I’m never ordering from a food delivery service again. Yesterday I used Grubhub. Today from Uber Eats. Both times something was missing from the order.
Yep, when I drove for Uber they would blame the driver for not checking the order. Now everything is sealed up due to Covid19 so they can’t do that anymore.
I’ve had baked potatoes show up without butter or sour cream that I requested. No compensation offered from the place (FU Red Lobster). Can’t blame the Doordash guy for that.
Had a Uber driver drop off a no contact order in front of my door such that I could not get to it without tipping over the milkshake. No more for me either.
I’ve been recently pleased with DoorDash after a rocky start (have you even tried Naan that was delivered an hour late? Cardboard!), but it got way better. Now they’re screwing up by listing restaurants (e.g. my local awesome burger place) that are demonstrably open as closed; not just misinterpreting an 11am opening as 12pm, they listed this place as closed yesterday Friday and today, all day.
We’ve never had food delivered (pre or post COVID-19).
Kudos though to food trucks. We’ve gotten dinner from trucks ~10 times a month in 2020, and haven’t had a dud yet.
A local restaurant owner I know stated video recording the order as it was put into the containers by turning one of the security cameras toward the, lack of a better term, order assembly area. Would write the name/order number on the container/bag so the camera could read it when the held it up to the camera. If a customer would complain about missing food and he would send the video as proof the order was filled correctly. The drivers were eating part of the food being delivered.
Now that he is allowed limited indoor seating and added a “to go” order pick up area he no longer uses these services. Yes, business is down but so are the complaints against his business that were unfounded.
Whether it’s an employee or a contractor eating the food, isn’t the restaurant owner still responsible for providing a complete order?
Yes, and sealing the order so it cannot be tampered with.
I picked up an order from Olive Garden tonight and they brought it out and told me it was good. So I asked them where my drink was because they forgot it. So I have no confidence that if I had ordered from a delivery service I would have gotten a complete meal.
Got it home and there was no utensils. Not a big deal since I was home, but what if I had not been? How do you eat pasta without a fork?
The delivery service in my town of 8k was terrible. The last time I ordered pizza from one of the big guys (grubhub or door dash i don’t remember) and it took almost 3 hours to be delivered and the driver was complaining to me about the small tip I gave him since he had to drive almost an hour to bring me my food.
Then after COVID hit a bunch of local restaurants got together and formed their own delivery service. Its a bit expensive but I assume that’s because its not screwing over the restaurants. We love it now we can get burgers and wings and pizza and a whole bunch of other options. I just wish they would add our favorite mexican, sushi, and chinese places then we would never leave our house for take out.
I haven’t heard anything positive about GrubHub, from their vendors, contractors, or customers. The main issue is that the people who are relying on this for an alternate source of income aren’t getting paid.
I have a friend who does Door Dash, and while it has its problems, overall it’s been a positive experience for her.
Messily.
I have to ask. Do restaurants/ fast food places in the US not have delivery drivers of their own? Why is this service contracted to separate companies?
Fortunately, I know how to cook. LOL Sure, I wouldn’t want to cook every night, but I cook at least two, usually three, and sometimes even 4 nights a week. It’s much cheaper, the food is really good, and I’m not constantly eating out of boxes and paper bags.
Also, simple things like burgers and sandwiches have gotten absurdly expensive. One of my watering holes has an outstanding sandwich called, “Fire Roasted Caprese”. It is about the size of a 6 inch Subway sandwich. With tax and delivery, it is about $17.00. Really? I can reproduce that sandwich myself and make 4 of them for that price. It’s just gotten out of hand but, of course, that’s because these places have lost so much money and tips without indoor dining.
Pre-COVID it wasn’t really necessary. The owners of sit-down restaurant are struggling to keep their heads above water. They aren’t up to hiring delivery people, nor can they afford to.
Makes sense, thanks.
I suppose another factor might be that people (I imagine that includes delivery drivers) in the US use cars much more than other places (around here almost all delivery drivers are on bikes which would make it more expensive).
I’ve noticed this too. I started using a local delivery company, and I order a lot from an Argentinian place. When I first started going there in person, you could get two empanadas and a soup for 10 bucks. Now one empanada is almost six dollars, and that’s before all the extra delivery fees. There other prices are equally ridiculous. I needed the push to cook more, anyway.
Depends on who hires the contractor. In some cases delivery services actually have a business relationship with the restaurant, in which case, yeah, you can complain to the restaurant.
But delivery services will also just list restaurants they have no relationship with, then call in the order and go pick it up. In that case, the delivery service is contracting not with the restaurant, but with the customer. If I give my buddy some money to go get food and he eats half my fries on the way back, that’s not the restaurant’s fault.
In terms of customer service, perception is reality. If one orders food from the Purple Rooster, and the order is incomplete, the customer is going to think less of the restaurant, regardless. 
I found that out a while back (and started a thread about it) when someone I know that owns a restaurant had that happen. He’d have drivers (grub hub?) randomly show up to pick up food. His restaurant is a sit down place that doesn’t (didn’t) do call in/pick up orders. Fine, so he’d ask the driver what they needed. If the order was actually food that he even offered, he’d put the order together and send it out.
That meant the customer often got their food much later than expected and missing some of the items, since the menu shown on grub hub (?) was made up and had nothing to do with his restaurant.
The customer would call grub hub, grub hub said ‘all we do is pick your stuff up and deliver it, call the restaurant’…and now he’s getting people calling and complaining or leaving online reviews about their horrible service, late deliveries, screwed up orders, cold food etc. He eventually had to put a notice on his website/facebook page explaining that he has nothing to do with those services and he’s not responsible for an order you placed through them.
After some digging around on the internet and asking here, I found out that a lot of restaurants are having similar problems. It turns out these services are essentially black mailing the restaurants into becoming partners. Either you work WITH them or you end up with tons of shitty reviews as they send out messed up orders in your name.
As I said in my other thread, any problems you have are 100% with the delivery (sorry, “pick up”) service. Like you said, if I send my friend out to pick up some food and he gets back 4 hours later with cold food, that’s not the restaurant’s fault. If the food has been exposed to unsafe conditions or contaminants and someone get’s sick, again, not the restaurant’s fault. But these services are convincing people that it is, in fact, the restaurant’s problem.
If they keep up with this, I really hope the restaurants start pushing back.
Yeah. Which is why it’s total bullshit that delivery services do this.
My experience with food delivery is that prior to GrubHub, et al, there used to be a few restaurants that were well-suited to delivery and hired their own drivers and it worked pretty well, but the selection was limited.
Now you can basically get food from any restaurant delivered but it costs more and the service is pretty bad. Not clear that this is a huge improvement. It’s now harder to find the restaurants that are set up to do delivery well.
I’ve had good luck with Doordash, middling with GrubHub and really bad luck with Uber Eats. With Uber eats, I gave up after giving them a chance with a discount deal three times and each time the order had a major problem - one an hour later than expected, another driver gets to the restaurant after 40 minutes and finds out they can’t make half my order, another shows close-ish to time and they’re missing like half the order.
Most sit-down restaurants just didn’t do delivery pre-covid, and the services came up to fill a desire for delivery food from restaurants that don’t deliver. Aside from pizza places, virtually no chain fast food places did their own delivery in car-served areas - it was all either at the counter or drive-through (big cities probably had more delivery). Pre-covid, these orders were only a small portion of the restaurant’s business, so working with a service to grab things from the take-out counter was fine. Post-Covid, the delivery services have more visibility and are already set up, so a lot of restaurants stick with them rather than try to create their own delivery service during a time when income is down.