If you’re a fan of staying in your pajamas and tapping a few buttons on your phone to get a meal delivered straight to your door, this news might sting.
A new report from US Foods, an food service distributor, has revealed that this convenient service may come at a cost: Your delivery driver may be sampling your food before it they bring it to your door.
The company sampled 1,518 American adults (aged 18 through 77), who said that they have used food delivery apps before for a survey about what customers want in a food delivery service. They also sampled 497 American adults (with a median age of 30) who said that they had worked as a food delivery employee for at least one service.
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Perhaps the most shocking result of the survey — and the one that has many squirming — is that 28 percent of the delivery drivers sampled admitted to taking food from an order they were delivering.
This may come as no surprise to many, as 21 percent of the customers surveyed said that they had suspected a driver had taken their food before. 85 percent of the customers said that they wished that restaurants would use tamper-evident packaging to address the issue, so that they would be able to see if their driver had sampled their wares before it reached their door.
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A few more common gripes that customers had were also revealed through the survey. For example, 34 percent of customers said that they had had a deliverer stay in their car and pass their food out through a window; 29 percent had a deliverer that refused to bring their food to their door; and 17 percent had a deliverer drop their food outside and leave.
Delivery drivers weren’t without their own complaints, either. 60 percent said that they were consistently irritated by receiving a poor tip or no tip; 52 percent said that the food often was not ready at the restaurant for them to pick up; 34 percent said that customers would pester them with questions and complaints through some form of messaging; and 21 percent complained that customers expected them to climb many stairs and take elevators to bring the food straight to their doors.
Despite all these issues, the survey found that the average American has two food delivery apps on their phone, and uses them three times per month.
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By Hannah Chubb