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
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“Yes I’m naming and shaming”
God i love not being on Reddit
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.
We don’t have pubs in the area next to my local BWW. Lots of places don’t have pubs.
Ya that makes sense.
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.
You forgot regulatory capture and socialism for the business owners
That’s how free markets work. Free markets and capitalism are different things.
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.
As a non-US citizen, this is a ridiculous greed.
As a US citizen, this is a ridiculous greed.
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 - ¥800. 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.
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
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.
You’re correct, and that’s another beef I have with the whole industry.
It’s actually more of the problem. They can pay wait staff 2.13 an hour, but they cannot make them pack up take out orders for that. So it literally does cost them more to do take out.
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.
Wrong. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped “Basic Combined Cash & Tip Minimum Wage Rate” means that if tips do not meet the federal minimum wage, the employer must make up the difference.
What part of that do you think applies to this discussion?
Do you think it’s illegal to tip on a Togo order?
From what I’ve heard, that rule is quite rarely enforced. Since some portion of tips is probably going to be in cash, the employer doesn’t have a 100% perfect ledger of how much each person made in tips, so they aren’t just going to automatically fill that gap unless the employee asks for it and backs up their claims.
There are a few implicit incentives at work that would prevent an employee from pursuing that course of action unless it’s happening really regularly. I’ve heard stories about people trying to go after it and facing “unrelated” retaliation. While such retaliation would be illegal if a causal link were proven, the entire thing is shrouded in so much plausible deniability that I imagine most people would just find it easier to take a few dollars loss than pursue legal action. Another thing preventing such action is that many cash tips often go unreported, so attempting to bring all of the numbers to the floor in a legal setting is not something most servers would want to try anyways.
Anyways, that only guarantees a wage of $7.25/hour. That’s a poverty wage, and the thought that employees need to fight their employers just to get that is depressing. States differ, but a pretty large number still use the federal minimum wage. Any employer that can’t manage to pay their employees a living wage, much less $7.25/hr, should absolutely go out of business.
The answer to all of this is to remove the nonsensical reduced minimum wage for tipped workers. Some states have done this (WA comes to mind) - they make state minimum wage plus tips. Worth noting that the restaurant industry there is doing just as well as anywhere else, so clearly it’s not such a harmful thing to establishments.
It’s averaged out across a pay period, and in my twenty plus years in the service industry I’ve never heard of a server making less than minimum wage. They’re generally the highest-paid employees on a per hour basis.
The group of people who benefit the most from tipping are the servers.
Stick to topics you actually know something about.
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.
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.
Or compare it to yet another innocuous bs fee slipped in under the radar by companies testing what they can get away with
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
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’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 .
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.
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.
https://www.today.com/food/restaurants/buffalo-wild-wings-takeout-fee-backlash-complaint-rcna90228
Tiping culture has gotten wildly out of hand
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.
I hate when restaurants force me to tipe
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
