I've ordered food from Chipotle online, taken 30-40 minutes to get to the store, and very often it would have been more convenient (I would have gotten my food more quickly) if I had skipped the online order and waited in the in-person line instead.

This doesn't always happen and it depends on a ton of things (store, time/shift, crew working at the time) but it got to the point where I couldn't reliably get the food on time so I just stopped going. That and an extra steak bowl with guac is $18 without chips or a drink. Kind of tough to justify eating that 7 days a week. It's just not super efficient.

Then I realized the $47b market cap company doesn't care if they lose my business because my nitpick problems most likely aren't happening at a large enough scale to affect them (otherwise they'd do something about it, right?)

My wife's aunt owned a sushi restaurant and definitely gave the better quality sushi to people in person on purpose, and used delivery to get rid of the lower quality fish. She was also kind of a bad person though in other areas of life so your results may vary.

They ought to give you more, to make up for when the delivery agents invariably mess things up.

At least Deliveroo UK finally relented to give delivery failures back as a refund rather than their old position which was effectively: "Oops, we messed up leaving you without a portion of your meal... Please can we keep your hard-earned cash as a credit, so that you can only use it by spending more money with us".

Has anyone else looked into the tipping vs not tipping thing? Basically the service was very spotty in London at first; therefore I thought I'd try tipping a bit more and a bit less, to see what effect it had. I found that actually not tipping resulted in way better service. They really ought to just reserve the amount on the credit card up-front and then only take it once it's delivered so customers have the opportunity to tip *post-delivery* - I'd be all over that and would have no concerns giving generously, but I'm certainly not shelling out for worse service!

Some friends I've discussed this with try to post-rationalise that the agents think they're getting tipped in person and so go above and beyond, yet they never give that sense during the delivery (who uses cash now anyway?!)

Title needs to be changed to Here’s How Much Sweetgreen Rips You Off You When You Order Online (with data) since Do you get less food when you order online? That's what the data shows is both not the original article title and misleading since the article only examines a single restaurant.

This is a sample size of exactly two salads from one location. Which employee makes the salad probably has more to do with it than if it was delivery or in-person.

Do a real study and get back to me.

Not even less food, but also lower quality. I did grocery pickup and got marked-down, expires-that-day meat. They typically have a coupon attached to the package -- they ripped that off and didn't give me the discount.

Hey, for Chipotle, I've had the exact opposite experience.

Order online with their app, and the order is always bursting at the seams.

Order in person, and it's meh. Plus the line!

Order through like Favor / Uber, and it's like, "Why did I do this?"

Curious how worker training factors in, or if it's just, "Oh we had more time so we made a better order..." Or, "Oh, we had the data in our own system that prints slips we know how to read (vs. Uber slips)..." Or, "Oh, we just feel bad ripping people off if we have to look them in the eye."

For Chipotle, wouldn't surprise me if they told workers to make sure to always do a good job on the Chipotle in-app orders. They really push the app to help keep line size down.

The state of restaurants is sad indeed, I certainly notice smaller servings of everything whether I'm in person or particularly delivery, plus prices are 30-40% higher. Anywhere with food that is volumetric, delivery definitely gives you less from places I know from experience that I've tried delivery. Even Chinese food, which prior to the InstaUberCartHubs would arrive heaped with food like you were family now give you a careful sized portion like an assembly line.

For me being older, delivery used to be a treat, pizza and Chinese food were the staple of American "living it up" night for families ordering in with big orders, and at least local restaurants that actually did deliver generally respected and rewarded that, but no more when people order a single salad or burrito at a time for delivery.

What are you going to do, call and complain your order was too small? Likely not, we're all used to getting a hamburger that surely doesn't look like the one on the billboard or TV, but if something even I mentally note, I simply never go or order again, telling anyone that cares to know or leave a review where I can stating as much.

It's just the evolution of the businesses as a whole to stay alive, like everything now - pay more, get less, deal with it.

Here's a question to all those who order food - whether online or in person - from restaurants or caterers: what is gained by doing so compared to cooking your own food? For us it is an extreme rare occasion when we get something from a restaurant - usually pizza or Thai - since we (mostly "I") cook our own food. This takes some time, anything from 45 minutes to 1.30 hours and we also need to get the required materials to be able to cook but the results are worth it. What is the main reason for ordering out? Is it time? Lack of materials to cook your own? Lack of facilities? Lack of experience? Lack of inspiration to make something new every day? Is it just the thing to do without thinking about the alternatives?

It makes sense, the restaurant makes less cash with online orders. Why wouldn’t they try to save whatever they can?

I wonder what portion of this is from biases caring for less about anonymous online orders. Seeing a human face might prompt an employee to stuff more chips or fries in that to go bag.

I think in person psychological effect maybe forces restaurant operators to want to please more. But in general everything is getting worse. Prices raising, portions decreasing and qualities dropping...

I really miss pre-covid food experience!

I'm not familiar with the various dishes that were tested. Are any of them dishes that lose mass over time? When I cook rice I've noticed that it weighs quite a bit more shortly after it comes out of the rice cooker than it does a half hour later.

In the article they were weighing at their office. For an in-person order the time between the food being made and the weighing would be the time to get back from the restaurant to the office.

For a delivery order the time from being made to the weighing would be the time it takes the delivery driver to pick up the order plus the time it takes them to get to your office and deliver it.

Unless the driver is already waiting at the restaurant when the food is done, and doesn't wait for other orders to finish too so as to take them at the same time, and yours is the first or only order to be delivered on that run your delivery food on average is going to have been out of the kitchen longer than your in-person ordered food.

I notice this. But in my experience I figure a leading reason for this is because the take out containers come in certain sizes, but in a restaurant food is often served on plates or bowls that can hold more food.

Heh I actually really like Sweetgreen, and I like it so much that when I order in-person, I smile and politely tell the employee to give me more. They almost always comply.

Tons of people use cash. I used to work for Deliveroo. I got cash tips approx 30-50% of orders.

I always tip in cash. I pay in cash for orders that accept it. Why would I use card unless forced?

edit: this is a rhetorical question, I don't literally need to know why physical objects are cumbersome to you, this is HN lol

> Has anyone else looked into the tipping vs not tipping thing

I consider it an abhorrent practice and lament its leakage from the US into the UK market by the laptop class; since I don't want to normalise this practice in the UK I simply judge a delivery's service on the not-tipping aspect.

I always tip $5 for a single meal and $10 for a meal for two. These delivery folks clearly don't pull in a lot of money, so if you are privileged enough to be able to afford takeout, you can also throw down a tip.

> "Oh we had more time so we made a better order..."

I think this would have a lot to do with it, there's definitely a different time pressure between "the customer is watching me prepare this in front of them and is impatiently waiting on me" versus "the customer won't arrive for at least 15 minutes and I'm waiting on them".

Also, another factor is I've noticed it is sometimes the managers rather than the usual line workers that make the online orders, if the Chipotle doesn't have dedicated workers for the online order line. That would impact quality as well, as you may just presume that the Managers have more overall experience over average line workers. (I've also had cases where Managers actively watching the line have given me more food than unsupervised lines.)

My theory is if the manager is not near the line at the time when you order, you get bigger scoops.