Should you employ drivers or use freelance couriers?
Most operations need both, for the same reason restaurants keep both permanent and casual kitchen staff: demand is spiky. Employed drivers give you guaranteed cover at known cost during service; freelance couriers absorb the peaks you cannot justify staffing for.
What employed drivers give you
Certainty. Someone is there at 7pm because you rostered them, they know your kitchen and your area, and your cost per hour is predictable whether you do ten deliveries or two.
The cost of that certainty is that you pay for the quiet hours too, and you carry the obligations of an employer.
What freelance capacity gives you
Elasticity. You pay per delivery, so an unexpectedly busy Saturday does not require an unexpectedly staffed one, and a quiet Tuesday costs nothing.
The cost is less certainty about who turns up and how well they know your area.
Employment status is not a label you choose
Whether someone is an employee, a worker, or genuinely self-employed is decided by the reality of the arrangement (how much control is exercised, whether they can decline work, whether they can send someone else) and not by what a contract calls them.
UK courts have repeatedly looked past contractual labels in exactly this sector. If you are structuring a driver arrangement, this is worth an hour of an employment solicitor's time before it is worth an hour of anyone else's.
Scorto is built for the mixed model rather than forcing a choice. A courier attached to your restaurant is assigned your deliveries while on shift, and can take network jobs between shifts, so your drivers earn more in their idle hours without costing you more, and without ever being pulled away during your service. Scorto does not advise on employment status and does not decide it.