Gig employees are not paid an hourly wage. They're paid per-delivery/ride. You know that, right?
Because of this, it's possible to either not have enough deliveries/rides or to have the deliveries/rides pay too little to achieve enough money in an hour to make minimum wage.
My friends - the level of naivete on this board is beyond pale: the 'gig' economy companies are absolutely founded on the principle of having extra leverage over workers so they can be de facto considerably lower than standard net packages.
This is the business plan.
Large companies have power over individuals, which is why we have regulations, min. wage and sometimes unions (and laws for unions). Even thinks like 'weekends' are effectively legislated.
So, by adjusting the terms of contracts, putting in fine print, especially leveraging things like lack of understanding of 'hidden costs' (aka wear and tear on vehicles), etc. they can eke out a profit where there might be none otherwise.
In a magical world where we could talk exclusively about 'excess labour' aka 'everyone had a full time job and wanted to make a few bucks on the side' - this might work out in some ways, but generally speaking, it doesn't.
'Gig economy' is toxic for the working class and mostly is just a giant wealth transfer.
The people creating and investing in these companies absolutely know this, this is their 'secret sauce' or 'IP' or 'special insight' etc. that makes it work.
I think much of it would survive if min. wage were required, but not all of it.
I suggest it's not actually efficient for middle class people to have 'gig servants' in most cases, the efficiency just is not there - again 'slack labour' notwithstanding.
Finally, we may be a couple of steps away from it working - notably, there are a lot of 'hiccups' that happen with delivery, such as people not present, addressing problems, bad food selection, etc. and working through a lot of that may bring efficiency across the threshold to where the 'grocery bill' is just a 'little bit more' because the delivery guy is able to do it very efficiently, and so the economics add up.
I think we might be there with Uber but I don't think we're there with Instacart.
Because of this, it's possible to either not have enough deliveries/rides or to have the deliveries/rides pay too little to achieve enough money in an hour to make minimum wage.