Chain restaurant fees are getting absurd
3 years ago by ArtVandelay to c/mildlyinfuriating
I got this fun fee after trying to order takeout from Buffalo Wild Wings (yes I'm naming and shaming). How exactly does adding a dollar help you operate takeout? It's literally less work than waiting on a table. This is nothing more than a shameful cash grab to pad profits.
I cancelled my order and got local street tacos instead.
EDIT: Look what I found this morning, lol https://www.today.com/...
I'd bet all the cash in my wallet that the tacos were significantly better than anything from Buffalo Wild Wings.
They were delicious, cheaper, and I don't know what my dumb brain was even thinking
Ah convenience fees. I love paying more money for causing less work. Ticket master, oh these digital tickets that will be distributed immediately will have an extra $14 fee... Per ticket!
McDonalds is especially egregious recently. Time was you could get a set for ¥500 (about 5 dollars) Then suddenly all the menu items went up to ¥700 - ¥900. That starts to get very very close to the alternatives which are much better. The only competitive edge they had was price really.
Same in Europe, MacDonalds used to be the cheap fast option. Now it's almost restaurant prices. If I pay restaurant money I expect restaurant quality, not fast food.
No shit. Last time I went with my girlfriend we just had some fries, couple burgers and nuggets.
€34! Not doing that again.
except actual voting is 1 person = 1 vote. shareholders, corporate conglomerates, and lobbyists have made it that 1 person gets millions upon billions of votes. when we do vote with our wallets and buy from the places we want to support, the corporations always win in the end. either by buying them out, or because what we supported decided to cater to shareholders instead of customers. just look at what happened to reddit
Shareholders have no vote unless they also buy from the company. The only vote is the number of dollars spent at the business. Shareholders, boards, and lobbyists can try to manipulate those votes, but your money is your money, and I guarantee you McDonalds wouldn't be around very long if they relied only on the rich to sustain them.
McDonalds is dependent on the lower class. Uber/Doordash even more so because they're dependent both on a) poor people making poor financial decisions and b) poor people being willing to work for almost nothing.
Capitalism does work in the voting with your wallet. However there's two things that tend to get in the way. Laziness and mergers. Either customers don't care and/or all your other opinions got bought out.
We don't have pubs in the area next to my local BWW. Lots of places don't have pubs.
The value that chain and fast food restaurants bring isn't quality. Their value is (1) convenience, and (2) consistency.
Many people will often prefer to have a known quantity quickly in preference to a highly probably better but uncertain quantity slower. Every Dunkin Donuts has donuts that taste the same as all the other locations. That's more valuable than people think.
That's why those locations are successful.
These chains are going out of business because their demo is dying. People who know how to use the internet to find well liked local spots don’t go to these places.
You're correct, and that's another beef I have with the whole industry.
Yes they can.
I think the point is that if all the staff do is pack up take out orders, they legally cannot make them do it for $2.13/hour. The employer legally has to pay tipped employees minimum wage if tips do not cause them to reach minimum wage. More time on take out orders is less time earning tips.
More broadly, most wait staff aren't going stick around even if they're being paid minimum wage and getting no tips. They'll go elsewhere where they can earn better — presumably somewhere they can consistently earn tips.
If all the staff does is pack up takeout orders, they can legally be paid $2.13 an hour.
I grabbed a single burger at Wendy's last weekend and it was $6.50. That was my last trip to Wendy's....I expected half that!
I have to say, where I live Wendy's is actually cheaper than McDonald's, so if I'm craving a cheeseburger I hit up Wendy's instead. But yeah prices for fast food are absurd nowadays.
I don't know if this is the case everywhere, but here a lot of chains are switching to doordash partnerships, which is just gross. At this point I'll stop ordering delivery/takeout from any chain that does this because I'm just that disgusted by Doordash and Uber.
On the bright side, if you're in a city, usually there are more than enough delivery co-ops or in-house delivery services available that it's not too painful to ditch delivery apps.
Can’t speak for the other person, but Uber is disgusting for hacking a raped woman’s medical files to try and slander her in court.
I'm guessing because those have fees and the restaurants increase their prices to compemsate for that.
That's exactly why for me. I'm not lazy enough (and I have good transportation) to drive and pick up food if I'm doing takeout instead of getting stuff delivered and paying fees and tips on top .
As a non-US citizen, this is a ridiculous greed.
As a US citizen, this is a ridiculous greed.
Fortunately I married someone who can cook better than anyone I've ever met and they're frugal. Every meal is centered around whatever main ingredient is going to go bad first to ensure we don't throw away food, ever (and any scraps we do have leftover get fed to the chickens to produce more butt nuggets and meat).
These days the quality of food at restaurants has gone way down and one can often cook a much better meal at home. Like we have gone to a few hole-in-the wall places with pretty decent food, and then we have gone to pretentious up-scale places where the prices are 3x higher than normal and the food was still only mediocre - even fancy yacht club restaurants where almost everyone is stuck up and acts like they're better then the staff have terrible food. I have to laugh that they think it's worth $50 for a cheesburger when it tastes no better than what I could get from Applebees (at least they could have used higher quality beef for the burger! Nope - sysco special).
ChatGPT really helps make things easier for even novice cooks like myself - just tell it what you have and ask for suggestions then directions.
Honestly I don't miss going out for food and paying those dumb ridiculous prices
Over COVID I tipped 20-25% times we're tough for everybody and service workers kept it all going. But in other words back to normal I've made a conscious effort to put it back in the 15 to 20 range.
And everyone wants a tip, even just picking up food you're asked to tip.
Honestly, how can they? (non-american here)
They don't actually force you, it's just very strongly encouraged. Like some places will have you tip while the cashier/server is staring you right in the eye, so if you hit 'No Tip' they give you a disapproving glare.
I had plenty of sympathy for restaurants when the pandemic first hit. Extra fees? Yeah, I get it, and I'll throw in an extra tip for the workers who are braving the place so that my fat ass can get some delicious food. The problem is that they haven't dialed back the fees/tipping requests. If anything, they've gotten much worse.
Cost of takeout bags, containers, IT, all that jazz, the company believes it should be able to pass on to the customer without raising it's menu prices. I don't know it's a classic "cash grab" so much as a business attempting to recoup as much as it can from a sale. Last time I checked BFF wasn't doing all that great. But in the end, I agree completely with you in that these Fees are so fucking annoying, one after another, never ending.
Yeah, and that was on top of having it "suggest" a 25% tip, which I had to manually type in a custom amt of 0. I'm not tipping for goddamn takeout ffs
Cost of takeout bags, containers, IT, all that jazz,
And then we subtract the cost of plates, dishwashers, chairs, menus, tables, IT for their internal POS and seating systems... gosh, sounds like I should be getting a discount!
Did you submit a handwritten ticket,pay with cash, and order without ever looking at the menu? Did you do so without taking up any time of an employee or occupying any space in their establishment for any amount of time? Did you ask them to just give you all of the raw ingredients in a Togo container without actually cooking anything?
Of course not, so you used everything you just whined about getting a discount for.
Do you really think they plate the food in the back of the house, then turn around and dump that plate of food into a container, and then wash the plate?
No wonder they need to charge extra.
Do you really think the food just springs into existence without having to be cooked or prepped?
If the taco truck is behind an alley and the owner has a mustache and scratches his ass and the pork tastes great but a little raw, don't eat there.
Feels oddly specific.
The Greatest Taco
This may be imposed by the take out provider. Some states/municipalities also tack on extra fees
There is no provider. This is me, driving to the restaurant, walking to the counter, and getting my food.
Payment provider. BWW may have a contract with a payment provider, in which they don't pay the fee to use this payment platform for a flat fee of $1 per.
This is of course, all speculation.
For only takeout orders?
I could see it. Online billing probably uses a different payment provider than physical machines. And it's probably a smaller proportion of their business, so they're not willing to eat the cost like they do for physical machines.
It was/is just Buffalo Wild Wings themselves.
The payment provider would also be taking payments for dine-in customers, no?
Borderline absurd but 100% asinine
Last time I ordered to go from there I got home and there was a live fly walking all over my salad. We threw everything away and disputed the credit card charge due to unsafe food.
The original poster added context in a comment, saying that the location they ordered from was a Buffalo Wild Wings Go store, a contactless version of the establishment.
Was the location you were ordering from one of these? Maybe instead of paying proper wages like fast food restaurants these assholes were trying to make up for people being unlikely to tip for pickup to keep the profits from being able to pay employees barely anything?
Mine was not, it was a traditional BWW establishment. Tbh, I didn't know they had such a thing lol
It's a dollar going to corporate, not the employees.
It's a charge for the container your takeout food went into. They're a significant expense, especially if it's any type of sustainable packaging. This is not new. It has been a thing since at least the early 2000s.
I have never seen that style of container for takeout in my life and I spent two decades in the service industry. That's not common in America.
Still, for arguments sake that works out to about £.05 per box. Of course, that's if you go to the wholesaler to pick it up. If you're running a restaurant, you probably get it delivered with the rest of your dried goods. You pay for that, just like you pay for the cutlery and the napkins and the sauce packets and the bag it all goes in.
A buck really isn't unreasonable here. I've worked at spots where the takeout container was $0.30 each, and that's without figuring in the delivery/fuel surcharge.
These containers are really common with independent curry/chinese places.
Even on this wholesaler website had loads of different containers, they aren't that expensive at all. There are places here that do charge for cutlary and only provide it if you ask.
Also I'm not disagreeing with the price, just that the containers are expensive. They really aren't, good businesses will buy them in bulk from a wholesaler. A place like that you get discounts anyway it just makes sense to do so.
You're wrong.
If they have a $4.40 table area credit to compensate me for the lack of physical rental space I’m not taking up, and a $0.35 silverware wash&roll power, water, and labor credit, plus a $1.25 parking space credit for the hour I’m not using the lot, and a $0.45 reception/waiting area credit for not standing around paying someone to call me when my table is ready, then I’d accept the $1.00 boxing fee. But if I’m paying the cost of waiting to be seated, taking up a table for an hour, and parking - which is bundled into the entree price - I think they can spot me a take out container.
(Interesting that places like Gregg’s, Costa, and Pret sometimes actually do charge more if you eat in)
A dollar fee seems like a small price to pay to not have to deal with you as a customer.
If that is the issue, then they should have a different menu price for takeout vs dine in.
Tacking on these fees at the last minute in an order is just exploiting people. It’s the sunk cost fallacy… I drove here and already ordered, so I’ll just go along with it.
Not cool. This is a dirty tactic.
Why bother? You would just bitch about that instead.
Walmart started putting their grocery delivery in half-size paper bags so they can charge 2-3 times as many bag fees. I paid almost a dollar this week for shitty bags I can't reuse.
Can lemmy please not be the curmugenoy spot where people whine about restaurants? Please?
This is a community dedicated to what is... mildly irritating.
Lemmy and kbin have a bunch of sublemmys/magazines, and there are probably going to be a lot more.
You could maybe argue that !mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world shouldn't have that, but anything and everything is going to show up somewhere on the Fediverse.
It can be, but it seems unlikely. Too many r/antiwork users are here already.
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“Yes I’m naming and shaming”
God i love not being on Reddit
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