Food & Drink

Restaurant owners...suggest you keep your wait staff for delivery service

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  • Mar 26th, 2020 11:17 pm
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Restaurant owners...suggest you keep your wait staff for delivery service

Restaurant owners are going to be letting go their wait staff. I suggest you start taking orders over the phone/fax and asking if your wait staff want to do delivery for a fee $10 (perhap). Better than EI IMO.
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gr8dlr wrote: Restaurant owners are going to be letting go their wait staff. I suggest you start taking orders over the phone/fax and asking if your wait staff want to do delivery for a fee $10 (perhap). Better than EI IMO.
Some restaurants will try to stay open. Phone first and see if they're still open.
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playnicee1 wrote: Some restaurants will try to stay open. Phone first and see if they're still open.
I'm sure some might want to but I worry about the "social" twitter type policing ppl who will be in outrage mode if some 20 seat resto still has dine in service.

I'm suggesting to these restos to resist paying an UBER Eats % cut + delivery fee by offering delivery by wait staff for a delivery fee. Resto Wins by selling food, wait staff Win by still earning money.
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Waiters may want tips and may spit in your food the next time if you don't tip.
Now that's double the spit.
First the cooks, now the waiters.
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Article from Toronto Life re. Yeuh Tung on Elizabeth St near City Hall - I've been to this restaurant at least a couple dozen times over the years (actually whenever I'm in the area for lunch).

https://torontolife.com/food/restaurant ... ronavirus/

While sales are still down, the proportions have shifted to 65 per cent takeout or delivery. Normally, it’s about 30 to 35 per cent. So we’re ramping up our takeout and delivery services via Uber Eats, DoorDash and MealPal. We are in talks with our entire team now to see how they feel about creating our own delivery system so we can reach out to as many of our loyal customers across the GTA, since our third-party delivery vendors only cater to customers within a four-kilometre radius of our restaurant.


Uber Eats, DoorDash, MealPal, Ritual etc - these services should reduce their cut to help keep the restaurants alive. It's in their best interest as well. Notice that the restaurants says they are considering creating their own delivery system - the % cut which I think is 30% is way too much.

On another note, the city is asking for no dine in. I think cutting dine in capacity to 50% (or even 25%) of normal is a better solution. Yeuh Tung's seating is pretty spaced out for a Chinese restaurant. Why is a restaurant different than say a food court in a mall?
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https://lifehacker.com/support-restaura ... 1842358946

Support Restaurants by ordering directly from them.

So nice of these companies like Grubhub...we'll collect our blood later.
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Apr 26, 2013
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gr8dlr wrote: I'm sure some might want to but I worry about the "social" twitter type policing ppl who will be in outrage mode if some 20 seat resto still has dine in service.

I'm suggesting to these restos to resist paying an UBER Eats % cut + delivery fee by offering delivery by wait staff for a delivery fee. Resto Wins by selling food, wait staff Win by still earning money.
Restaurants, no matter the amount of seats wouldn't be allowed to serve people in the dining room after today (in Toronto, other levels of government in Canada will surely follow suit) as an order which would result is steep fines for those caught breaking them. Most were already complying with the recommendations before an order had to be issued.

Your second idea isn't anymore helpful, if restaurants stop taking orders through those traditional venues they would close much faster because unfortunately that's just how the consumer orders now.

Wait staff will be compensated via EI. I am sure more government assistance will follow but I would say that's solid footing for now. Issues may arise because wait staff under report tips and as such their EI would be less than normal pay.
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WMPCOT wrote: Your second idea isn't anymore helpful, if restaurants stop taking orders through those traditional venues they would close much faster because unfortunately that's just how the consumer orders now.
Restaurants that used to do delivery before all those Uber eats, Foodora, etc came to be can still go back to that. They lose the benefit of being on a list of options with those companies when they do though.
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playnicee1 wrote: Restaurants that used to do delivery before all those Uber eats, Foodora, etc came to be can still go back to that. They lose the benefit of being on a list of options with those companies when they do though.
If someone is already on one of these platforms ordering I doubt they are going to call up the restaurant to put in an order.

The people who use these platforms want to pay by credit card, and have a ton of options otherwise they would have just called the restaurant and placed an order themselves.
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WMPCOT wrote: Restaurants, no matter the amount of seats wouldn't be allowed to serve people in the dining room after today (in Toronto, other levels of government in Canada will surely follow suit) as an order which would result is steep fines for those caught breaking them. Most were already complying with the recommendations before an order had to be issued.

Your second idea isn't anymore helpful, if restaurants stop taking orders through those traditional venues they would close much faster because unfortunately that's just how the consumer orders now.

Wait staff will be compensated via EI. I am sure more government assistance will follow but I would say that's solid footing for now. Issues may arise because wait staff under report tips and as such their EI would be less than normal pay.
I think he meant... make a public movement to order directly from the restaurant. That wAy the restaurant makes more money because they don’t have to pay fees to the delivery apps.
The margins are rAzor thin and sometimes money losing when ordering from the apps.

E.g. lazy driver takes too long , or it takes a while for drivers to pick up the order and the food goes cold. Now the restAurant gets a bad online review for slow delivery and cold food when it isnt their fault... and they end up having to refund the food & lose money on the order to keep their online reputAtion (highly valuable these days).
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UrbanPoet wrote: I think he meant... make a public movement to order directly from the restaurant. That wAy the restaurant makes more money because they don’t have to pay fees to the delivery apps.
The margins are rAzor thin and sometimes money losing when ordering from the apps.

E.g. lazy driver takes too long , or it takes a while for drivers to pick up the order and the food goes cold. Now the restAurant gets a bad online review for slow delivery and cold food when it isnt their fault... and they end up having to refund the food & lose money on the order to keep their online reputAtion (highly valuable these days).
Exactly. Try calling the restaurant directly first and see if they can deliver or perhaps you can pickup (get some fresh air - you'll get fresher food faster). There's no profit with UberEats/delivery services, so IMO you're not helping them really. Added to that the wait staff are having a hard time so perhaps the restaurant might start using some staff to deliver.

I really wished the delivery services would reduce their cut in this time of need. Kind of like the Internet providers bumping internet bandwidth and eliminating bandwidth caps. Extraordinary needs requires extraordinary measures.
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gr8dlr wrote: Exactly. Try calling the restaurant directly first and see if they can deliver or perhaps you can pickup (get some fresh air - you'll get fresher food faster). There's no profit with UberEats/delivery services, so IMO you're not helping them really. Added to that the wait staff are having a hard time so perhaps the restaurant might start using some staff to deliver.

I really wished the delivery services would reduce their cut in this time of need. Kind of like the Internet providers bumping internet bandwidth and eliminating bandwidth caps. Extraordinary needs requires extraordinary measures.
Uber has announced free delivery but that does not help restaurants when they still take 30%.
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WMPCOT wrote: If someone is already on one of these platforms ordering I doubt they are going to call up the restaurant to put in an order.
The people who use these platforms want to pay by credit card, and have a ton of options otherwise they would have just called the restaurant and placed an order themselves.
Here is a sample of an email I recently received from a local privately run (not chain) restaurant in Toronto.
The name is absent in effort to honestly show that I am not shilling any particular restaurant:

(Restaurant name) is now take-out/pick-up only.
You can do so through Uber Eats, Skip The Dishes or feel free to call us directly and we will deliver within a 5km radius. Open from 4-9pm.
(the phone number is also included in the email)
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Does anyone actually know, how safe is ordering/picking up food in terms of chance to get contamination. What if the cooks/workers are sick making the food? I've read a ton of posts on reddit where staff is sick and they are still at work but of course restaurant is saying they are clean and taking precautions.
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baz5 wrote: Does anyone actually know, how safe is ordering/picking up food in terms of chance to get contamination. What if the cooks/workers are sick making the food? I've read a ton of posts on reddit where staff is sick and they are still at work but of course restaurant is saying they are clean and taking precautions.
I'm pretty sure Dine safe Toronto is still doing inspections: https://www.toronto.com/whatson-story/9 ... this-week/
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baz5 wrote: Doesn't really help much when someone is there with the flu making food.
You could say this kind of stuff every day. Person making your food could have hepatitis or they could have gone to the restroom and didn't wash their hands (this is 50 times more possible than having Covid 19).

If anything the restaurant is cleaner now and the workers are more scared of you than you should be of them....after all you have money to eat out and travel, they work likely for minimum wage.
We're all bozos on the bus until we find a way to express ourselves...

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baz5 wrote: Does anyone actually know, how safe is ordering/picking up food in terms of chance to get contamination. What if the cooks/workers are sick making the food? I've read a ton of posts on reddit where staff is sick and they are still at work but of course restaurant is saying they are clean and taking precautions.
Yeah... don't peek behind the curtain if you're concerned.

This is before Coronavirus.
If anything it might actually be safer now.
Do you not have anything else to do rather than argue with strangers on the internet
Nope. That's why I'm on the internet arguing with strangers. If I had anything better to do I'd probably be doing it.

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