Responding to GrabFood rider's viral post, restaurant owner says there are errant delivery workers too

After a GrabFood rider voiced out his frustrations dealing with rude F&B staff during the course of the circuit breaker, a Dempsey Hill restaurateur has spoken out about his own grievances with errant delivery personnel. 

On Saturday (May 9), a man by the name of Jerry Toh wrote a lengthy Facebook post about how he and his fellow food delivery workers are treated poorly by restaurant workers who can’t cope with their orders, resulting in late deliveries and angrier customers. The post went viral, with many netizens empathising with his plight. 

AsiaOne spoke to Ken Lim, the owner of Spanish eatery Don Quijote, who has another perspective on the issue. He highlighted that restaurants have also been struggling under the pressures of the pandemic — and some food delivery workers are not without fault too.  

Lim shared that he faced some troubles with food delivery personnel on more than a few occasions, some of which required him to personally calm his customers down. 

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One incident involved a customer who received his food cold after waiting for one-and-a-half hours. Lim was told that the delivery rider had been rude when confronted, and claimed that he was simply following the instructions of the restaurant to make a delivery to another location first. 

This was a lie, Lim stated: “The travelling time between the two places is only 10 minutes, and there’s no reason why it would take 90 minutes — even if he had done so the other way around and stopped for lunch in between.”

“Do the delivery companies do anything about such bad hats? No,” Lim asserted, adding that any repercussions would be negated as demand for delivery workers outstrips the supply during this period. 

Lim said that he had to make amends to the disgruntled customer by sending him a free meal in the future. Still, he remains frustrated that his restaurant “had zero part of the fault in this”. 

“It’s not just delivery riders who are ‘poor things’... restaurant owners and customers (and their hungry kids) are too... the world isn’t so one-sided,” he concluded. 

The outspoken restaurateur continues to be the managing director of Don Quijote since the establishment of the Dempsey Hill tapas joint in 2008. Back in 2014, Lim got into an online spat with a disgruntled customer who accused the restaurant of turning him away even though the restaurant was “far from full”. 

ilyas@asiaone.com