28% of food deliverers admit to snacking on your food — and other take-out revelations: Study
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As the competition in the food industry runs hot, more and more restaurants are turning to delivery to stay competitive. And we are now learning more about how that is working and which apps are winning.
U.S. Foods, one of the country’s biggest food services companies, conducted a survey of over 1,500 American adults who use food delivery apps and 497 food delivery workers to highlight the emerging industry.
One jarring finding: 28% of deliverers said that they have actually eaten food from the orders they were supposed to deliver.
What consumers want
According to the study, the average person has two food delivery apps and uses them three times a month. The four most popular apps are Uber Eats (UBER), Grubhub (GRUB), DoorDash and Postmates.
On average, survey respondents were willing to spend $8.50 for delivery fee, service fee and tip combined. Ninety-five percent of people tipped deliverers regularly and think $4 is a good amount to tip on average, according to the study. Half of those surveyed said that they tipped on a per cost basis, while 25% tipped a set amount, and 25% tipped a set percentage of total.
The biggest complaints among customers? Food that’s not warm and fresh took the top spot, followed by late food and incorrect orders. And in order to ensure freshness and quality, 85% of customers said that they would like the restaurants to provide tamper-evident labels.
Deliverers have complaints too
On the flip side, of the 500 deliverers surveyed, the top complaint was poor tips. More than half complained about when the food was not ready at the restaurant, and 39% didn’t appreciate it when there weren’t clear instructions from the customer in the app.
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Heidi Chung is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @heidi_chung.
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