How to reduce your delivery cost per order

Most shop owners know exactly what they pay their riders. Far fewer know what one delivery costs them.

That is a problem, because you cannot lower a cost you have not measured. A delivery that looks cheap on a busy day can be expensive on a slow one. A rider who looks busy may be driving the same roads twice.

This guide shows you how to work out your real cost per delivery in five minutes, where the biggest savings usually hide, and how planned trips bring the number down.

Work out your real cost per delivery#

You only need five numbers from an ordinary day. Write them down, add them up and divide by the number of orders delivered.

Then the formula is simple:

Do this for a few different days, not just one. A Monday and a Saturday will give you very different numbers, and the difference tells you where your money goes.

Where the money leaks#

Once you know your number, look at where it comes from. The same few leaks appear again and again:

• Trips with a single order. The whole journey is paid for by one sale.

• Empty trips back to the shop. The rider returns with nothing, then sets out again.

• Waiting at the counter. Orders are not ready when the rider arrives, so the rider is paid to stand still.

• Driving the same roads twice. Stops are visited in the order they were typed, not the order the road allows.

• Failed deliveries. The trip happened, the order came back, and the customer is unhappy as well.

The first four are about how trips are planned. The last is about how well your information is kept. Both can be fixed.

The biggest lever: orders per trip#

Your rider costs about the same whether they carry one order or five. So the number of orders in each trip is the biggest thing you control.

A trip with one order pays for the whole journey with one sale. A trip with four orders shares the same journey across four sales.

This is why grouping matters more than almost anything else. The question is not "how cheaply can I pay my rider?" It is "how many orders does each trip carry?"

The table below uses the same ₹900 a day. It only shows what happens to the cost of each order as the number of orders grows. Again, these are made-up numbers for the arithmetic.

The rider's day does not get longer. The cost is simply shared between more orders. A rider can only carry so much at once, so the orders in a trip have to be grouped sensibly, which is why planning matters.

Planned routes vs. rider guesswork#

Without a plan, each rider chooses the order of stops on their own. Good riders do this well. Even so, nobody can see the whole map of the evening's orders in their head.

Typical problems with guesswork:

• Two riders end up going to the same area, while another area waits.

• A rider drives past a customer's street on the way to a far one, then comes back.

• The first customer on the list is not the closest one.

MiniDrop plans the best trip for each rider. Orders wait in a queue. When you press Dispatch now, or when your schedule runs, MiniDrop splits the orders across your riders and puts each rider's stops in a sensible order. It respects how many orders a rider can carry and any delivery windows. The result helps cover fewer kilometres and use fewer rider-hours.

You stay in control. Each rider's route appears on a map. You can change it, then approve it. Read more about route planning.

Respect what a rider can carry#

Grouping orders only helps if a rider can really carry them. A box that is too full tips, a bag that is too heavy tears, and food that is squashed becomes a complaint.

Think about the biggest order your rider's bag or box can take, and plan trips around that. MiniDrop respects how many orders a rider can carry when it plans trips, so a trip is never bigger than the rider can handle.

Fewer failed deliveries#

A failed delivery is the most expensive kind. You pay for the trip, the fuel and the rider's time, and then the order comes back.

Most failed deliveries have the same causes: a wrong address, a wrong pin, or a customer who was not at home. You can reduce all three:

• Save customer addresses. Repeat customers' addresses are saved in MiniDrop, so the next order starts from a correct address.

• Give customers a tracking link. It shows how many stops are before theirs and gives an arrival estimate once the rider is on the way, so customers know when to be home. See how it works.

• Let riders call the customer. The rider app shows the customer's phone number, and the tracking page has a call button.

• Record why. When an order is not delivered or put on hold, the rider marks it in the app, so you can see patterns.

Five quick wins this week#

You do not need to change everything. Pick two or three of these:

• Write down your five numbers for one ordinary day, and divide.

• Ask your riders where they wait the longest during a shift.

• Group orders in the same area, and send them out as one trip.

• Check your most common failed-delivery reasons from the last month.

• Save the addresses of your repeat customers.

A monthly habit: look at your delivery history#

Once a month, spend ten minutes with your delivery history. You are looking for answers to a few simple questions:

• Which days of the week are busiest, and do I have enough riders on those days?

• Which areas order most, and which areas cost me the most to reach?

• How many orders were not delivered, and what were the reasons?

• How many orders did each rider deliver, and are some trips too thin?

• What was my cost per delivery this month compared with last month?

The answers tell you where to act: change your delivery hours, set a minimum order for a far area, add a rider on busy days, or fix a street with a bad pin.

Frequently asked questions#

Start by writing down your five numbers for one ordinary day. Then see how a planned trip changes the picture.

Start free

Talk to us