Hands off the fries

A new poll proves it: You can’t trust anybody

T’S 2019, and pizza is far from the only food that’s delivered to your home anymore. Thanks to ye olde Internet, a bunch of mobile companies have popped up. Companies like Uber and Lyft change the way we get from A to B. And some of those companies are changing how food gets from A to B.

But a new survey reveals customers may not be able to trust as many as 30 percent of those food delivery drivers. Imagine you’re hungry, you want pizza, but the restaurant doesn’t deliver. You’re not interested in going out in the rain to get this pizza, so you pull up an app like Uber Eats or Grubhub.

You place an order for a large pizza, and when it arrives, you discover a slice missing. Your delivery driver, with a pepperoni stuck in his beard, tries to convince you that you ordered the Pac-Man Pizza Special, but you aren’t having it. No tip.

Now imagine it wasn’t just your pizza the driver was eating on the way over, but your fries. You want some stranger’s hands on your french fries? Or your taco/ burger/lobster frittata?

NPR reported a U.S. Foods survey that helped shine light on this awful truth. Here’s more from the outlet:

“Respondents ranged from 18 to 77 years old, with a median age of 31. Drivers who reported working for at least one food delivery app had a median age of 30. In an effort to better understand the process of ordering and delivering meals, the company asked both groups about their ‘habits and pain points.’ Of the drivers surveyed, 54 percent admitted to being tempted by the smell of a customer’s food, and about half of those people actually took a bite.”

If you can’t trust a food delivery person, who can you trust in this bleak world? Is nothing sacred? What other terrible food-related truths are yet to be revealed by future U.S. Foods surveys? On second thought, we don’t want to know.

One other detail from the article that left us scratching our heads was this tidbit: “‘We think it’s possible that by 2030 most meals currently cooked at home will instead be ordered online and delivered from restaurants or central kitchens,’ according to UBS.”

Really? It makes sense that the number of Americans eating restaurant food will probably go up since apparently nobody has time to cook anymore in this busy gogo lifestyle society has carved for itself.

But 2030 seems a bit soon for the majority of consumers to replace cooking with delivery, especially with restaurant prices on the rise. And if these lobster frittata plates keep showing up with a bite or two missing, ramen noodles are going to make a comeback.