Is it common for sit-down restaurants in your country to all have delivery drivers on standby?
No, not at all. But those that don’t don’t do self pick up/ take away either (which in effect is what these door dash services are doing if I understand the concept correctly).
Pet peeve of mine is how these services expect you to tip on the fees. Now I’m not against tipping the drivers at all but I resent getting hit with a $6 Delivery fee, $7 “Service fee” and then being told that I should be tipping 25% on that $13 as well. Especially when you have a situation like Door Dash who used your tips to avoid paying their drivers out of their own pockets. Or maybe still use – I remember there was a kerfluffle about it and they handwaved about changing policy but a follow-up a few months later said it never actually changed.
As far as the individual services, they all seem to fuck over their drivers and restaurants and all (in my experience) do about the same job of bringing food to my home. Sometimes I’ll run an order through each just to see which comes in lower by a buck or two. I dislike having to use them but I suppose it’s better than not giving the restaurant any business at all and, if I relied solely on pick-up, my circle of restaurants would be much smaller and more infrequently used.
Traditionally in the U.S., restaurants tended to specialize. Pizzerias, Chinese restaurants, and Indian restaurants were most likely to have their own delivery services. But most other types of restaurants didn’t. When GrubHub, UberEats, and the other services started popping up a few years ago, they became popular in part because that meant if you wanted to order in, you could get any kind of food.
The restaurants that maintain their own delivery services now prominently post signs like “WE DELIVER OURSELVES” or something like that, because the surcharges from the delivery services can be so exorbitant so as to rob them of any reasonable profit. Some of the delivery services have also started setting up fake websites that re-direct customers away from direct communications with restaurants, so they can grab the surcharges.
And the services aren’t “contracted.” GrubHub places a carry-out (take-out, take-away) order like any customer, pays for it, and picks it up. It just acts as a middleman, not contracted by the restaurant.
Thank you, most enlightening.
Do you think my speculation above that delivery by car rather than by bike = higher cost to maintain a delivery service= one of the reasons delivery by the restaurant is not more popular, holds any water?
Here there are just a few days in winter that make delivery by bike impossible and most restaurant type establishments (high end restaurants might not, for instance) have at least a couple of delivery people that work for them.
(Edited to finish a sentence)
It certainly could be. One thing to consider is that most restaurants operate on razor-thin margins. And fast-food restaurants operate by aggressively minimizing their costs. Both situations make it difficult to keep a staff of delivery people on standby, even if you shift the cost of operating and maintaining the car to the driver, which most places do.
So, the only places that are going to maintain delivery services are ones that will expect a high percentage of their business (sometimes 80-100 percent) is delivery.
The other thing to consider is that bicycle delivery would be impractical almost anywhere except for a few densely populated cities like New York. And people who live within bicycling distance of a restaurant might find it easier to go pick up themselves. Delivery services will be most wanted from people who live farther away.
I have never heard of a restaurant in the United States that would refuse a take-away order, even very expensive ones.
Thanks, let me just clarify that by bike I mean motorbike!
Going to have issues in the winter with those. Those are peak times for people ordering delivery.
Oh, I see. In the U.S., the only people who use “bike” to mean “motorcycle” are people who own motorcycles. Otherwise, “bike” generally means “bicycle.”
I suppose I might have seen a motorcycle delivery at some point, but, again, probably just in New York. Very few people own motorcycles here, and a restaurant is going to have a hard time finding people to answer a call for a food delivery driver who has a motorbike E can use for work. Not even Dominos Pizza, the largest delivery service, keeps its own fleet of delivery vehicles, so I doubt there are many restaurants that are going to acquire a fleet of motorcycles and then train teen-agers to ride them.
About a year or so back when DoorDash/Grubhub etc were becoming problematic, some restaurants were refusing to let them place orders. If the recognized the driver as being a doordash/grubhub driver, they wouldn’t let them pick up the order.
At the time, even ignoring the service’s tactics, the drivers were doing a spectacularly terrible job of delivering the food. Lots and lots and lots of reports of food showing up hours later, cold, soggy, in at least one case, covered in dog hair. Not only is this unsafe for a multitude of reasons, if you complained to the place you ordered it from, which would be DD/GH, they’d tell you it’s not their problem and that you need to direct your complain to the actual restaurant.
So, now you have a restaurant handing an order to a driver at 4:30 and at 6:30 a customer complaining because their food hasn’t shown up yet, followed by nasty reviews that can seriously hurt their reputation.
On top of all that, a lot of these places don’t have menus/meals designed for carryouts or to-go containers meant for packaging up an entire meal (as opposed to leftovers).
When I was looking into this a while back, I was surprised that one of the first things I found was a form letter from an attorney’s office that was effectively a cease and desist letter for restaurants to send to these place in an attempt to knock it off.
And, in looking for an anecdote of restaurants refusing orders, I found that the grub hub app the drivers use has a ‘restaurant refused order’ button. Apparently it’s a big enough problem that grubhub needed to integrate it into their (driver’s) app.
Right. I meant that end-consumers can order take-away from almost any restaurant. The delivery services have created complications.
Never use any food delivery service! The small restaurants that use it usually go bankrupt from paying service fees!
Even big chains for their own delivery service charge a ton of money in service fees, my local Pizza Hut charges about $6 in “delivery” and “service” fees and that’s not including tip. If you get a $10 three topping pizza like their current deal you will easily exceed food costs against the delivery costs.
I use Bite Squad and have been very satisfied.
DQ messed up my order of Chicken Tenders and Mocha MooLatte. The driver handed me a bag and my drink. I went to the table and opened the bag. My dipping sauce and ketchup were in it. No chicken tenders.
I opened the bite squad App and live chat. They credited my account within ten minutes. (They called the restaurant)
Otherwise I’ve had good results during the pandemic. I had pizza from a local place delivered tonight.
I try to support the local restaurants They’re struggling without dine-in customers.
I stopped using Grubhub when the driver never delivered my order and lied, saying that I didn’t let them in the door of my condo building. They never called my cell and Grubhub had the nerve to tell me my only recourse was to re-order and pay full price. I’ll never use them again; DoorDash is much better.
Or dispute the charge. Even if you were to ‘lose’ the dispute, the merchant still gets dinged $15 or so just for having a charge disputed.
We’ve recently been given a number of DoorDash and UberEats gift cards, and although we haven’t had any of the nightmare experiences described above, several times we got lukewarm or cold food that had to be reheated (not always successfully–have you ever tried reheating Alfredo sauce? Yuck!).
So my policy now is to use the cards to place the order but pick up the food myself. That way I can be there as soon as it is ready, and get it home as quickly as possible.
Even so, depending on the proximity of the restaurant, there are some foods that just aren’t worth the effort: a 15-minute delay between coming out of the kitchen and getting to the table transforms some meals from a delight to a meh experience that isn’t worth the price or the trouble.
This was my experience when I used Grubhub twice. The second time was just to give them a second chance. No third chances are forthcoming.
I’ve been happy with Door Dash. I’ve ordered with them dozens of time, and I’ve had 4 or 5 issues that were handled with no quibbles based on my word. Most were minor, so it’s not like I felt it was a big problem overall, and once it was my fault (that I only discovered after I’d complained – embarrassed!)
My credit card company spiffs me DashPass - no DD delivery charge at some places. I was loving this, ordering from my favorite local burger joint, so I’d pay like $18 for a $11 burger+fries with driver tip, not great but I could live with it. Then that burger joint dropped DoorDash altogether and started offering delivery themselves, now that $11 burger is $23.50ish delivered. Sorry burger joint, won’t be ordering from you. I had been getting a burger a week for a while, no more.