, there’s just a negative cycle of having to put money back in your car for gas,” Bush told the newspaper. 

Most income for drivers comes from tips, and they cannot see how much customers decided to give them until after completing a delivery. They can see how much each trip will earn them excluding tips before accepting an order, according to Uber’s website.

Some drivers also recently found that Uber was blocking tips of $100 or more unless the customer verified the amount, per the report. Uber told The Times it had improved its app to reduce “verification confusion” for high-value tips and added measures to encourage better tipping.

While Bush said delivery drivers were considered “essential” during the pandemic, that was no longer the case: “Now we’re just the bottom of the barrel.”

Bush, who once worked for a studio and has appeared in minor roles, according to his IMDB profile, said he likes the flexibility of being a gig worker because he can take acting classes and attend auditions at short notice. He spends about 40 hours a week making deliveries.

Bush and Uber didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider, made outside normal working hours.