I've ordered food from Chipotle online, taken 30-40 minutes to get to the store, and very often it would have been more convenient (I would have gotten my food more quickly) if I had skipped the online order and waited in the in-person line instead.
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?)
If a restaurant is deliveries only (or primarily) like Dominos then I will order for delivery. I'll never order delivery from a place with a dining room. It just doesn't work. It will take the best part of an hour at minimum, the food will be cold/soggy/crushed when you get it, and you'll have to pay delivery fees.
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.
IMO pickup works fine. You can show up a little early for your food so you can pick it up as soon as it's cooked and you know how to get home quicker than a random delivery driver.
> I've ordered food from Chipotle online, taken 30-40 minutes to get to the store, and very often it would have been more convenient (I would have gotten my food more quickly) if I had skipped the online order and waited in the in-person line instead.
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.
Depends on when you go. If you show up during lunch/hour when the line is getting long they absolutely will over scoop. It isn’t worth it for them to slow down the line when every customer asks them “can you scoop more” at every single step. They just over scoop to keep people quiet and keep the line moving. The difference is about 2x an online or off-peak order, and about 3x a late night order (hour before closing). Just my experience though.
I feel they are less likely to skimp you if they are face to face with you/you signal you are willing to pay extra for extra (whereas on the ticket as an online order they build, they might miss it)
I've ordered food from Chipotle online, taken 30-40 minutes to get to the store, and very often it would have been more convenient (I would have gotten my food more quickly) if I had skipped the online order and waited in the in-person line instead.
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.
My experience has been the same. Take out is either cold or a long wait. The estimated time the app gives is WAY off and there are no notifications unlike other apps letting you know how it's progressing.
We've tried delivery three times. Every time resulted in a refund because they sent the wrong order.
It's highly dependent on location. I can't get to the one closest to my house fast enough, because my food's always on the rack already (which is good). But I always have to wait for it at the one by my job. My point is, maybe try the second farthest location for better service.
They should care in aggregate. It seems unlikely that you have a completely isolated problem, but maybe online orders don't make up much of the business and they don't even care in aggregate.
My wife's aunt owned a sushi restaurant and definitely gave the better quality sushi to people in person on purpose, and used delivery to get rid of the lower quality fish. She was also kind of a bad person though in other areas of life so your results may vary.
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.
Not agreeing with it, but it seems like natural human behavior to prioritize those in your presence that could complain/compliment you where as online orders are faceless and reviews don't seem to have as much impact these days. The classic dream of the restauranteur isn't exactly selling a lot of takeout orders either.
>used delivery to get rid of the lower quality fish
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.
They ought to give you more, to make up for when the delivery agents invariably mess things up.
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 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.
Says someone who's never had to wait in line for 15 minutes waiting for the valets and customers ahead of them to figure out which apps they each have in common so they can exchange $5. Something that can be done in under four seconds with cash.
Sounds for a ripe opportunity for government to enforce interoperable bump-to-pay. GooglePay<>APplePay<>Venmo<>Meta<>CashApp<>Zelle<>PayPal<>WesternUnion<>MoneyGram. A lack of interfacibility and the rise of silo'd private institutions vs public standard protocol caused this.
ACH was that. Instant distributed settlement would be nice.
In other words people will jump through hoops to make something already frictionless into multiple orders of magnitude more steps to make the last step easier.
Banks did their utmost to perpetuate the idea that cash is harder. They make it harder.
The only thing you have to do with cash is add/subtract it yourself. Feel the need for an app? Calculator can do that!
> Has anyone else looked into the tipping vs not tipping thing
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.
I always tip $5 for a single meal and $10 for a meal for two. These delivery folks clearly don't pull in a lot of money, so if you are privileged enough to be able to afford takeout, you can also throw down a tip.
Why would you tip half as much if you are just ordering for yourself? Does the delivery driver have to drive half as far when he is just bringing you the order vs when you are ordering for two? Does the weight of the second order double the cost of gas. Can the drive deliver another order simultaneously when you order for 1 instead of two? Why punish the driver when you are just ordering for yourself when it is virtually the same amount of effort as ordering for two.
A long time ago when I worked for a middle man delivery service (Before grub hub, etc were big and entrenched) I loved people who ordered a sandwich and tipped $5. The percentage of the price to tip was extreme and that is typical the metric used. Sure I’d like more money if offered but I think this is fine. Tipping is weird but this is how it works.
What I hated was huge orders where they didn’t tip. I had to double check everything because the restaurant staff were sometimes openly hostile to us, and the bigger the order, the longer it takes.
The biggest order I ever delivered was about $350 of food. The place I delivered too was like a cartoon. A huge mansion set back a mile long driveway and I was literally surrounded by hounds as I came down the driveway. They had a fountain and a huge cul de sac and a half dozen luxury cars.
They didn’t tip a dime.
The best tip I ever got was from a guy who was high out of his mind and just handed me a bag full of change. It was $56.
Title needs to be changed to Here’s How Much Sweetgreen Rips You Off You When You Order Online (with data) since Do you get less food when you order online? That's what the data shows is both not the original article title and misleading since the article only examines a single restaurant.
I thought the original title meant that people are less likely to order excess food when ordering online. Still an interesting article, but not what I was expecting.
This is a sample size of exactly two salads from one location. Which employee makes the salad probably has more to do with it than if it was delivery or in-person.
The full data set has 35 salads. The graph near the bottom shows 20 that were all for the same menu item. Of those 20, I'd say there were about 4-5 different employees doing the in-person orders. No idea how many different employees did the online orders.
Still not a _real_ study by any means, but there's more data than just 2 salads.
Yes, the lighthearted Medium post about food ordering is certainly the place to display your unwavering commitment to scientific rigor. We got a real intellectual heavyweight here everyone!
My experience is you usually pay more at least. Sometimes restaurants add a dollar to every item flat out on grubhub versus their actual takeout menu. Sometimes they charge another 4% for not paying in cash. Sometimes they do both of these things.
FWIW it's not necessarily the restaurant trying to upcharge you. The delivery apps will often take a percentage of the food costs in addition to their separate fees, so restaurants will have to raise the cost of each item by the same amount to make the same profits as an off-app togo order.
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.
Not even less food, but also lower quality. I did grocery pickup and got marked-down, expires-that-day meat. They typically have a coupon attached to the package -- they ripped that off and didn't give me the discount.
Hey, for Chipotle, I've had the exact opposite experience.
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.
> "Oh we had more time so we made a better order..."
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.)
I worked at a sandwich shop in high school... I don't know, like we wanted tips and we knew that if we made good sandwiches people would tip. I suspect Chipotle is the same.
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
I've actually had a manager look at my food at Chipotle and tell the server to increase the amount of food.
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.
The state of restaurants is sad indeed, I certainly notice smaller servings of everything whether I'm in person or particularly delivery, plus prices are 30-40% higher. Anywhere with food that is volumetric, delivery definitely gives you less from places I know from experience that I've tried delivery. Even Chinese food, which prior to the InstaUberCartHubs would arrive heaped with food like you were family now give you a careful sized portion like an assembly line.
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.
Here's a question to all those who order food - whether online or in person - from restaurants or caterers: what is gained by doing so compared to cooking your own food? For us it is an extreme rare occasion when we get something from a restaurant - usually pizza or Thai - since we (mostly "I") cook our own food. This takes some time, anything from 45 minutes to 1.30 hours and we also need to get the required materials to be able to cook but the results are worth it. What is the main reason for ordering out? Is it time? Lack of materials to cook your own? Lack of facilities? Lack of experience? Lack of inspiration to make something new every day? Is it just the thing to do without thinking about the alternatives?
It makes sense, the restaurant makes less cash with online orders. Why wouldn’t they try to save whatever they can?
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 think in person psychological effect maybe forces restaurant operators to want to please more. But in general everything is getting worse. Prices raising, portions decreasing and qualities dropping...
I'm not familiar with the various dishes that were tested. Are any of them dishes that lose mass over time? When I cook rice I've noticed that it weighs quite a bit more shortly after it comes out of the rice cooker than it does a half hour later.
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.
I notice this. But in my experience I figure a leading reason for this is because the take out containers come in certain sizes, but in a restaurant food is often served on plates or bowls that can hold more food.
Heh I actually really like Sweetgreen, and I like it so much that when I order in-person, I smile and politely tell the employee to give me more. They almost always comply.
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?)