28% of Delivery Drivers Have Tasted Your Food, Survey Finds (restaurantbusinessonline.com) 165
One of America's top foodservice distributor's recently surveyed 1,518 customers of food-delivery services -- and then also surveyed 500 delivery drivers. Restaurant Business magazine shares one surprising result:
About 21% of delivery customers worry the driver may have nibbled their order en route -- and with good reason, according to a new study of delivery gripes. Some 28% of drivers say they were unable to resist taking a bite...
Overall, the research uncovered a wariness on the part of consumers about the drivers who cart their meals. More than 4 out of 5 (85%) said they would like restaurants to adopt tamper-proof packaging. The consumer respondents were given a hypothetical situation: "If you ordered a burger and fries, and the deliverer grabbed a few fries along the way, how upset would you be?" On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being an attitude of "no big deal" and 10 representing "absolutely unacceptable," the average score was 8.4.
They also readily cited service snafus. 34% of respondents said they'd experienced a driver refusing to leave his or her car to hand over the meal. 29% said a driver refused to walk all the way to their door for the delivery. Nearly 1 in 5 (17%) reported that a driver had dropped the food at the door and left, without any interaction.
Meanwhile, though 95% of customers said they tip regularly, insufficient tipping was a "consistent" complaint for 60% of the drivers -- and in fact, the survey showed the drivers had much higher rates of consistent irritation. 52% complained their restaurants didn't have their orders ready on time, though many also complained about customers leaving unclear instructions in the app (39%), taking to long to answer the door (33%), not answering their phone (37%), or messaging the deliverer with questions or complaints (34%).
And a full 54% of drivers said they were "often tempted" by the smell of food they delivered.
Overall, the research uncovered a wariness on the part of consumers about the drivers who cart their meals. More than 4 out of 5 (85%) said they would like restaurants to adopt tamper-proof packaging. The consumer respondents were given a hypothetical situation: "If you ordered a burger and fries, and the deliverer grabbed a few fries along the way, how upset would you be?" On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being an attitude of "no big deal" and 10 representing "absolutely unacceptable," the average score was 8.4.
They also readily cited service snafus. 34% of respondents said they'd experienced a driver refusing to leave his or her car to hand over the meal. 29% said a driver refused to walk all the way to their door for the delivery. Nearly 1 in 5 (17%) reported that a driver had dropped the food at the door and left, without any interaction.
Meanwhile, though 95% of customers said they tip regularly, insufficient tipping was a "consistent" complaint for 60% of the drivers -- and in fact, the survey showed the drivers had much higher rates of consistent irritation. 52% complained their restaurants didn't have their orders ready on time, though many also complained about customers leaving unclear instructions in the app (39%), taking to long to answer the door (33%), not answering their phone (37%), or messaging the deliverer with questions or complaints (34%).
And a full 54% of drivers said they were "often tempted" by the smell of food they delivered.
Re:8.4 (Score:4, Funny)
It's not the 28% who have tasted it I'm worried about, it's the 37% who have spat in it.
And the 12% who have peed in it really creep me out.
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No shit, who wants someone sticking their dirty fingers in my food?
Delivery is for the lazy. Always order for pickup.
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Delivery is for the lazy. Always order for pickup.
Right, because when I work a 12-hour day and literally can't drop everything for half an hour to an hour, that's being lazy. I'm actually not a big fan of delivery and usually do pick up, but it has its place.
Re: 8.4 (Score:1, Insightful)
Bullshit.
You've clearly never worked in food service, or you'd know that working around it all day renders the food you are serving somewhere between boring and disgusting.
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But not that far fetched considering how cheap fast food chain has a high rotation of new workers and part timing teens that results in fair amount of people who is working around food for the first time (even if they will probably find the sight of that pudding nauseating after a month). Also factor in weird shift timings that disrupts the workers meal times (and appetite) so much that the some workers started their shift without eating, and is totally famished towards the end of their 10 hour shift.
Neve
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The most disgusting was at a high-end restaurant. This creature had all her preferred dishes mapped out for suggestive selling and would become very happy when a customer ordered a favorite. I don't know what level of picking she did before serving the plates, but she would very helpfully o
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That's totally true if you're working food service at a cheap-ass fast food joint.
Not so true for an upscale fine dining establishment. Although, yes, sometimes even their food can get nauseating.
The cod tripe I had at the Michelin starred Vijante was one of those foods.
Re: grody (Score:2, Interesting)
im glad i dont live in the USA, and while a higher wages and no tip culture means higher prices, it also means this is less of a worry and probably less of a problem. Id love to see the same questions and answers for other regions.
Tamper-proof doesn't need to be fancy or expensive (Score:5, Informative)
I used to order delivery from a local store, who put their food in brown paper bags. They folded the top over and stapled it. Cost them almost nothing extra and solved the problem completely.
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Until the first driver brings their own stapler.
Note: Nobody with a clue calls anything tamper-proof. "Tamper Resistant" is the highest level actual security experts use.
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There's $41B available if you're able to find a way to tamper with bitcoin blockchain in a meaningful way.
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Can I get my $41B in cash? because in bitcoin is pretty much worthless
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There is indication that this has already been done, but the ones doing it were careful to not kill their golden goose.
Re:Tamper-proof doesn't need to be fancy or expens (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't even need to be tamper resistant: tamper evident would be enough, and the stapled paper bag gets most of the way there because it's not at all easy to re-staple the bag using the holes from the original staple.
Re:Tamper-proof doesn't need to be fancy or expens (Score:4, Funny)
It doesn't even need to be tamper resistant: tamper evident would be enough, and the stapled paper bag gets most of the way there because it's not at all easy to re-staple the bag using the holes from the original staple.
Solution: In addition to a stapler, bring a 2nd paper bag with no holes.
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Slap on a sticker with the food company's unique branding, and staple the bag closed through the sticker
Re: Tamper-proof doesn't need to be fancy or expen (Score:1)
Sealed with wax and imprinted with the king's err chef's ring.
What's old is new again
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Sure is. When Mum started getting so arthritic that she struggled to write her signature, I made her a "signet ring" for "making her mark" on documents.
And before the rest of Slashdot starts on the "she'll have to learn to GPGP cross-encrypt PDFs of her flange sprockets" palaver, she's never used a mobile phone (and only answered the landline - I never saw her make a phone call), would type very rarely back when we had
Re:Tamper-proof doesn't need to be fancy or expens (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't even need to be tamper resistant: tamper evident would be enough, and the stapled paper bag gets most of the way there because it's not at all easy to re-staple the bag using the holes from the original staple.
Solution: In addition to a stapler, bring a 2nd paper bag with no holes.
How about stapling bags with a payment receipt, which restaurants around me do pretty often?
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btw, delivery is thirsty work. Bring an extra straw and replacement drink top.
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You are certainly correct on the first one. The second one is a question of skill. Can be done, but requires real effort and that may be enough to stop these drivers from doing it. Also, putting in a few more staples is very easy and makes the attack so much harder. And you only have casual attackers here that commit an attack of opportunity. A professional one would probably just use a new bag, but this is no worthwhile target in any way.
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If you've eaten out, say conservatively, 30 times a year over the course of your life, and your food has been tampered with 1% of the time, you'd realize that someone grabbing a bite off your plate is probably the least of your worries. Delivery person? What about the people cooking the food and plating it?
Tamper-proof... like security theater at the airport, it's just to make you feel better.
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And that is an excellent point. The whole problem is a) not actually a problem and b) the delivery guy is not the issue.
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Delivery person? What about the people cooking the food and plating it?
About 99% of the time they'd have access to the product in bulk and not really be stealing it off anyone's plate. I suppose there's possibly some chain shops with pre-weighed containers with exactly 20 slices of pepperoni for your pepperoni pizza where one eaten means one less on the pizza but that would be an exception. The delivery person only has your one meal though, so when it arrives it'll be less than 100%.
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"Tampered with" includes things like spitting on the food, not washing hands after visiting the loo, etc. A friend that worked in the industry for a while told me especially the former was quite common. Not sure he was truthful, but would not surprise me. There is a reason some cultures like food to be prepared in front of the customers in their restaurants.
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My cousin got a summer job working in a bakery (more like a bread making factory) to this day he refuses to eat that brand of bread. He freely acknowledges that more than likely ALL of them have the same issues, but he KNOWS that one does. But seriously, if you think your food is squeaky clean and doesn't have gunk in it you would not want to eat then you are sadly
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The delivery person knows your name and address. The people cooking the food and plating it generally don't. So if they decide to spit on what they're making, that's more of a random chance it'll be your food than say, the guy waiting in line at the restaurant.
The delivery person however does know where you live and who you are. In some places, it would be the same delivery driver over and over again just because they happen to like to s
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Until the first driver brings their own stapler.
The point is not necessarily to make everything foolproof -- its to provide a good enough deterrent to help keep honest people honest.
Breaking open an enclosed package and then re-sealing is a more overt act of tampering than sneaking into the package and pawwing someone's foot to grab a piece of it.
Although my suggestion would be that they FEED the driver with 1 meal per night as a compulsory order and part of their compensation as in later waive the cost
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I completely agree on all of that.
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Great idea! But restaurants are cheap as fuck, so they rarely give the staff the same calibre of meals as they are serving customers.
There's really no reason not to give staff a delicious and complete meal -- after all, people aren't having Filet Mignon, Lobster, or other high-cost meals delivered
(typically).
A successful delivery restaurant has less than 25% in cost of material/labor to actually make the mail,
so you can expect that $15 meal for one person cost less than $4 to make.
1 free meal for
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Most 'easy' theft is a crime of opportunity.
A staple would cut out 99% of it... It is not a perfect solution but a cheap one that gets you most of the way there.
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I will not allow a stapler anywhere near my kitchen though. If you use a stapler enough on food orders, eventually you WILL end up with a staple somewhere it shouldn't be, whether through fault of an employee or a customer's carelessness. That could be a bit expensive and l
And I assume all these people (Score:3)
Are willing to pay 20% more for tamper proof packaging? It's kinda like when you plant a garden, sure you could spend money for electric fencing and barriers to keep out turtles, etc, or you could just plant some extra for the wildlife. Or better yet, make your own food, generally better for you, cheaper and tastes better.
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That works especially well with glass bottles.
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Tamper evident tape costs next to nothing, certainly not 20% on top of the cost of your meal.
And why would I pay for it? If the restaurant can't guarantee that my food hasn't been sampled while maintaining a reasonable price, I just won't buy from them.
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They already pay the extra 20% to be lazy rich assholes. 40% is a drop in the bucket. Some of these people pay over 10k a month in property taxes.
How about this: Are you worried the pleb delivering your food might be hungry enough to nibble on your food? Give him a real job.
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Even more disturbing... (Score:2)
A follow-up study found that 72% of delivery drivers lie when asked “do you ever taste a customer’s food?”
The Real Numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
28% of drivers say they sample the food, probably higher.
54% of chefs sample the food.
32% of serving staff/packagers also sample.
You would have to break out Bayesian statistics to determine the odds of your food not being sampled by someone in the chain.
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> You would have to break out Bayesian statistics
Now this is news... for nerds.
Re:The Real Numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
100% of chefs should be sampling food
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Re: The Real Numbers (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, indeed and they should be doing it in a sanitary way.
I can tell you that this can be done appropriately and hygienically - I witness my chefs and managers do it all the time. Our menu and procedures do not require constant tasting, but it is not hard to control quality without doing something gross, prohibited by health code, or that will cause a customer to think someone ate part of their meal.
Allowing third party delivery service to handle our customers' food was a nightmare, and it did not take us long to recognize this and ban them. Problem solved, and I will never order delivery unless the drivers are directly employed by a restaurant that I already trust (and even that is rare for me). Of course this still leaves a chance that something nasty might occur, but in-house staff are supervised at least, depend solely on orders from that one particular restaurant, and can order their own food for free or at a discounted price, in most cases.
Re:The Real Numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
I would hope 100% of chefs sample the food. They can't tell if they're making it right or wrong if they don't. As long as these people are not smearing their hands over the parts of the food they don't sample, or putting back food that they've partially eaten, it's not a problem.
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That's true. At my store, a driver was once fired for taking 1 slice of pizza and trying to rearrange the remaining 7 slices so it looked like a whole pie. He wasn't very bright.
In fast food, the chef doesn't need to. To summarize, th
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So, not a chef?
In other news (Score:2)
Another thing to worry with (Score:2)
Well, I always try to tip well so they don't spit on the food, but hell, but you can't fix hungry.
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Well, I always try to tip well so they don't spit on the food, but hell, but you can't fix hungry.
LOL. That's hilarious. You realize that by the time you give them a tip they've already delivered your food, right?
Now we'll have to worry about delivery people licking or spitting on our food. As if Jesse Jackson doing it wasn't enough years ago. He admitted doing that.
Ever eat something and it had a gritty feel to it? It was on the floor.
Well, then, it's only fair . . . (Score:4, Funny)
. . . that I get to taste the delivery woman coming to me who has already tasted my food.
"Tip the veal . . . try the waitress."
Food delivery apps could be easily modified so that you can order a delivery person with the gender of your choice.
Wrong headline is wrong (Score:2)
Re:Wrong headline is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Should read "28% admitted to tasting your food. You and I know the total who actually do so has got to be higher .
Also 28% of drivers admitted to sampling someone's food at some point in time. This is not the same as the headline suggests that 28% have sampled *your* food. If a company had 100 drivers each who had delivered 100 orders then there were 10,000 orders delivered. If the drivers who admitted to tasting food each did so once, then your chances of having driver sampled food would be 28 out of 10,000 or about a quarter of a percent. Since we don't know the number of drivers, the number of orders delivered, the frequency of how often a driver samples (just did it once, does it all the time), nor the honesty of the drivers' survey response, we have no way to know what the chances are that your specific food was sampled by a driver.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why (Score:2)
Seen it (Score:5, Informative)
We could not allow a third party, over whom we had no control and with whom and had no business agreement, to continue to act as an authorized middle man, and requested that they cease and desist from reselling our food. And what do you know, the complaints immediately stopped; no more Grubhub or Door Dash orders, no more complaints about cold, damaged, missing, "sampled," or late food. Our carryout sales numbers have not taken a hit since opting out of these services, and continue to be the same healthy percentage of total sales they were before the delivery services moved into town. We don't deliver, and third party delivery services provided no benefit to our company but instead only seemed to harm the brand image because they did not maintain the same standards that our customers have come to expect.
Delivery Driver Here (Score:4, Funny)
Driving doesn't pay so I usually just eat a little bit from each delivery to hold me over during the day. This way nobody notices. If people don't like it maybe they should think twice the next time they go to vote. A vote for socialism is a vote for safe food deliveries as people like me won't have to work any more. I at a minimum have a right to eat your food if you won't feed, clothe, and house me. You owe me at least that much. I know I could move some place cheaper and survive, but those places won't give me free money and why should I?
Good luck moving someplace cheaper (Score:2)
Agreed, we should be paying you $15/hr, a living wage. FDR said it best:
Don't fuck with people who handle your food (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
People need to tip better and not be dicks to the food service workers.
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don;t be a dick to the delivery driver .... but tipping? - are they not paid by the restaurant, are they not paid to deliver the food, properly, politely, already ....?
Get it yourself. (Score:2)
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Not just food (Score:2)
I believe that pimps have a similar habit.
Tipping, pah (Score:2)
I've literally never tipped a delivery driver, because I live in the UK. I assume they get paid a proper wage by their employers. I think the American reliance on tipping is really crazy. You guys need to get rid of that cultural custom IMHO. Just pay them a proper goddamn wage and be done with it!!!
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Biblical (Score:2)
I think you have to either explicitly feed the drivers or figure a percentage lost in transit as a reality of doing business.
DEUTERONOMY 25:4
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funny, I thought the drivers were getting paid. But here they were doing it as enslaved draft animal, silly me.
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It's a metaphor.
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it's a metaphor for paying for work, actually in the context for paying religious leaders and workers.
The drivers are being paid, your metaphor doesn't apply.
Those who whine about "living wage" should consider the percent of drivers who live with other wage earners. The only issue is if household has a living wage.
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Maybe they're living in household with other wage earners. Getting some income while living in mom's basement is fine.
Stealing is bad, and the solution is simple anyway, the packages can be sealed to keep grubby thieving driver mitts out.
Insufficient tipping... (Score:3)
The comment by uvajed_ekil covers the restaurant side of things.
On the subject of tipping: This just shows how stupid tipping is, as a means of paying a delivery service. Imagine if the Postal Service, or UPS, or FedEx worked that way: The delivery person relies on tips to get paid. If you're a lousy tipper, they start dropping some of your mail in the trashcan, or keeping interesting packages for themselves. It's just an idiotic model that puts both the delivery person and the customer in an awkward position.
If a customer wants a service, tell them what it's going to cost. Don't leave it to their imagination.
Enjoy your delivery job while you can... (Score:1)
...because you'll be standing in the unemployment line in the near future when self-driving autonomous vehicles take your jobs! Best part about a self-driving car delivering food? You don't have to give it a tip... and you don't have to worry about it stealing some fries!
In our case (Score:2)
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Yup, this isn't the gig economy, it's the lazy economy.
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You'd be surprised. I occasionally drive for UberEats, when I feel like having some extra money.
I've gone to a restaurant, picked up an order and then found that the address for delivery was just down the street. One time the restaurant was on the ground floor of an apartment building and the delivery was up to the 16th floor. The fucking 16th floor and the person would rather pay for delivery than come down and get their own food.