Drivers make more, businesses pay less with Direct Local Eats

Source: https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/drivers-make-more-businesses-pay-less-with-direct-local-eats There’s a new food delivery app in town, Direct Local Eats, and it’s promising more money for its drivers and less fees for restaurants. Direct Global’s CEO-President Ahmed Attia said the driver-owned co-operative sees drivers keep 90% of revenue-ride fees from every trip and costs businesses using them only 5%. Attia says existing food delivery apps charge businesses up to 35% in fees and leave drivers with less than 60% of revenue from each trip. “Back in 2019, we were actually going to work with DoorDash and UberEats and what we decided to do was survey a bunch of the drivers and what we found really kind of bothered us because of how much these companies were taking advantage of these drivers,” said Attia. Direct Local Eats just staged a successful six-month pilot project that began in August in Guelph, with almost 100 drivers picking up from 75 local businesses which led to the Toronto launch. Currently there are 3,000 Direct Local Eats drivers in Canada, with 1,500 in Guelph and Toronto and the other 1,500 about to start in Kelowna, B.C., St. John., N.B. and Montreal. Attia said plans to expand across Ontario are underway with the company recently signing an agreement with A&W Canada in December to be a delivery partner for over 1,000 stores across the country. The first 1,000 drivers in each city pay nothing to join the co-op and after that each driver must pay $100.