This doesn't always happen and it depends on a ton of things (store, time/shift, crew working at the time) but it got to the point where I couldn't reliably get the food on time so I just stopped going. That and an extra steak bowl with guac is $18 without chips or a drink. Kind of tough to justify eating that 7 days a week. It's just not super efficient.
Then I realized the $47b market cap company doesn't care if they lose my business because my nitpick problems most likely aren't happening at a large enough scale to affect them (otherwise they'd do something about it, right?)
I learned this lesson way back in the 1980s when a McDonald's here tried to partner with a delivery startup to deliver food. They went all in, renovating the store with a call center and a half-dozen phones and order taking stations. It was a novelty for a few months but everyone quickly figured out that burgers and fries don't travel well.
Learn to cook some simple meals at home. Or go out to eat. Delivery is the worst way to get your food.
Agree that delivery is not ideal and many times food is cold, more expensive, and items were forgotten.
This was "pickup" ordering in case it wasn't clear. Not that your point doesn't still stand.
$20 lunch is now a thing, even at food stands/trucks, sandwich shops, or counter restaurants like Chipotle. :(
Best Chipotle deal is probably a single taco, which usually gets more than a single taco's worth of fillings and toppings.
Chipotle is so terrible I've stopped ordering from them. If I tried that, there'd be a decent chance that when I'd get to the store, I'd fine it would be "online orders only." I've also put in online orders (which were accepted) only discover the store was actually closed.
I see this every time I go to Chick-fil-a.
There are always people waiting in line for their pick-up orders. By the time I arrive, wait in line, place my order, pay, get my food and go, many of the same people are still standing in the pick-up line waiting for their food.
We've tried delivery three times. Every time resulted in a refund because they sent the wrong order.
That just seems like good business, since takeout sushi is always worse, even if you start with the same quality at the store. It's still just as edible and safe, and the takeout recipients know to expect a little lower quality. Conversely, people eating in expect the best quality. Sushi is always only the best quality fresh off the ice, not in a container a few minutes later.
I don't see how this reflects on her as a person, bad or good, at all. It's just good business practice, while not letting the fish spoil.
Do you mean fish she wouldn't serve to in-person customers even if delivery didn't exist? Because otherwise, that sounds like pretty reasonable prioritizing.
At least Deliveroo UK finally relented to give delivery failures back as a refund rather than their old position which was effectively: "Oops, we messed up leaving you without a portion of your meal... Please can we keep your hard-earned cash as a credit, so that you can only use it by spending more money with us".
Has anyone else looked into the tipping vs not tipping thing? Basically the service was very spotty in London at first; therefore I thought I'd try tipping a bit more and a bit less, to see what effect it had. I found that actually not tipping resulted in way better service. They really ought to just reserve the amount on the credit card up-front and then only take it once it's delivered so customers have the opportunity to tip *post-delivery* - I'd be all over that and would have no concerns giving generously, but I'm certainly not shelling out for worse service!
Some friends I've discussed this with try to post-rationalise that the agents think they're getting tipped in person and so go above and beyond, yet they never give that sense during the delivery (who uses cash now anyway?!)
I always tip in cash. I pay in cash for orders that accept it. Why would I use card unless forced?
edit: this is a rhetorical question, I don't literally need to know why physical objects are cumbersome to you, this is HN lol
I would prefer it if I could pay in cash fractionally, without having to give or get slips of paper, file that paper in a portable filing cabinet in my pocket, keep up with how many slips of paper of what denominations I have in my filing cabinet, and periodically run out of slips of paper just at a time when I most need them.
The worst is giving somebody one slip of paper and receiving in return multiple slips of paper and several bits of metal. Then I need to file the bits of metal too and remember how much in my pocket they add up to, or, more likely, keep them at home and never use them for anything.
I consider it an abhorrent practice and lament its leakage from the US into the UK market by the laptop class; since I don't want to normalise this practice in the UK I simply judge a delivery's service on the not-tipping aspect.
Tipping for regular meals & service is not a part of UK culture.
I only do it when somewhere does something truly exceptional or for a really large dining party.
Do a real study and get back to me.
Still not a _real_ study by any means, but there's more data than just 2 salads.
Berkeley and a few other cities capped the amount an app can take out of the restaurant's food costs, which is why you'll see extra fees when you order there. The delivery app is now taking their cut directly from the user instead of from the restaurant without the user knowing.
Order online with their app, and the order is always bursting at the seams.
Order in person, and it's meh. Plus the line!
Order through like Favor / Uber, and it's like, "Why did I do this?"
Curious how worker training factors in, or if it's just, "Oh we had more time so we made a better order..." Or, "Oh, we had the data in our own system that prints slips we know how to read (vs. Uber slips)..." Or, "Oh, we just feel bad ripping people off if we have to look them in the eye."
For Chipotle, wouldn't surprise me if they told workers to make sure to always do a good job on the Chipotle in-app orders. They really push the app to help keep line size down.
I think this would have a lot to do with it, there's definitely a different time pressure between "the customer is watching me prepare this in front of them and is impatiently waiting on me" versus "the customer won't arrive for at least 15 minutes and I'm waiting on them".
Also, another factor is I've noticed it is sometimes the managers rather than the usual line workers that make the online orders, if the Chipotle doesn't have dedicated workers for the online order line. That would impact quality as well, as you may just presume that the Managers have more overall experience over average line workers. (I've also had cases where Managers actively watching the line have given me more food than unsupervised lines.)
The manager was on the hook to make sure we didn't use too much of the ingredients, since they had a little quantity checklist... "If I make X sandwiches, I should only need Y slices of bread" type metric to go off of.
But we had so much waste anyway, hard to think anyone really cared. I think probably 20% of the food we prepared got thrown out. Maybe that's less these days, but like we would slice tomatoes and onions knowing we might as well chuck every 5th slice directly into the bin. More some days. It was really frustrating to prepare a bunch of onions, only to literally throw out 95% of them later if we had a slow day.
I don't know that my manager ever really cared about us adding more ingredients. But... it does seem like something they would worry about. =P
The closest Chipotle to me went online-only during Covid lockdown and it must have worked out well since they no longer allow in-person orders. Most people either get it delivered or use the drive-through to pickup. They don't even have a cash register anymore.
For me being older, delivery used to be a treat, pizza and Chinese food were the staple of American "living it up" night for families ordering in with big orders, and at least local restaurants that actually did deliver generally respected and rewarded that, but no more when people order a single salad or burrito at a time for delivery.
What are you going to do, call and complain your order was too small? Likely not, we're all used to getting a hamburger that surely doesn't look like the one on the billboard or TV, but if something even I mentally note, I simply never go or order again, telling anyone that cares to know or leave a review where I can stating as much.
It's just the evolution of the businesses as a whole to stay alive, like everything now - pay more, get less, deal with it.
I wonder what portion of this is from biases caring for less about anonymous online orders. Seeing a human face might prompt an employee to stuff more chips or fries in that to go bag.
I really miss pre-covid food experience!
In the article they were weighing at their office. For an in-person order the time between the food being made and the weighing would be the time to get back from the restaurant to the office.
For a delivery order the time from being made to the weighing would be the time it takes the delivery driver to pick up the order plus the time it takes them to get to your office and deliver it.
Unless the driver is already waiting at the restaurant when the food is done, and doesn't wait for other orders to finish too so as to take them at the same time, and yours is the first or only order to be delivered on that run your delivery food on average is going to have been out of the kitchen longer than your in-person ordered food.
