Yes, sometimes delivery people sneak bites of your food
A sizable number of food delivery workers are sampling your fries.
US Foods, a restaurant and food distributor, ran a survey in May asking more than 1,500 Americans who use food delivery apps like Uber Eats, Grubhub, DoorDash, and Postmates about their delivery app habits. Nearly 500 food delivery app workers were also surveyed.
A sizable chunk of deliverers (28 percent) said they had taken food from an order. More than half said they're "often tempted by the smell of food" in their delivery pack, but apparently practice restraint -- or so they say. Just over 21 percent of customers suspected some of their food was pilfered during the delivery process.
In what feels like an extreme solution, 85 percent of customers said they'd want restaurants to use "tamper-evident labels" to curb food snatching, kind of like putting a wax seal on an important envelope.
So, people aren’t constantly stealing food. But they are ordering a lot of it. Based on survey results, people on average use a delivery app for food orders from restaurants three times per month.
Last week, delivery app DoorDash was called out for its tipping policy and reversed course to give its delivery workers full tips. In the US Foods survey, 63 percent of customers said they tip through the app instead of cash. Cash ensures workers get the full tip instead of the extra money going toward a base pay rate. Amazon appears to be the final holdout and still tips workers this way. Online grocery app Instacart changed its policy earlier this year after similar backlash.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
