We all know that alcohol is one of the riskiest edible items to imbibe, especially with health experts expounding on what it can do to the body and mind. With the availability of alcohol increasing due to shops on nearly every block—plus door delivery via apps—the temptation is sometimes overwhelming.
Uber and DoorDash still offer alcohol delivery, as you probably know, even if they’re not the only apps doing that. Some apps are made exclusively to deliver any kind of libation available. Questionably-named Saucey and QuickLiq are just two examples.
While working for Uber Eats, I had the opportunity to deliver alcohol fairly early. They made it just an option, including requiring proof you were old enough to deliver. At first, I declined with the thought it would lead to unwanted issues. Stories were out there about deliverers encountering drunk people, which meant having to refuse them the delivery. In those scenarios, it could sometimes lead to the recipient having conniptions due to not getting their whiskey fix.
It took a while until I finally accepted alcohol deliveries. But, by that point, it was through DoorDash who seemed to sell it better to me. And so it began on delivering alcohol to various customers, not always singularly. Many deliveries were just delivering beer with a combination of other items from places like 7-Eleven.
Very rarely, I’d deliver a singular alcoholic item. For the most part, though, many people just wanted relatively mild alcoholic drinks rather than heavy stuff like whiskey or brandy.
You’ll want to know what to expect if you decide to deliver alcoholic drinks to your customer base. You may find out most people are cooperative when it comes to scanning their ID on your phone. However, you might encounter one or two people who seem high—albeit not on alcohol.
Steps for Delivering Alcohol to Customers
DoorDash will always remind you that you need to ask the customer for their ID if you have alcoholic drinks in your order pick-up. Sometimes you might see drink cans that don’t look like they contain alcohol, yet they do.
Be sure to pay attention to this since not asking for ID from the customer will end up getting you terminated at Uber or DoorDash. You might notice the majority of customers order alcohol in cans rather than bottles. This is a good thing since transporting whiskey bottles could potentially break. Not that many whiskey brands don’t just place their contents in plastic bottles nowadays.
Still, delivering large cans of beer and other alcoholic drinks can be very heavy to lift. I once had to deliver several six packs of beer to a recipient. It required several trips back and forth to my car to get it all to the person’s door.
When you deliver your first alcoholic drink to your customer, you need to learn how to use the ID verification system. This might be a little confusing at first, but my first recipient for alcohol helped me through the steps. Yes, a large percentage of your alcohol delivery customers are going to be ones who’ve done the online verification process many times before.
The first thing you need to do is use your phone’s camera to capture the person’s ID to prove they’re over 21. As with all technology, this can sometimes glitch, especially if the person doesn’t hold their ID card steady while you take the photo. Expect, once again, to let the customer snatch away your phone to take the photo themselves.
Once done, you have to wait for the verification to finalize. During one delivery, I lost cell service for a short time, leading to several tries on re-sending the customer’s ID. Remember this also requires an e-signature besides, making the whole process a bit protracted. Blame it on the alcohol and all the past abuse for the multi-steps.
I got the hang of everything after a while, making all subsequent alcohol deliveries much easier. It also helped that all the recipients knew the steps better than I did, making it a faster procedure every time.
So, you probably wonder if I encountered any drunk people. Perhaps some were drunk, though I couldn’t detect it being close to them. Based on my personal observations, they were legal age and sober to take the drinks I was delivering. Then again, we all know some alcoholics can drink and not even show any signs they’re inebriated.
You’re supposed to refuse delivery if you see any signs of the customer being drunk. Only one time did I sit on the fence (not literally) with a customer. Let me tell you what happened so you can be prepared yourself.
Is the Customer Drunk, or Just High On Another Substance?
Out of all alcohol deliveries I made, 98% were trouble-free. On one day in 2023, however, I delivered some canned alcoholic drinks to a young woman. When approaching the door, I could see her in her living room, appearing to talk on her phone.
I rang the doorbell, but she seemed to ignore me standing there. After several doorbell rings, I figured she wasn’t going to come to the door, which would require driving back to return the drinks. Not wanting to do that to save time, I just spoke up through her screen door that she needed to provide ID for the delivery.
First she muddled to me to just leave the order by the door, setting off a bit of a red flag. This customer appeared to be trying to get her alcohol without providing ID first. I kindly reminded her she had to come out and provide ID or I couldn’t deliver to her.
As she walked over to the door, I could clearly see she was high on something. But, I could tell the difference that it was likely a cannabis high rather than being drunk. I’d seen enough drunk people in my life to know the difference.
With that revelation, I had to decide whether to deliver to her or not. Since she likely wasn’t drunk, I figured I could legally deliver. The ensuing problem was waiting for her to get her ID out of her purse. Unfortunately, she claimed she couldn’t find it as she dug through her bag.
After waiting 15 minutes, she finally found it and brought it out for me to photo. All ended well, if still leaving me wonder if I’d encounter more people like this. To date, there hasn’t been anyone similar. It’s still a warning for you to make the best possible judgement when you see someone who appears high. Knowing the difference between a cannabis high and an alcoholic high is very valuable.
In as few words as possible: A cannabis high is usually signs of more absent-mindedness, while a drunk high is stumbling around and/or slurring words.
How Much Do Alcoholic Deliveries Pay?
Delivering alcohol can pay just about the same (sometimes slightly more) as delivering food. I still say that delivering pharma drugs and other miscellaneous items can be more lucrative. It just depends on how expensive the particular product is.
Since many of the customers I encountered were buying beer or various canned alcoholic drinks, it paid equal with food orders. There isn’t quite as much of a rush delivering alcohol either as with food—despite not having an hour for the delivery window.
It’s up to you to decide on delivering alcohol. Don’t always expect a lot of them, including on holidays. I was shocked that when attempting to deliver for New Year’s Eve in 2023, I had zero alcoholic deliveries. This proves, again, perhaps people want to buy their alcohol in person on holidays, if not already having it at home.
I’d recommend signing up for alcohol deliveries, just to gain the experience. It can lead to some interesting social situations you’ll learn from in the end. This is my further proof to you that life and Uber Eats/DoorDash kind of go together in the learning curves.
Wrap-Up:
With the above in mind, I move forward now with another 30 chapters while the previous segments are made available only to subscribers. The reason: I just published an e-book on Amazon Kindle Store that has all prior chapters re-edited for use as a perpetual Uber Eats/DoorDash e-guide. I’ll be doing a separate segment next that acts as its own press release for the book.
In the meantime, this is the only chapter from the e-book that’ll be made public. Feel free to subscribe if you want to read the blog editions of those prior chapters. But all upcoming blog segments will now be more of an outsider view of Uber Eats and DoorDash, not including looking back on my past experiences to inform any analysis or opinions.
Plus, the topics are going to be a lot broader (and perhaps wilder) in how to do Ubering and Dashing. As life gets crazier in our times, it requires looking at every possible scenario in delivering food & drink in the most sane and smartest ways.
/End
Greg Brian 