ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- If you’re ordering out tonight, you may want to pick it up yourself.
A new study by US foods shows the delivery person may steal some of your food before you get it.
Food delivery apps, like Uber Eats, Door Dash, and others, have made ordering food very easy.
"There’s prime times where you’ll have at least five or 10 drivers in here at once waiting on an order,” said Bianca Rengifo, a server at La V Vietnamese Fusion in St. Petersburg. She processes orders all the time.
"Downtown is definitely a pedestrian place so if they can’t get here in the rain or they’re stuck here in the rain that’s kind of where we’re at,” she said.
But a new study from US Foods reveals a germy little secret: About 1 in 4 drivers sample your food before you get it.
"What do you expect when people make as much as they do delivering food? They’re going to get hungry and they’re going to want to eat,” said Ernie Fuglevand, who uses these apps all the time.
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Most people surveyed say they’d be very upset by a delivery person snuck a bite. It happened in California — a family spoke to a local news station after they caught their delivery person on their security camera taking a sip of a milkshake before handing it over.
So why are they doing it? According to the study, 54 percent of drivers were enticed by the smell of the food. Which is why it’s no surprise that 85 percent of consumers to invest in tamper-proof labels.
"More stapling of the bags shut,” said Sam Becker. “We’re seeing more of that. It’s just a nicer feel when you receive the food [that way] then just an opened crunched up bag."
