Delivery drivers and take away orders ruin restaurant meals

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We don't eat out much, maybe once a month or less. When we do go, tends to be local independent restaurants. However our 4-5 most recent experiences are ruined by the revolving door of delivery drivers collecting takeaways and restaurant staff bending over backwards to meet their demand at the expense of those sitting there.

Yesterday we sat directly opposite the kitchen and watched orders for those eating in sit under hot lamps for upwards of 20 minutes whilst they packed order after order to give to the delivery drivers crowded round the door. We waited more than 15 minutes for a waiter to come to take our order, the food arrived at odd times with items missing and a couple of drinks forgotten entirely. The restaurant was at half capacity at this point.

I find it crazy that if I were to order a take away for the restaurant, it would be at my door in 30 minutes but when I am sitting right there, I spend more than half that time just trying to get their attention to place an order.

AIBU to think that the experience of eating out has ben destroyed as a direct result of the explosion of food delivery services?

We live in a popular tourist area so this is a huge issue here. I have to admit that we've given up trying to eat (can't get into most places in the summer!) eating in and add to the issue by using just eat ourselves. Means we can eat in peace, no groups of holidaymakers (no issue with them in general, but they tend to larger groups, noisier and more likely to be sinking the beers - good for them and is their right, but not necessarily the best dining experience for us!), get food quicker and order from different places if we want to.

It is a problem though, I absolutely agree, and it's down to poor management. I guess they're just going down the business model that is most profitable for them and I understand that in this economic climate....but still frustrating when you're trying to enjoy a meal!

Some places definitely don't get the balance right between customers eating in and those ordering food from home. They need to make the eating in experience worth bothering with. I expect some places will soon become takeaway only if that makes more business sense for them.

I'd rather get a takeaway and eat it in the comfort of home or in the garden on a nice evening. We have one once a week on a Friday evening but only rarely eat out - mostly on holiday and special occasions, and our household income is in the top 5%.

Also it is not noticed in larger chain restaurants as Deliveroo have invested in Dark Kitchens. Essentially kitchens on industrial estates or in shipping containers churning out food from well known restaurant brands. That comes with its own issues, for both the workers and the local residents.

Deliveroo have invested in Dark Kitchens

Not an issue where I live - there are not many choices compared to say, London, from where you can get food delivered, so I know exactly where the food is coming from. My favourite place now does its own delivery and is much cheaper than ordering through Deliveroo.

It's a tricky one with lot's of different things going on. Some restaurants are raking it in but most aren't, especially the independents, and the costs of running a hospitality business are insanely out of control now - especially energy. Since the economy is hitting everyone, there's only so much you can raise prices or compromise on quality before damaging the business so increasing the volume of sales if the only option. That's fair enough but most restaurants just don't have the set-up or the space to accommodate the extra staff and/or kitchen facilities needed to do it well but it's either do what you can or go out of business.

Restaurant spaces were just never designed with this split business model in mind, the idea of a traditional restaurant even being viable as a takeaway didn't really come around until the pandemic. I'm kinda glad it did because it's given businesses a lifeline in the mess that's followed but it's a double edged sword.

Some places could definitely do more to improve the logistics to lessen the impact on sit-in customers but most are buggered from both sides.

My partner's restaurant is resisting takeaway. There's a function space downstairs with kitchen attached that only get's used at weekends but their menu isn't suited to travelling. It's in a city, in a densely populated neighbourhood that's historically been a food/night out hotspot and it's just getting slowly quieter. It's the same for all the business in the area. People just aren't going out enough across the week in some places.

Yes, these certainly exist in our city. And not always on obscure industrial estates either. I noticed one recently in a former takeaway on a residential street not far from here.

I think this about click and collect in the big supermarkets. You can't move for picking trolleys yet there's no-one on the till!

One of my friends did Deliveroo/Uber Eats in Covid. He got an order for a cup of tea from McDonalds to go from Stretford to Sale. I think the drink was 99p and the delivery charge was £6. The mind boggles that people have money to waste like that.

@divinededacende I agree the cause is multi factorial and many restaurants will be doing this in order to survive.

From my perspective a meal out is a very occasional treat. It is a time when the children have the chance to look at a menu and pick what they would like, we all get to eat something different to each other (like most working parents, we cook one meal for the whole family), the food is brought to us while we get to socialise and give the children attention. I feel the cost of a meal out is really high - since CoL, it would be rare to get a meal less than £50 for 4 of us and that would be without alcohol. I really begrudge paying this much money for a meal where I am trying to placate children instead of chatting to them because they are getting impatient and the waiter still hasn't taken our order. And in the case of yesterday, we can see some of our meal but noone has the time to bring it to us, then when it does come, the children's food is missing which makes them even more upset.

From reading the responses on here, I am far from alone and it seems these restaurants will either have to adapt their model to separate the take away aspect from the main seating or end up switching to take away only as I doubt we are the only ones that will be voting with our feet

True. It was a shame though. I've been there a few times over the years.

Interestingly, I was watching one of those behind the scenes shows where a supermarket executive said that they've never been able to make home delivery or click-and-collect profitable with the slim margins supermarkets operate on. It started as an experiment to see what was viable, took off with customers and everyone jumped on the bandwagon and now they can't dial back from it because the first supermarket who does will lose a huge customer base to competitors. The basically said that they wished it had never happened.

Ah, my heart bleeds for them and their fucking huge profits in a cost of living crisis.

That's interesting - but that's one where I wonder whether it'll ultimately go the other way, that it'll all be delivery and it's the cost of the shop they cut rather than the delivery service. No one's going to the supermarket for the experience, and we might one day wonder at the inefficiency of us all going in our individual cars to a big shop.

https://www.unitetheunion.org/what-we-do/unite-investigates/new-analysis-rips-apart-dodgy-claims-of-squeezed-supermarket-profits/unite-investigates-food-profiteering-update-june-2023#:~:text=In%20their%20latest%20profit%20releases,gain%20from%20high%20food%20prices.

Poor, poor supermarkets and their inconvenient customers wanting deliveries.

It's a sign of the incredible wealth of the country to see how many people have takeaways.
If you're seeing them from the comfort of a restaurant rather than just looking out of the lounge window then good for you.

It this really a stealth boast?

You know their huge profits are just because the businesses are massive? It's a highly competitive market and they work on much lower profit margins than probably any other business - it's the sheer scale of the business that means they make the big profits.

The biggest reason for the recent price increases has been the increase in minimum wage. A supermarket making between 3% & 5% profit can't absorb a 28% wage increase between March 2022 and April 2024 without increasing prices.

Oh absolutely, no tears being shed for them at all. But did find it amusing as an example of big corporations that have effectively shafted themselves given how reliant it is on staffing resources.

Pretty much all restaurants in large towns and cities have take away now.

I agree, I think the whole hospitality model is going to change a lot in the next few years. In my city there's a definite trend in new places opening that focus on a specific type of food done well that have a small amount of cafe-style seating but they're mostly geared towards takeaway and delivery.

The fact is that the food marker is oversaturated now and it's going to readjust to the new reality soon with less traditional table service venues overall. I've seen hospitality spread like wildfire for most of my adult life and it probably helped compensate for the loss of retail in a lot of neighbourhoods but I dread to think what happens to these spaces as hospitality shrinks - not really the point of your post though so sorry for the tangent!

I guess this is a benefit of living in the sticks… we have no Deliveroo or Uber Eats out here so I haven’t encountered it in local restaurants! I can see it would be absolutely infuriating though and would probably put me off eating out.

Be great if there was an innovation whereby a section of the restaurant area is separated (mentioned above also) and you phone in your order like Uber eats or Deliveroo. You go next door to the pub for a pre dinner drink, they phone you when your order is ready and you collect it and sit at the (home style take away sit down) restaurant table and unpack it like at home. Yay!

BYO also for a corkage charge. I hope someone steals my brilliant idea LOL.

I mean, you can't completely compare profit margin to wage increase without factoring in volume of sales and number of staff into the equation. A 28% wage bill doesn't automatically ruin a retail business running a 5% profit margin when their volume of sales is mammoth. Less profitable doesn't mean not profitable. I mean I'm not deluded into thinking big businesses don't need to increase prices to offset costs, it's just part of the bigger problem with how our world is structured where constant growth is needed at the top while quality of life is sacrificed at the bottom.

Given that I don't have all their accounts information, it's impossible for me to give an accurate representation of why costs have gone up.

There will also be in increases in the wages of the suppliers, meaning the product price will have increased. The increased electricity costs. The increases in raw material costs which have been affected by the issues like Ukraine and Brexit. I could go on.

But the simplest way to illustrate it, with numbers that are actually easy to access, is with wage increases.

Of course, anyone that thinks the supermarket price rises are simply because of profiteering will be able to go to other shops and presumably enjoy lower prices. (Not saying this in relation to what has been said on this thread, but I've seen it said before).

I’ve noticed this too. It’s poor service and very annoying. I would have complained.