Shipt's Preferred Shopper program has been around since August 2021 and it's the single biggest factor in whether you make real money on this platform. Not your star rating. Not gaming the schedule. Your preferred list.
The idea is simple. A customer rates you five stars and Shipt asks them if they want to make you their preferred shopper. You get a notification, accept or decline, and from that point on you get their orders before anyone else sees them. Before it gets sent out to other shoppers or placed on the open metro.
That's it. That's the whole advantage. And it changes everything about how you earn.
Why the list matters more than anything else
Open metro is a lottery. You're competing with every shopper in your zone for whatever orders nobody else wanted or nobody was scheduled for. Some days it's fine. Some days you sit in a parking lot for 45 minutes staring at an empty screen.
Preferred orders skip that entire system. The customer places an order, you get a notification and you claim it. Done. No competition, no refreshing, no luck involved.
The claim window is short. You've only got a little while before it moves on to other shoppers or enters the regular rotation. But if you're paying attention, that order is yours.
There's a catch with bundles though. If Shipt bundles your preferred member's order with someone else's, you may not get the notification. The bundle goes through normal offer flow. Annoying, and there's nothing you can do about it except know it happens. Some shoppers have also reported that their high-tipping preferred shoppers are often paired with customers that don't tip. Not great.
Not all preferred members are worth having
This is the part nobody tells new shoppers. Getting a preferred request feels good. Someone liked your service enough to want you back. But some of those people don't tip.
I've had customers request me as preferred after I delivered a $200 order with perfect substitution communication, bagged everything the way they wanted, got there thirty minutes earlier than the end of the window. $0 tip. Then the preferred request pops up and I'm supposed to be excited about locking in more $0 orders from this person.
Nope.
You can decline preferred requests. Shipt doesn't tell the customer whether you accepted or declined. No awkwardness, no consequences. Just tap decline and move on. Or you can be like me and just let them sit there indefinitely. I feel rude declining them, since it feels like a compliment to my service, but at the end of the day I don't want them again as a customer either.
The smart play is only accepting preferred requests from customers who tipped on that initial order. You already have the data point. They either tipped or they didn't. Why would the second order be any different?
Some shoppers accept everything and sort it out later. That works too but you end up with a bloated list where half your preferred notifications are orders you're going to pass on anyway. If you only accept preferred requests from customers that tip, then the offer notification about an order from a preferred member is much more exciting to get.
How customers actually become preferred
After delivery, the customer rates you. If they give five stars and pick at least one attribute (like "great communication" or "good substitutions"), Shipt asks if they want to add you as preferred. That's the only trigger. Four stars? Nothing. Five stars without selecting an attribute? Nothing.
So your job is making five-star-with-attribute ratings happen consistently. Which brings up the actual strategy.
Building the list
Communication is the whole game. Not speed, not how neatly you bag things, not whether you found every item. Communication.
Text them when you start shopping. "Hey, starting your order!" Takes five seconds. Most shoppers don't do it. Customers notice when someone does.
Photo every substitution. Don't just text "they're out of the Honey Nut Cheerios, is the store brand okay?" Take a picture of what's available (and the empty spot where the original one was out of stock), send it, let them pick. This is the single biggest factor in both tips and preferred requests. Customers hate getting home and finding something they didn't want in their bags. A photo takes that anxiety away completely.
You can also go "above and beyond". One of my favorites is bananas. I see bananas on the shopping list and before I'm even in that section I send a message asking what ripeness they prefer. Gets me a preferred request almost every time and it takes almost no time if you send it before you're actually waiting at the bananas. Just an example, but it's really the little things that do it.
At the door, be normal. Be friendly without being weird about it, just a "Where would you like me to leave these" and then a "Have a great day!". Some shoppers try to pitch the preferred program at drop-off. "Hey, if you liked your experience you can add me as a preferred shopper in the app!" That works sometimes, but it's frowned upon by Shipt and can be seen as pushy to the customer. Personally I just do good work and let the app handle the prompt.
The long game
Preferred lists compound over time. This is the part that makes Shipt actually viable as real income instead of the side gig you're constantly frustrated with.
Month one you've got maybe five or ten preferred members. Not much changes. Month four you've got fifty. Now a few orders a week just show up without you doing anything. Month eight you've got almost a hundred and suddenly you're turning down open metro orders because your schedule is already half full from preferred notifications alone.
Veteran shoppers with big preferred lists report earning in the high $20s to mid $30s per hour on an average day. New shoppers without one are often stuck in the $16-22 range, if they get lucky with tips. Same platform, same zone, same hours. The difference is the list.
And here's the thing about preferred members who tip well. They keep tipping well. It's the most consistent pattern in all of Shipt shopping. A customer who tips $15 on their first order tips $12-18 on basically every order after that. A customer who tips $0 tips $0 forever. There are exceptions but they're rare enough that you shouldn't plan around them.
Delivery-only is a dead end for this
One thing new shoppers run into, especially in saturated metros. If it's available in your metro, Shipt feeds you delivery-only orders when you're starting out. Target packages mostly. Drop them on the porch, done. It sounds easy but ever wonder why no one else is taking those orders?
Problem is delivery-only customers can't add you as preferred. The feature only works with shop-and-deliver. So if you're doing nothing but delivery onlys, you're earning base pay with no tips and no path to building the list that actually makes this job pay well.
Take shop-and-deliver orders even when they're harder and riskier in terms of earnings. That's where the preferred relationships come from. Delivery onlys are fine to fill gaps during slow times but they shouldn't be your whole day.
When to remove someone
You can remove preferred members anytime. Swipe left on their name in your preferred list. They don't get notified.
Remove people who stopped tipping. It happens. Someone tips three times, then nothing for the next four orders. Pattern changed, move on. Remove people whose orders you consistently don't want. If their order pops up and you find yourself letting the timer run out every time, just cut them loose so the notification stops being noise. One of your first preferred members you got that tipped $7 and you thought it was great? Well, they live on the third floor and consistently order 3 cases of water with Every. Single. Order. That $7 doesn't look great compared to your other preferred members anymore.
Shipt also automatically removes you from a customer's list if they give you a 1 or 2 star rating. So if the relationship goes south, the system handles it.
It's a client list
Forget thinking of yourself as someone who picks up whatever gig is available. That's how you burn out making $14/hour or less before expenses.
Treat the preferred list like a client list. Know which customers order on which days. Know who tips and how much. Know which ones text you about every substitution (some people like that) and which ones just want you to use your judgment. Know the addresses, know the stores they order from, know whether their apartment complex has a gate code you need.
All of that knowledge turns into faster shops, better ratings, more preferred requests, higher tips. It feeds itself. Every good delivery creates the conditions for the next one.
The shoppers who last on this platform aren't the fastest or the ones who work the most hours. They're the ones who built a list of many people who specifically want them, tip them well, and order regularly. Everyone else is fighting over open metro.
Auto Tip Map is an Android app that saves every order, tip, and address automatically, so when a preferred request comes in you already know whether that customer is worth adding to your list.