Don't forget indian food. Much of that cuisine was specifically developed for delivery. The multitude of cultures and eating habits (vegetation, Muslim etc) in modernizing india meant that housewives would prepare hot lunches for their husbands away at work, food which was delivered by the famed Dabbawala network. Some modern restaurants are so proud of this that they deliver food to the table in metal dabba boxes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala
"In the late 1800's, an increasing number of migrants were moving to Bombay from different parts of the country, and fast food and canteens were not prevalent. All these people left early in the morning for offices, and often had to go hungry for lunch. They belonged to different communities, and therefore had different types of tastes, which could only be satisfied by their own home-cooked meals. So, in 1890, Mahadeo Havaji Bachche started a lunch delivery service in Bombay with about a hundred men."
I don't say this with any malice, but a lot of people are just not that bright. Things that you think are "perplexingly obvious", to the point that you can't conceive of not thinking about them, just aren't to them.
From anecdotal observation, I wouldn’t say intelligence is the deciding factor, but impatience. People don’t pause to evaluate.
I have a friend who lashes out or gives up at mundane life problems (why is this hamburger soggy and how to avoid it) without pondering a solution or cause. Her immediate reaction is to find blame (even if herself), not to consider if and how the issue can be fixed.
But I’m confident she has the ability and intelligence to find solutions, because from what she tells me of her work—including customer and management reviews—she does it in professional settings.
In this situation, I think it’s more that when you really want a burger, Chinese food just isn’t going to cut it. A kinda soggy burger is still better because it’s what you want.
Also note that I'm not claiming that this is simply due to people being dumb. It's just my experience that, in the absence of an explanation for why someone does something "obviously" dumb, it makes more sense to accept that they're dumb than it does to be "perplexed". There's a cultural barrier against communicating openly about differences in intelligence, and it can lead to blindspots if you rely on it too much tk explain people's behavior. But it's my observation that the pendulum has swung so far to one side that many people don't even like to consider that others may be reasoning poorly.
Depends. If the restaurant doesn’t offer delivery, and some third party is charging you to perform delivery services for you, why is the restaurant at fault?
Invariably, the restaurant gets the blame for the failed delivery experience, regardless of whether or not they’re responsible.
As the snickers advert correctly notes: you’re not you when you’re hungry. Reason and rational thought are difficult when blood sugar is low.
Is this absurd? You have to balance it against the service you want, which is having someone drive to an arbitrary burger joint, wait for your order, and then drive it to your door. That's such an inefficient use of someone else's time that I'd expect to pay a lot for it. It's not clear to me that 15-20% is somehow "absurd". I get mild sticker shock on the few occasions I order delivery, but the sticker shock is directed at my own laziness, not price-gouging. Wasn't there an article on HN just yesterday calling these companies "parasites" for screwing investors, drivers, and restaurants, all in the name of delivering unreasonably low consumer prices?
> If you're willing to pay extra money in order to get your desired food while you're busy doing your own work, isn't it reasonable to get mad at the restaurant and the app for handling the food poorly?
Those standards don't extend infinitely. As the original comment I replied to says, some foods don't deliver well. If you get a burger delivered, it's probably not going to be as good as in the restaurant. This isn't just common sense; it's the type of common sense that a sufficiently intelligent person is usually not going to be able to avoid thinking about. As an upthread comment says, it's fine if you want a soggy burger, but expecting it to taste fresh off the grill is almost physically impossible.
The only way for the restaurant to get around this is by leaving items off of their delivery menu. But this would be a terrible idea: if I felt like a delivery burger, I wouldn't want a restuarant deciding for me that it's too low-quality to even be an option.
Fundamentally,the act we're talking about is complaining in a review that a (subsidized) delivered burger tastes like a delivered burger. It seems pretty irreducibly dumb to me.
And it can take almost half a lifetime to realize this
That other people can have so vastly different brains.
Of course there are plenty of people, both bright and dull, who could live comfortably and yet stay mired in debt and distress.
In first grade, I was in the "green" reading group, with just 4 or 5 out of about 30 kids. Nothing was ever said about abilities. I just assumed that the groups were random. I was the best in the green group by far, so it seemed that I was experiencing the other extreme of mental abilities. Late in the year, something inadvertently revealed to me that "green" was the best. To this day, I have no idea how bad the other groups could have been.
I remember being the best in AP Chemistry too. I set the 15-year record for the final exam score, permanently changing the grade scaling for the class by 3 points out of 100. (old scaling would have given me a 103 but that became a 100, and even years later all the grades would be lower by 3 points) That class was about 15 out of 350 students who started as freshmen. There were other students, about 50 out of the 350, who dropped out. I don't have much of an idea of what their science classes might have been like.
Class "adjustment" is usually simpler than you might think. Expect the following differences as the class gets dumber:
- Less material is covered by the instructor.
- There is less of an expectation that any given material will be remembered more than a week after it was covered.
- Hints for questions asked of students in class will be more direct.
- More time is spent on watching movies with themes notionally related to the class, and on playing games (think "chemistry bingo") during class.
Note that all of these are pretty smooth continuous scales; there's lots of room for tuning.
Good point. And they "self segregate" themselves too? If there're two kids, and one is a lot brighter than the other, i think both of them will tend to get frustrated when playing together or deciding what to do -- so they'll find others to play with.
Maybe this a bit applies to emotional intelligence too.
One's whole life, one a bit chooses people with similar "capabilities", without thinking about it?
And then, from time to time, one sees in the newspapers what the vastly different people do, and get surprised: can there really be such people, where are all those people
But during the pandemic I wanted a burger, and getting my car out sucked (yay city living), so I ordered a delivery burger. Immediately after that subpar experience I thought “oh, that’s why ordering delivery burgers isn’t the norm” and went back to ordering noodles and pizza instead.
It’s the leap from “culturally this isn’t a common thing to do (order a delivery burger), so obviously it’s the restaurants fault that my experience wasn’t as good as it would be in store” that I don’t get.
I also don't have any strong opinions about this particular topic, and there could very well be some other explanation. I'm just generally remarking on the common expression of such confusion at other people acting suboptimally; sometimes it's just because most people aren't all that smart or thoughtful.
If I go and pick up something that doesn't sit around at room temperature well (let's say a milkshake), and drive 20 minutes home before eating it, I'm not going to ding the restaurant for the fact it's melted.
If, however, milkshakes are offered for takeout (reasonable), but then a third delivery party gets involved and starts offering them for delivery, anyone ordering it will have the impression of "I ordered a milkshake. It arrived to my hand melted! 1-star, bad!" Since they clearly aren't thinking enough to -not order the milkshake in the first place-.
Milkshake is an extreme example to demonstrate the point, but applies to anything that doesn't sit well (previously mentioned burger included), with the added trouble that customers are less likely to know what will sit well.
There’s not really enough alcohol in there to affect you; probably because it would eventually hamper the formation of ice. But having ice cream that actually tastes like coffee and bailey’s is the best.
The third party app drivers don't have this, so pizza delivered from them often arrives cold and soggy, and sometimes even smashed to one side of the box.
Before the pandemic, many people had literally never ordered delivery before!
I for one only ever ordered carry-out, or ate at the restaurant. I live in an urban jungle of restaurants, all within walking distance; why would I pay someone to drive to a place that's within five minutes' walk?
Recent months have been educational about both the virtues and vices of delivery food. This has not been an education I would have ever otherwise received.
Some Chinese places near me have started selling the dumplings they make frozen as well.
I'd be very happy with good frozen potstickers and wontons. Actually cooking them is pretty easy; I just find making them really tedious. And I haven't really found the ones I can get in Oriental markets all that great.
* in the bay area anyway, presumably it's not this expensive out in the real world
Technological solution: some sort of return-for-deposit Teflon-walled thermos. Only available for regular customers, of course.
And it was dropped because when McDonalds stopped using styrofoam they couldn't make it work any more.
There is an irony in that. We went from a society that uses styrofoam to paper cups. Never mind that styrofoam is one of the most easily recycled substances we have, while the wax on paper cups makes them destined for the landfill.
Is that actually true? I've always heard to put styrofoam in trash rather than recycling.
I had a friend whose father was a chemical engineer back in the 1980s who did a study on it. The cost per cubic yard to recycle styrofoam was insanely cheap. It was just that it required a specialized process that nobody implemented because creating more was also cheap. So it wasn't recycled, but it could have been.
The problem is that there is no money to be made from selling recycled styrofoam since it is competing with products that are themselves extremely cheap. If we imposed a high enough tax on the original product, then it would be cost effective. However we still have the trouble that we have to collect it, separate it out from other wastes in the waste stream, and so on.
So we could recycle styrofoam. But we don't because it is not cost effective to do so. So it is viewed as unrecyclable. And for that reason we have replaced it with things that are even less recyclable.
No wonder. Maybe volume is not the good metric to look at when comparing styrofoam to paper.
Styrofoam is insanely bulky. The same orders could be filled with a fraction of the volume of paper.
You can't recycle wax paper cups. But they'll either break down in the landfill, which is fine. Or they won't, which is a form of carbon capture, which is also fine. You can also burn it for energy.
Still consider this. Things decompose only slowly in a landfill. But when they do, they decomposed into methane because it is a low oxygen environment. And methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 is.
Therefore "they'll break down in the landfill" is not as fine as you think it is. The fact that styrofoam will NOT breakdown in a landfill makes it ACTUALLY better as a form of carbon capture. (Although the carbon being captured is actually from fossil fuels, so at best it can be net neutral.)
Now, though, consumers are being offered the food they love delivered to their door, with no hint that it might be a bad idea. I'm not surprised at all that they are unhappy that the thing they were sold turned out to be disappointing. I agree that if one understands all the logistical, marketplace, and culinary factors, it doesn't make much sense to blame the restaurant. But one of the glories of capitalism is that purchasers don't have to understand a thing. They just have to have money and a desire.
I think the real bad actors here are the delivery companies here, not the consumers. The delivery companies are selling something they really can't deliver. It shouldn't be up to consumers to figure all this out on an order-by-order basis.
Of course, you should not and you would not
But, to paraphrase PT Barnum: no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average populous.
There are a sufficiently large portion of the customer base who either lack the intelligence or just do not care enough to figure out what is the source of the problem, and will happily blame the restaurant, and broadcast that erroneous blame in person and online. More than enough of these to ruin a restaurant's reputation and business.
That is why this law is a good thing.
My product or service, I should have the right to control it's distribution up to and including it's first sale (especially if it is not a commodity).
If you're a restaurant and some of your dishes do not handle delivery well then you should not sell them as delivery/takeaway but only on premises. Otherwise you'll have to accept that some customers will be unhappy and leave a bad review.
I think this is a learning curve for many restaurants that are not used to this business model. Certainly in Europe it was not usual for restaurants to offer delivery/takeaway, which was only done by some pizzerias for a long time. Now these platforms are booming and the pandemic has made them critical.
Weird. It takes me notably longer than that to eat a burger in a restaurant, and I never notice any quality problems over that period of time.
If you keep the bread from getting soggy, which is definitely possible (worst case pack it separately), a delivery burger can be high quality. I don't care if it's no longer perfect.
Burgers work really well with delivery. Used to order burgers very regularly at parties (GBK in London), it was one of the few things everybody would agree with and find good.
I can imagine that you would have troubles if the restaurant wasn't aware it was intended for delivery and gave a loose burger on a plate to the delivery guy. Gotta be put in a tight box to stay warm and in shape.
And then there are a lot of foods that just aren't going to be good. Basically, if it's something that either cold or that you would normally consider reheating in the oven or microwave it's probably OK. Otherwise, not.
And, as others have noted, take-out you have more control over. There are some sandwiches I'll order from a local place and pickup given that I know I'll be home in less than 10 minutes. I'd be less tempted if I knew it might be sitting in a delivery car for an hour.
Because otherwise, there is nothing preventing Doordash or similar from adding the location to their app. The restaurant may not offer them favorable terms, or otherwise work with them, but even without official support, Doordash interopts with the restaurant's online ordering system for pickup (or even involves a human to call it in), sends a driver to pick it up ("Here to pick up an order for Steve"), and then delivers it. Nothing the restaurant can do to prevent it.
If the restaurant sells takeout, why does it matter whether I take it gone to my house or another person’s house?
However, perhaps a solution might be a labeler that prints a label with consume by time and attach the label to carryout container. Or some other kind of disclaimer on the containers. Yes, this adds burden on the restaurants but hopefully, reduces negative reviews.
That’s what both parties want.
It seems to me that this is working “as intended” and no intervention from the state is needed.
I really don’t know who this is helping because I’m not going to start using a more inconvenient way of ordering because these restaurants want things their way.
It’ll only result in these local businesses losing access to the $750 I pay in delivery each month.
This is not shitty consumer behavior. It is lying... a company pretending to be another company or a representative of another company... when they are not.
If you buy a fake Toyota car and it sucks, do you blame Toyota then complain when a law is passed making this fraud illegal?
This law affects much more than that.
This is the sort of thing we expect to be taken care of by the free market. If signing up with a delivery service is truly in their interest and aligns with what they want their business to be, they mostly will. And if not, that's fine.
Can you give an example?
Of a bad reason or a bad effect?
Bad reasons are a dime a dozen. Maybe they just don't want to. They don't like the idea, and they're stubborn. Or they made a deal with one or two companies and don't want to allow others, even though some customer would really prefer the disallowed ones or can't get service from the allowed ones.
For bad effects, it means that the customer can't get the food they want, even with 100% knowledge that it's a third party picking it up, and that the quality will be imperfect in a way that's not the restaurant's fault.
Here, let me quote someone else from this same comment page: "Last night I wanted w bottle of alcohol for new years celebration. I already had a few drinks so I didn't want to drive. Unfortunately no delivery service had an agreement with any local liquor stores."
And, I mean, for non-food items imagine how bad it would be if you needed explicit permission from the manufacturer to sell something on ebay. Food's not that different.
If you're using exclusively delivery platforms and not getting delivery from the restaurants themselves, I can guarantee you that the local businesses likely never had access to the 750$ you pay. Assuming a tip of say 20% to the driver, let me take the sales tax of my local city which is around 8%, a 10% commission from grubhub with a processing 3.05% fee (plus $0.30 per order).
This means on a platform like grubhub, your 750$ you pay in delivery is paying grubhub 97$, 60$ to government, 150$ to delivery people. Restaurants only receive 443$, assuming you never take advantage of deals they offer to stay afloat, and the restaurant only pays grubhub the minimum fees (they are often pressured more or the grubhub algo will deprioritize them).
A friend who manages an excellent restaurant says that this is indeed a problem. One of their signature dishes is fried chicken, and it is glorious. They optimize everything about the meal with the understanding that it's 15-30 seconds from the kitchen to the table. But those are the wrong choices for 15-30 minutes of travel time. You'd be better off just getting Popeye's. But who gets the negative review on Yelp? Not the delivery company.