STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

small fry · Chanel

mystery shoppers

tara t · Marc Jacobs

when i was in college a roomie looked into it. do you mean at a restaurant or a store? she did the restaurants and the co. reimbursed her for her and a guests meal and paid her about 10 bucks.

small fry · Chanel

well both I guess but the con side is that you have to pay for your meal- money up front.

atlgirl · Gucci

It pays okay, but nothing stellar. My (retired) mom does it. But she does a LOT of shops. If you just do one here or there, I don't know that it would be worth it...

small fry · Chanel

thanks girls, well it was a thought, need job with better hrs iam still looking

zeitgeist4 · Gucci

My dad did it in college, at grocery stores. I don't know if the pay was good or not.

laken1 · Hermes

I have done all kinds of shops & here are my thoughts:
*I sometimes still do restaurants, but they really only pay your bill. I have 2 I do pretty often & they pay up to $30 in food / drinks & then $5 or $10 on top of that. But yes, you have to front the $$ & they usually only cut checks once a month, so you may not get your money for 6 weeks or so.

*I did a few retail things, but they only paid like $8 reimbursement + $5 so I didn't think it was worth my time.

*I did ONE Kroger store & I hated hated it. They paid $15 flat & I didn't think it was worth it.

*Now I am doing a different grocery chain (Safeway / tom thumb) and I am actually an employee of their company. Lots of places use contracted companies to do their shops so it may or may not be really professional. With this, I have a specific person I can ask questions to, I had an actual training class, then a 2 week training / coaching period, all of which they paid me for hourly. Now they pay hourly (about $10) + $0.48 per mile, and the clock starts when you leave so you get travel time as well. So I've made up to $85 for 1 shop because I went far. But it's sure not the way to get rich. I do it to get out of my house, and we figure it pays about half our grocery bill, because of course I'm buying stuff when I go. Sometimes I think it's not worth it at all, but I enjoy it, so i'm going to keep doing it til I don't.

That's my FWIW.