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Food Service in Quarantine

Thu Feb 04 2021

#reflection

#suggestion

17 min read

I have had the fortunate privilege of working a food service serving job amidst a jobless, heartless pandemic. This job is very different from every other job I have worked at because I have never previously worked in the non-corporate food industry, much less in a cultural food business. I work at a small family-owned Japanese-Korean business managed by the owner, her husband, and the occasional help of her two sons. Over the course of the past year that I have worked here, I have learned so much about working in the food industry during a pandemic. I will to share my conclusions with you in hopes that you can empathize with me and learn from my experiences in the food industry to apply to yourself as a customer. I hope you remember my experiences the next time you eat restaurant food.

If you're a customer... tip.

I hate that I have to even bring this up. In America, "tipping" is the act of contributing additional bonus payment to a food bill because you wish to show your appreciation for the food and service. However, most people do not realize that in the standard American food industry, servers (otherwise known as waiters or waitresses) depend on tips as payment. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 for hourly employees, but $2.13/hr for servers as determined by the Fair Labor Standards Act. In other words, if I received no tips from a night of work, I would only make $2.13/hr of taxed income.

Fair Labor Standards Act

Would you say those are reasonable wages for a comfortable life?

And yet - people still do not tip. I can't tell you how many tables I have served where I will provide quick and friendly service only to get a tip less than 10% of their bill. For a $30 bill, less than 10% means less than $3. It's truly frustrating to put forth effort to give someone a wonderful dining experience, only to have them reward you with less than hourly minimum wage. To add insult to injury, Asian Americans and Asian international students tip the least of any demographic in my experience.

Come on. We're better than this.

But what incentive is there to tip less? Why isn't the tipping system abandoned? The answer here is capitalism. The original intent of the tipping system was to reward restaurants with good food service and criticize restaurants with poor food service; however, in today's food industry, this no longer functions properly. Tipping now only affects the service and not the food quality. Regardless of how terrible the food tasted, no amount of tip will change the wages of the cooks or the kitchen staff. Any tip punishment falls directly on the server's wallets. In other words, I can be the nicest friendliest server in existence and still be paid nothing because someone's food is cold and they decide not to tip. Here are some conclusions I have drawn from my experiences:

Tip always. There should never be a time where you deprive someone of their wages completely - even if you have to wait two hours for food.
Tip well. As a server giving good service, it means a lot to know that someone enjoyed their experience. It doesn't hurt to tip a little more than usual to show your appreciation, because tipping 15% or less gives servers the impression that the customer didn't care about the service they received. There's also no excuse to claim "tipping is so expensive!" - if you can afford to eat out, you can afford to tip. If you can't afford to tip, you should not be eating out. Everyone should consider prices with tips in mind when they order food.
Tip carryout. While customers do not get as friendly or demanding of an experience while picking up carryout, the hosts still put effort into preparing and bagging your food. Remember, tipping contributes to the effort people put into preparing your food - what incentive is there to remember to bag someone's food properly or provides napkins and plasticware if you don't get paid at all for it?
Leave reviews. Reviews on sites such as Google Maps and Yelp help restaurants gain recognition and attract more people who have never visited the restaurant before. Reviews on such sites are also perfect places to criticize food quality. Instead of punishing food service for poor food, you can instead leave a review or speak to a manager - both of which can actually affect the quality of food in the future.

Something I've noticed from my own experience eating out with friends is that people who have served at restaurants tend to tip a little more than usual - because we know what it's like to work 8 long hours only to earn $40 of taxable income.

Treat employees with respect.

It seems like this should be an obvious sentiment - but this could not be farther from the truth. A lot of customers seem to assume that if they paid money for their service, they can treat the staff however they want.

Keep other people safe. It's unsettling that customers have tried to walk into our restaurant without wearing a mask or walk around the dining hall talking loudly without a mask. You should only have your mask off when seated at your table or eating food. Any other interaction without a mask puts other customers and the restaurant staff at unnecessary risk. Just because the United States is not officially quarantined does not mean that COVID-19 has disappeared overnight.
We are not your slaves. It's extremely disheartening to try and care for a table who berates you or demands so many things from you. I'm lucky enough to be a male and not have to worry about customers catcalling me with "sweetheart" or "honey" but I have experienced my fair share of similar aggressions. Just because you pay for a service does not mean you can yell "hey you" to staff, ask for unreasonable amounts of sugar, or expect staff to clean up after you when you spilled water and food all over the floor. As a server, I try my best to meet everyone's needs - not just yours. It's not all about you.
Clean up after yourself. Similar to the previous idea, just because you pay a restaurant for a service does not mean you should act like a pig. If you make a mess on the table, clean it. If your child throws food all over the floor, clean it up (and discipline your child!). If you leave a mess in the bathroom, take care of it. We're not paid to babysit you or your baby. It's like paying for an Airbnb or hotel room - just because you pay a fee to use a space doesn't mean you can trash that space. You pay for the food, not the space in which you eat. Someone has to clean up your mess. It's frankly embarrassing to see how many adults don't have the decency to clean up their own messes and leave their mess to the servers to clean up. I was raised with the discipline that you should always leave a space cleaner than when you arrived and I think everyone should do the same.
Leave shortly after finishing your meal. Occasionally after a long day of work, business finally dwindles and we get the chance to close early - except that customers still remain in the restaurant. This is not a problem at all, unless the customers have already finished their meals, paid, and have been sitting in the restaurant the past three hours talking. This is a problem because it can prevent the dishwasher from washing the dishes and prevent the front of house staff from cleaning the floor and ables. Additionally, it can slow our business if we are in normal rush hours because we have one less table to use. Restaurant staff has to wait until all guests have left the retaurant before cleaning up and closing. It's most frustrating on school nights where I have assignments due the next day but I cannot work on them and am forced to sit in the kitchen waiting for customers to leave.

If you're ordering food online... buy more or buy in person.

We prepare orders for third party vendors in the same way we prepare orders for carryout. This means that each order is bagged, supplied with sauce, napkins, and the necessary plasticware. Each of these things, along with the containers, cost money. This does not even include the fees charged by the vendors - additional food cost as well as a hefty portion of the bill for utilizing their service (usually 30% to 50%).

When the restaurant I work at receives orders that are less than $20, we usually cancel them immediately. Why? Because we actually lose profit from small orders. Subtracting the cost of the plastic containers, the plasticware, bags, and profits demanded by third party vendors, and the actual food cost, we probably would have made -$2 from that order.

You're probably thinking, "Then why even use third party vendors? Just don't sell food through those platforms!"

COVID-19 has reduced our in-person interactions by more than half. Our profits have dropped considerably, and the only reasonable way a lot of business are able to stay afloat is through these platforms. It is a necessary evil - we manage to make a small profit instead of no profit at all.

In addition, most third party vendors raise the prices we initially set in the vendor storeface (DoorDash is notorious in this fashion). The customer ordering might think their bill was $100 from the vendor price when their food bill would have actually been closer to $70 if they had ordered carryout (speaking from a real experience with a customer).

I haven't even talked about the glitches and terrible interfaces of the third party vendor merchant apps. These vendor companies were all put on the spot as the pandemic forced the world into hiding. In response, they worked quickly to produce a viable product as quickly as possible; however, these makeshift apps are far from perfect. They include all sorts of glitches, bugs, and poor app designs that make it much harder to try and interact with customers. Let me give a few real examples along with the vendor with which the issue is associated.

Third party vendors make it much harder to cancel orders (Chowbus, Doordash, Postmates, RicePo). In order to cancel an order, we need to explicitly call support, wait five minutes, then tell them the order information and the reason we want to cancel the order. In most cases, we're attempting to cancel the order because we're simply too busy. If we don't cancel the order in time, the order can sometimes automatically confirm and notify the customer that we are preparing the order (DoorDash) when have not even confirmed that order.

Many third party vendors (Chowbus, DoorDash, Postmates, RicePo, UberEats) make it extremely complicated to change menu prices. That means that if a price is wrong, we are not able to change the incorrect prices in active orders. In some cases, if the incorrect prices are too low below the actual price, we are forced to cancel the order because we can't change the price - and usually we are not given the option to tell the customer why the order was cancelled.

Many third party vendor merchant apps were designed for a pleasant tapping experience and not designed for dinner rushes when five to ten orders come into the system at the same time. Many vendor interfaces make it extremely easy to confirm orders and extremely difficult to cancel orders (DoorDash, UberEats). Because of this, I can't even describe how many times I've accidentally confirmed an order during a massive dinner rush on a Friday night. It then leaves a poor experience for a customer who is wondering why their food is taking longer than usual.

In some cases, we don't even receive orders (Chowbus, Grubhub, RicePo). Usually the vendor will call us to tell us that we have had an unconfirmed order for fifteen minutes (to which we respond: "...what order?"). Sometimes, in the rare occasion, someone will come into the store personally to ask for their order when we never received it to begin with.

Some vendors make it extremely hard or impossible to change the food pickup time (DoorDash, UberEats). This means that restaurants sometimes cannot tell customers that their order will actually be ready in 40 minutes instead of the ten minutes the scheduled order has set as the default pickup time. This leads to a poor experience for everyone - delivery drivers demanding for the order and the customer waiting an unexpected time for food.

Vendors occasionally glitch and do not notify customers of restaurant changes (DoorDash). We will cancel an order and a customer will show up to our restaurant 40 minutes later - only for us to tell them "I'm sorry it shows on your end that we're preparing the order, but we cancelled that order 40 minutes ago". To combat this, we've tried to get in the habit of calling the customer every time we cancel an order, but this is not a feasible solution during dinner rushes. These kinds of glitches should never happen in the first place - but the reason I'm highlighting it is because it has happened more than once.

Some vendors lie (Grubhub). For a few weeks we took our Grubhub store offline because our Grubhub account was having issues - but Grubhub still showed that we were open and accepting orders. To make matters worse, Grubhub confirmed an order on our behalf and told the customer it was picked up and was in the process of being delivered. After the customer came in to request their food, we compared apps, apologized for the inconvenience, and tried to prepare her order as quickly as possible. This is not just a glitch - it's dishonesty. This situation should never happen.

You're probably thinking, "wait... all of these vendors are awful! How has no one brought these issues to light?!". The sad truth is that all third party vendors have major problems that need to be addressed. There is no vendor with a perfect experience. I hope it is plain to see why ordering food through a third party vendor can be an unfavorable experience. What can we learn from this?

Buy more. If you plan on purchasing from a third party vendor, it makes no sense to pay 150% of the normal price to receive only two items. Restaurants have more incentive to make your order worthwhile if your order has more food. In addition, it's highly unlikely a restaurant would cancel a large order unless it truly could not handle the order or it was a glitch in the system.
Don't try to add extra food in the food customization instructions. People tend to try ordering extra food via the food customization instructions (e.g. "can we have an extra side of beef with this?" or "can I have an extra piece of salmon on this roll?"). Everything in a restaurant costs money - restaurants can't give out free food. The purpose of the food customization instructions is to specify the absence of foods or specific allergies ("no onions" or "I am allergic to shellfish"), not adding food. If you don't mind surcharges and would like a truly custom food order, it makes much more sense to order in person where the restaurant can truly customize your order the way you want.
Don't try to place an order again if it was cancelled. As I mentioned in the previous example, we generally do not cancel orders intentionally unless the restaurant is too busy or we lose profit. It seems to be a common trend that if a customer's order is cancelled, they will place the exact same order again. I would speculate the reasoning is due to not knowing if the order was truly cancelled or simply lost in a system error. If this happens, please call the restaurant. We would love to help you personally rather than try to understand why the same order was placed five times. As I mentioned before with vendor app glitches and bugs, this is another reason why ordering carryout has so many advantages to ordering through a third party.
Buy in person when possible. I can't stress this enough - customers save money by ordering carryout. Don't believe me? If you take away the third party vendor fees, delivery tip, and add the cost for gasoline, you'll find that the cost is significantly lower than if you ordered through a third party vendor. In addition, you can verify that every dollar you spend goes directly towards the restaurant in question and not to some middle party trying to make a profit. As a bonus, you're able to request more sauces and plasticware when you go to a restaurant in person. You can also tip the restaurant and show your gratitude in person. It means a lot to businesses during COVID-19 when someone makes the effort to order carryout and come into the store to personally thank us for the food.

I think Drew Gooden does a fantastic job explaining the faults of food delivery from the perspective of a customer - all the more reason to order carryout.

food delivery from a customer's perspective

If you're delivering food orders... be more aware of your surroundings.

If you are a delivery driver - I have the utmost respect for you. In most cases, delivery drivers have to juggle multiple responsibilities at once in order to make an honest living. They are legally labeled as independent contractors, meaning they can work at whatever times they choose - however, this is usually only effective in populated areas and restaurants with a wide range of hours. In addition, they usually take on multiple orders at once. Even then, they are usually tipped very little. But in spite of the respect I have for delivery, I have to note my own observations and frustrations pertaining to general awareness from the perspective of a restaurant business.

Observe your surroundings before you walk in to a restaurant. Delivery persons tend to walk into our restaurant with their heads down looking at their phone. Occasionally we close off our dining area or tell delivery to stand in a certain area, but many delivery drivers just don't pay attention. It's really frustrating to have a bold large font sign with striped tape near the door saying "delivery - stand here" to have most delivery drivers ignore it. What if there was a life threatening situation occurring in the restaurant? What if you accidentally hurt someone by not paying attention? These sound like extreme examples, but don't most car accidents happen because someone isn't paying attention to their surroundings?
Know your order before you walk in. There are so many delivery persons who walk into our restaurant not even knowing the name of the order they're picking up (and even worse, what vendor they represent). It then takes a second for them to pull up the order on their phone. A person should know exactly what their intent is for walking into a business before they enter the door - or what's the point of even entering?
Don't just take food. I honestly don't even know what to say about this. We usually have multiple orders of food ready for delivery to pick up but we have stopped placing the orders by the door because delivery drivers used to waltz in and just pick up the nearest bag and drive away without even looking or checking. This is one of the biggest reasons why a lot of restaurants have begun to put tables in front of their doors so delivery drivers cannot just walk in and take orders without thinking. It sounds so obvious but it has happened more often than I would like to admit.
Clean up after yourself. If you read what I said about customers, you know exactly what I'm going to say here. If you stepped in mud, be mindful not to track dirt all over a restaurant floor to pick up an order. On a similar note - if you use a bathroom, have some decency to flush the toilet and clean up after yourself. It's aggravating to see delivery drivers leave our public bathrooms covered in shit (literally. This actually happened. We actually don't let delivery drivers use our bathrooms anymore for this very reason). If you can't clean up after yourself, you shouldn't have a job in the food service industry.

Closing Thoughts

The food industry is filled with problems from customers, vendors, and restaurants alike. In addition, the recent quarantine has dramatically changed the way we enjoy food. Despite these changes, I hope you have learned something from my experiences in the food industry and think about these observations and tips the next time you choose to eat food from a restaurant. While I don't anticipate the pandemic ending anytime soon, I am hopeful the food industry will improve in the future. Don't forget to show your appreciate for the restaurants you love!

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