The Best Times To Do Uber Eats In 2024 [According To Data]

As an Uber Eats driver, you might be wondering how to stand out from the crowd and maximize your time behind the wheel.

The key to delivery driving isn’t just knowing where to drive, but also when. Getting this right can help you make more.

I figured that it might be helpful to show you when the best times to do Uber Eats are, according to my experience, as well as data from hundreds of drivers across the country.

When are the Best Times to Drive with Uber Eats?

Generally, the best times to drive with Uber Eats are during peak hours when demand for food delivery services is highest.

Typically, these are during the lunch rush from 11:30am to 2:00pm, and during the dinner rush between 5:30pm to 9:00pm.

Optimizing your delivery schedule around these times means that you’ll spend less time waiting for orders and more time driving.

In turn, this helps maximize your per-hour rate and make more money as a result.

What are the Best Days to Do Uber Eats?

While the hours you drive make a difference to earnings, so do the days you choose to drive.

There are certain days of the week that see much higher demand than others, so driving during these times is another great way to spend more time delivering instead of waiting.

From my experience, the best days to drive for Uber Eats are Thursday through Sunday.

On Thursday and Friday, there are a ton of people ordering as they wind down the work week. They might not want to cook, so they order food.

On Saturday and Sunday, there’s equally high demand since people are usually hosting gatherings or not sitting around thinking about what to do for lunch or dinner.

The opposite can be said of Monday through Wednesday, with very few people ordering out.

People are typically playing catch-up from the busy weekend, or looking to save money after splurging during the weekend.

The Best Days to Do Uber Eats [According to Data]

Solo has collected data from tons of different Uber Eats drivers in over 60 of the nation’s most popular cities for gig work.

We analyzed the top 25 of those cities and extracted some key insights about the best times to do Uber Eats are. They aligned closely with my own experience.

Interpreting the Data

We’ve only listed 25 of the top cities for Uber Eats drivers for brevity, but we analyzed over 60 cities.

The data shows us that the best times to drive for Uber Eats are late-night or early-morning hours, specifically from 1:00am to 3:00am, and evening hours from 6:00pm to 10:00pm.

Drivers clearly make more in these times. For example, in San Francisco, drivers can earn $17.33 at 1:00 AM, while in Knoxville, earnings can reach $19.21 at 10:00 PM.

The most profitable days to drive are typically Sunday, Friday, and Saturday, which also closely aligns with the findings from my own experience.

If there’s one takeaway from this data that I can pass along, it is to try focusing on weekends and really going after strategies that target busy areas and promotions.

I also suggest multi-apping to take things to the next level. This will help eliminate inefficient downtime that can eat into driver income.

How to Figure Out the Best Times to Drive in Your Own City

While these are the best days and times to drive according to other drivers, I suggest you start looking for patterns in your own city to figure out what works in your area.

Doing so will help you develop a “litmus test” that you can use while making deliveries.

1. Observe Peak Hours

First, I suggest paying close attention to when you get the most orders throughout the day.

This will almost always fall on standard busy times, like lunch (11:30am – 2:00pm) and dinner (5:30pm – 9:00pm), but these times can widely vary depending on where you live.

When I first starting doing deliveries, I would keep a log of when demand seemed to be highest, which helped me drive during the times when I had the best change of making the most money.

Over time, these types of patterns will become fairly second-nature and you’ll sort of develop an intuition for when you should be out on the road.

2. Track Your Earnings

This goes hand-in-hand with observing peak hours, but tracking your earnings is another great way to analyze when the best times to drive are.

Don’t overthink this. Simply look at when you made the most money, and then eliminate the data points that can skew that data.

Things like large conferences, huge catering orders placed through Uber Eats, and other edge-case scenarios that might throw off your figures should be considered.

If you start noticing that you’re making more during a certain day or time, consider trying out that day or time more in the following weeks.

3. Utilize App Insights

Next, take advantage of the data that the Uber Eats app offers to drivers.

It’s in their best interest to make sure you’re on the road at the right time, so they provide some helpful tools and insights within the Uber Eats driver app that you can use to plan your schedule.

I really like “Earnings Trends” data that they provide, and how they present it. It makes it really easy to see when great times to drive are.

While not always correct, the data isn’t guessing – it’s real-world data from Uber Eats that they’re getting first-hand from drivers.

Play around with this, it never hurts to check it out.

4. Analyze Traffic Patterns

Lastly, I suggest also considering taking into account the traffic patterns and congestion that might slow you down and reduce the efficiency of your deliveries.

This is one thing that most driver’s don’t consider, yet almost always comes back to haunt them.

There’s a tricky art to finding a balance between a steady stream of orders and a steady stream of vehicles on the road.

But, getting this right not only saves time, but can also reduce the costs of gas that you burn while driving.

I like to use traffic apps like Waze, combined with local news sources, to monitor the traffic while I’m out and about completing deliveries.

Wrapping Up

When it comes down to it, finding the best times to drive with Uber Eats really just comes down to a bit of observation and planning.

It’s not overly-complicated, but does take a bit of time, efforts, and trial-and-error to get right.

Along the way, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out and ask.

If you’re still stuck or confused, simply leave a comment below and soembody from our team will respond with an answer as soon as we are able to do so.