Deliver to a wider area without hiring more riders

Customers three or four kilometres away keep asking if you deliver to them. You want to say yes. But every time you do the sums, the answer is no: a rider would spend a long trip on one order, and the shop would lose money on it.

So you draw a small circle around your shop and turn everyone else away. Those customers then buy from someone else.

The circle is usually not a problem of distance. It is a problem of how trips are made. This guide shows how the riders you already have can cover more neighbourhoods, and what to promise customers in the far areas.

Why distance kills profit when every order is a separate trip#

A rider who carries one order to a customer far away uses the whole trip for one sale. The petrol, the time and the rider's pay are all shared by a single order. The farther the customer, the worse it looks.

Meanwhile the next order may be going to a street close by. If the two orders leave the shop at different times with different riders, you have paid for two long trips instead of one.

So "too far" often really means "too far for one order". It is a different question when the trip carries four or five.

Group nearby orders into one trip#

A trip with several stops spreads the cost of the long ride over every order on it. Orders for the same part of town belong together, even if they came in twenty minutes apart.

Doing this by hand is hard when orders keep arriving. You have to remember who is going where and who is already out. With Dispatch, orders wait in a queue, and when you press Dispatch now MiniDrop shares them between your online riders and puts each rider's stops in a sensible order. It plans around how many orders a rider can carry. You see each route on a map and approve it before the rider gets it.

Read more on the route planning page.

Promise delivery slots, not instant delivery#

Grouping works best when customers do not need the order this minute. If a far area is served in a slot, for example "between 5 and 7 in the evening", you can collect the orders for that area and send them together.

Customers in a far area usually accept a wait if the slot is clear and you keep it. They are glad to get delivery at all. A simple way to start:

• Pick one slot a day for each far area. For example, Tuesday and Friday evenings for the north side.

• Set a cut-off for that slot. Orders after the cut-off go in the next one. Tell customers when you take the order.

• Plan the trips just before the slot. Put dispatch on a schedule at a fixed time shortly before each slot, so the orders are planned together.

Slots and cut-offs are your own shop rules. MiniDrop plans and tracks the trips around them. Keep the rule easy to say out loud and the same every week.

Keep the far customers informed#

A customer who waits for a slot needs to know the order has not been forgotten. Send each customer the live tracking link. It shows how many stops come before theirs and an arrival estimate once the rider is on the way. That stops the calls and makes a longer wait feel fair.

Check what your new areas bring#

After a month, look at your order history. How many orders came from the new areas? Were the slots full? Did the riders finish on time? If a slot is half empty, move it to a day when more customers are free. If it is always full, add a second slot.

Growing your area this way costs you no new riders. It costs you a little planning, and that is exactly what MiniDrop does for you.

Frequently asked questions#

Pick one neighbourhood customers keep asking about and give it a slot this month. Then plan its trips with MiniDrop and see what happens.

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