How to Start a Food Delivery Side Hustle in Canada (Skip, Uber Eats, DoorDash)

After this guide you can decide whether restaurant delivery fits your city and your car, sign up for the apps that actually operate near you, and run a one-week test that counts fuel, time, and wear — not just the payout screen.

Food delivery is one of the most visible side hustles in Canadian cities because the apps are already on your phone. It is also easy to fool yourself. The offer amount is not profit. Parking tickets, a cracked windshield, and an insurer who was never told about the work can erase a month of dinners. Treat the first two weeks as a measurement project.

Who it fits

This can fit if you already have a reliable vehicle (or you live in a downtown where bike delivery is actually offered), you can work the hours restaurants are busy, and you are willing to call your insurer before the first order. Evenings, weekends, and ugly weather are when the apps are busiest. If those hours are free, you have a real shot at useful extra cash.

This is a poor fit if your car is unreliable, expensive to insure, or already near the end of its life. It is also a poor fit if you need the same amount of money every week, if night driving makes you unsafe, or if you cannot lift a loaded bag up a walk-up. A tired driver who accepts every ping spends the “profit” on fuel and mistakes.

If you would rather carry groceries than hot food, read grocery shopping apps. If the appeal is parcels from a store rather than restaurants, compare package courier work. For a shorter caution on vehicle costs, the sample note on gig delivery trade-offs still applies.

What the apps actually ask for

Three networks cover most Canadian restaurant delivery: Skip, Uber Eats, and DoorDash. Availability is by city and even by neighbourhood. Open each app, enter your address, and believe the signup screen over a blog post.

From each company’s own Canadian pages, the public checklists look like this. Confirm them in the app, because zones change.

• Skip. The courier help centre says you must be the age of majority in your province, with a reliable vehicle, a valid driver’s licence, vehicle insurance and registration, proof you can work in Canada, a background check, a smartphone with data, direct-deposit banking, and thermal catering bags. The public application page also describes an 18+ path and a bike or an insured car. If those lines disagree, follow the checklist inside the app for your zone. Alcohol orders, where a zone offers them, add ID-check rules.
• Uber Eats. Uber’s Canada delivery page says car couriers must be at least 21, with a two-door or four-door vehicle from model year 1990 or newer. Licence rules vary by city. Proof of insurance must show your name and must not be expired. You also pass a background screening. Bike, scooter, and on-foot options exist in some cities and have their own document list.
• DoorDash. DoorDash’s Canada requirements answer says you must be at least 18, have an iPhone or Android, finish signup, and pass a background check. Delivering by car also requires a valid driver’s licence, auto insurance, and registration. Bicycle delivery is only in select Canadian cities and, on that same page, does not require a licence or vehicle insurance.

You are signing up as a self-employed courier, not as an employee with a shift guarantee. The app can be quiet. That quiet time is unpaid.

Costs you should price before you buy gear

These are shelf ranges to check in your own city, not a quote and not a study. The point is to stop treating a $9 offer as $9 of income.

Item	Typical CAD range	Notes
Large thermal catering bag	$30–$80	Restaurants notice a floppy bag. One solid bag beats three cheap ones.
Pizza bag or second bag	$25–$60	Useful only if your zone sends wide or stacked orders.
Phone mount	$15–$40	Vent clips fail in a Canadian winter. A sturdy mount is the safer buy.
Phone charging cable and holder	$10–$25	Navigation plus the courier app will drain a battery.
Background check, if the platform charges one	$0–$40	Some apps include it. Ask before you pay a third party yourself.
Extra mobile data	$0–$30 / month	If you already have a decent plan, do not buy a new one on day one.
Fuel or charging	Your real cost per km	Use your L/100 km or kWh, today’s price, and the kilometres you actually drive.
Insurance change	Get a quote	An endorsement or a commercial policy can cost more than the bags. Price it before you depend on the income.
Parking and tickets	$0 until it isn’t	One downtown ticket can wipe out a night.

When you choose bags and a mount, start here rather than guessing in a store aisle: a large insulated food delivery bag TODO-AFFILIATE and a car phone mount that holds in cold weather TODO-AFFILIATE. Skip branded clothing until an app actually requires it.

Pay yourself into an account you can separate from rent and groceries. A spending account such as KOHO TODO-AFFILIATE is one option built for everyday Canadian banking. The job of the account is simple: gig deposits in, fuel and car costs out, so you can see what is left.

Earnings, said honestly

Nobody can promise an hourly rate. A Friday night in a dense part of Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, or Montreal is a different job from a Tuesday afternoon in a suburb where restaurants are eight minutes apart. What you keep depends on:

• Offer pay and customer tips, which move with weather, events, and how many other couriers are online
• Unpaid time waiting for an offer or standing in a restaurant
• Dead kilometres between drop-off and the next pickup
• Fuel, electricity, parking, and the real per-kilometre cost of your vehicle, including oil, tires, and the value the car loses
• How often you drive hungry, tired, or in a rush and make an expensive mistake

Track gross pay, kilometres, hours online, and hours actually on a delivery. After two weeks, divide what is left — after fuel and a fair car allowance — by hours online, not by hours you wish you had worked. If that number is weak, the fix is usually a different time window or a different hustle, not a newer phone mount.

DoorDash’s Canada page says Dashers earn base pay plus tips, and that instant cash-out can include a fee (the page describes $1.99 per transaction, subject to eligibility). Read that line before you tap it.

Step-by-step

1. Check that the apps are live on your streets

Install Skip, Uber Eats, and DoorDash and look at the map around your home and around the neighbourhood where you would actually drive. A city name on a marketing page is not the same as offers on your block. If none of the three show a delivery zone, do not buy bags yet.

2. Call your insurer before you upload documents

Say plainly that you want to deliver restaurant food in your personal vehicle, name the apps, and ask whether your current policy covers it. Ask what happens while you are waiting for an offer, while you are driving to the restaurant, and while the food is in the car. Ask what endorsement or policy they need in writing.

Uber’s Canada delivery-insurance page says Uber maintains a commercial auto policy, issued by Economical, from the moment you are available for a delivery until that delivery is done, and that this does not replace your own personal policy. The same page says many basic ICBC policies in British Columbia allow up to six days a month of commercial use, and that more than that means you need business coverage. That is Uber’s description of ICBC, not a promise that your owner’s certificate already says it. Read your certificate.

DoorDash’s requirements page says insurance it maintains can cover up to $1,000,000 while you are on an active delivery and does not replace personal insurance. Skip’s help centre requires you to submit your own vehicle insurance. Read each app’s current insurance page after you are approved. If your insurer will not cover the use, stop. Driving uninsured for the work is not a side hustle.

3. Gather documents and apply to one app first

Have your licence, insurance, registration, proof you can work in Canada, and banking details ready. Apply to the app with the most restaurants in the area you will actually drive. A second app is useful after you know your costs, not before. Background checks take days. Do not promise yourself income next weekend until you are approved.

4. Buy only the gear the first app requires

You need a thermal bag that stands up on its own, a phone mount, and a way to keep the phone charged. Add a flashlight or headlamp if you will deliver after dark to houses with no numbers. Buy the second bag after you have seen real orders.

5. Separate the money

Put payouts in the account you chose in the gear step. Keep fuel receipts and a note of business kilometres. A notes app is enough for week one. You will want a proper log before tax time.

6. Learn your zone on a short shift

Start with a two-hour window you already know: the dinner rush near a cluster of restaurants, not a random drive across the city. Decline offers that send you far from that cluster unless the pay clearly covers the return trip with an empty car. Park legally. A $40 ticket is a failed shift.

7. Handle the food like it is your reputation

Keep hot food upright, cold food cold, and drinks separate. Text from the app when you are stuck, not from your personal number. If a building needs a buzzer code, ask before you have circled the block twice. For alcohol, follow the in-app ID rules and do not leave the order with someone who cannot show valid identification.

8. Add a second app only after the numbers work

If the first week of net pay, per hour online, is acceptable for your life, add a second network so a dead hour on one app does not end the shift. Running three apps at once sounds efficient and often means accepted orders you cannot reach on time. Two is plenty while you learn.

9. Set a stop rule

Decide in advance the latest you will drive, the weather you will not drive in, and the offer distance you will refuse. Fatigue and black ice cost more than a slow Thursday. Write the rule down. Future you, staring at a bonus badge, will try to break it.

Your first week

• Day 1: Confirm the zone. Call the insurer. If the answer is no, stop and look at a hustle that does not use your car, such as online tutoring or freelance writing.
• Day 2: Apply to one app. Photograph your documents somewhere with even light so you are not re-uploading blurry pages.
• Day 3: While you wait, price a bag and a mount. Open a separate payout account if you do not have one. Sketch a two-hour dinner route on a map.
• Day 4: Approval day, or a waiting day. Do not buy a roof sign “just in case.”
• Day 5: One short shift with a notebook: start time, end time, kilometres, gross pay, tips, fuel, parking. Refuse anything that leaves your zone.
• Day 6: Rest, or repeat the same window if you were not exhausted. Same zone, so the comparison is fair.
• Day 7: Do the math per hour online. Decide whether a second week is worth it. If yes, book two specific windows. If no, you learned it cheaply.

Tips that are easy to miss

Multi-order offers pay you to be late to someone. If the second pickup is in the wrong direction, the rating hit and the cold food are yours, not the app’s. Decline stacked orders until you know the restaurants that actually have food ready.

Apartment codes are where time disappears. Take the photo the app wants and go. Standing in a lobby is unpaid.

Winter is the busy season and the expensive one. Budget winter tires if you do not have them. A summer fuel average will lie to you in January.

Restaurants remember couriers who do not argue and who keep the bag closed. A calm repeat presence at two or three busy kitchens beats chasing a heat map across the city.

Common mistakes

Accepting every offer, including the $4 trip that takes you 20 minutes from home. The app is allowed to offer bad trips. You are allowed to decline them.

Waiting to tell the insurer until after a claim. Business use of a personal car is a change in risk. Find out before you need the policy.

Counting a “guaranteed” promo as your wage. Promotions have fine print, caps, and end dates. If the shift only works because of a bonus, it does not work yet.

Using a personal policy’s commute coverage and hoping delivery “doesn’t count.” It counts. So does the depreciation you never wrote down.

Buying three apps’ worth of branded gear, a new car mount, and a roof sign before the first approval email.

Canada note: provinces, insurance, and tax

Rules are not the same from province to province. Age of majority is 18 in some provinces and 19 in others, which matters if an app uses that test. Auto insurance is private in most provinces and public through ICBC in British Columbia. Quebec drivers also deal with the SAAQ. City bylaws can restrict where you wait outside a restaurant. None of that is a reason to skip the phone call to your insurer. It is the reason the phone call has to be about your province, your city, and your policy.

This is general information, not tax, legal, or insurance advice. Check your own facts with the CRA, Revenu Québec if you live in Quebec, and a licensed professional if your situation is more than a simple side gig.

Food delivery income is generally self-employment income. Keep the platform’s pay summaries and your receipts. Many platforms issue a T4A, and you still report the income if a slip is late or missing. Self-employed people usually file business details with their return (the CRA form is T2125) and pay both the employee and employer shares of CPP on net self-employment income. Keep a kilometre log if you want to claim vehicle expenses. You cannot claim the full cost of a car you also use for personal trips.

For GST/HST, most small businesses use the small-supplier test. The CRA describes a small supplier as someone whose worldwide taxable supplies — including associates — are $30,000 or less in a single calendar quarter and over the last four consecutive calendar quarters. Stay under that test and you generally do not have to register. Go over $30,000 in one calendar quarter and you register and start charging on the supply that put you over. Go over across four quarters, but not inside one quarter, and you stop being a small supplier at the end of the following month. The CRA explains the timing on its when to register page.

That small-supplier test is the one that applies to ordinary food delivery. It is not the ride-sharing rule. Self-employed drivers who carry passengers for a platform must register for GST/HST from the day they start, even below $30,000. If you also drive people, read rideshare driving and the CRA’s taxi and ride-sharing page. The CRA’s info sheet GI-196 says a small supplier’s mandatory registration can apply only to the ride-sharing fares until combined taxable supplies go over $30,000 — then GST/HST applies to the other taxable work as well.

The rate you would charge, once registered, depends on the province: HST in some, GST plus a separate PST or QST in others. Nova Scotia’s HST is 14% as of 1 April 2025. Use the CRA’s current rate table rather than a screenshot from last year.

Where to go next

If the car math is the problem, grocery batches can mean less aimless driving: grocery shopping apps. If you would rather move parcels on a scheduled pickup, see package courier delivery. If carrying passengers is the goal, start with insurance, not a mount: rideshare driving.

Common questions