Chain restaurant fees are getting absurd
Chain restaurant fees are getting absurd
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/food/restaurants/buffalo-wild-wings-takeout-fee-backlash-complaint-rcna90228
You voted with your wallet. That's how capitalism is supposed to work.
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
If capitalism worked Buffalo Wild Wings wouldn’t exist. Trash food. Go to a local pub or something.
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.
That's how free markets work. Free markets and capitalism are different things.
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!
It’s literally less work than waiting on a table.
It's not as if they're paying their waitstaff normal minimum wage in most states; tipped employees can be paid less if the tips make up for it.
Tiping culture has gotten wildly out of hand
I hate when restaurants force me to tipe
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.
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.
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
Automatic and compulsory tipping culture in the US for every single thing is just out of control.
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.
That’s crap too because of you dine in and have leftovers they don’t charge for a take home container. They didn’t have to wash plates or silverware. It should wash out.
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.
Same here. Literally no reason to go to McDonalds these days, worse food for a worse price.
“Yes I’m naming and shaming”
God i love not being on Reddit
Can lemmy please not be the curmugenoy spot where people whine about restaurants? Please?
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.
This is a community dedicated to what is... mildly irritating.
As a non-US citizen, this is a ridiculous greed.
As a US citizen, this is a ridiculous greed.
This may be imposed by the take out provider. Some states/municipalities also tack on extra fees
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'd disagree with that there, these things are bought in bulk for literal pennies from wholesalers
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.
I find it hard to believe that a cheapass disposable container costs more than keeping up with the dishes
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.
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.
I haven't ordered from BWW in a few years but that is shameful what some of these corporations will add in "fees" to see how much they can nickel and dime their consumer.
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.
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
i spent $20 at Arby's for a burger, fries, and shake (as a meal). just go to Olive Garden... seriously lol
If you are sitting in the restaurant, you are probably paying for some ridiculously overprized drinks as well.
Maybe compare it to ordering the same stuff but picking it up yourself.
Street tacos are going to be better anyways. As good as bww might be, I'll take a truck with a passionate team any day.
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
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.
Why does dd and Uber disgust you?
I mean,it's only a dollar. In general, tipping culture is our of control but I'm fine with nominal fees for local places. I know during covid, Chinese restaurants closed for awhile around us.
It's a dollar going to corporate, not the employees.
Stupid me read that as Chinese instead of chain. Reading comprehension is not my strong suit.
I barely even go out nowadays, I just try and fail to make it myself.
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
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