14 October 2025
Returning from another delivery, Green Riders rider Taylor Pitcher from Manenberg waits on her Mach5 E-bike outside Cavendish Square in Claremont. She is one of over 2,000 young people who have been employed by the Green Riders initiative since 2023. Photos: David Harrison
Taylor Pitcher from Manenberg, Cape Town was left with no choice but to leave school as a grade 10 learner to find work to help support her mother and younger sibling. Today, the 19-year-old is one of over two thousand people who have seized the opportunity to work as a Green Rider.
To date, the company has done about one-million deliveries of goods and food in the last-mile delivery industry.
Pitcher says she searched for a job for months before a relative introduced her to the Green Riders. She applied and underwent three-month training in Athlone. “I was one of the stronger riders during training, so I was given a bike with the first group in April,” she says.
Green Riders’ (From left) Tashriq Booi, Kyle Abels and Taylor Pitch stand outside Cavendish as they wait for order notifications to come through on their phones.
Green Riders, piloted in 2023, recruits unemployed young men and women from poor communities, and trains them to become professional delivery riders. The e-bikes they use are significantly cheaper to run than petrol engine motorbikes which not only saves riders thousands of rands each year but also helps to reduce the carbon footprint associated with delivery vehicles.
Pitcher delivers for Uber Eats mostly in Claremont and Rondebosch. The riders work on commission and pay a rental fee of about R900 per week.
“I’m the only one working in the house. My mom is unemployed. So in a week where I see I won’t make as much, I choose to sometimes work as late as 10pm or 11pm,” she says.
Through rain and shine, Pitcher works. Expecting cooler weather, she puts on a pair of warmer overpants during her Saturday afternoon shift outside Cavendish Square in Claremont.
The flexibility of being able to determine her own work hours and exploring as she bikes around the city are the main reasons Pitcher says she enjoys her job. To keep safe when riding home late at night, Pitcher says she communicates with and waits for other Green Riders who also live in Manenberg so they can leave and return together. But the job is not without its dangers; in May she was robbed at gunpoint.
Undaunted for now, she is eager to continue the work as she is supporting her family. “I would encourage other young people to join an initiative like this because the job is exciting and you see so many places and things while riding,” she says.
Pitcher arrives at her delivery destination in leafy Newlands, not far from the Claremont hub where she bases herself waiting for orders. Riders prefer to accept deliveries that aren’t too far and will often not choose delivery requests from dangerous areas.
Waiting for orders to come through on the Uber Eats App, Pitcher and her colleague Kyle Abels sit outside Cavendish Square on a Saturday afternoon.
Pitcher makes another delivery from the Claremont hub outside Cavendish Square where she bases herself waiting for orders through the Uber Eats App.
Pitcher (right) gears up to make the 10km ride back to her home in Manenberg after a long day of making deliveries for Uber Eats in the Claremont area.
Pitcher and her Green Riders colleagues head home to Manenberg from Cavendish Square. She often rides with a group of riders who also live in Manenberg as a way to stay safe.