To-go or not to-go; that is the question.

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen. I know it’s been a while since I’ve written anything new, but hey, how much is there to write about the restaurant industry? “A lot! You’ve written so much” you might say.

“Oh, ho, ho! Although I write some pretty damn amazing stuff, it is only so limited to my experiences and beliefs instead of me criticizing the little day-to-day things!” I’d reply. Now, if you’d rather me write shorter blog posts about the daily things that I see that I could write on, I’ll start doing that. However, it is my utmost belief that you, the loyal reader (all 6 of you), deserve exactly what you have been getting the past couple months: nice, long, TLDR (Too Long Didnt Read) walls of text, belittling the average man, woman and child to the point of sounding pompous and arrogant in my own special little way without actually being pompous or arrogant. Oh, and long-ass lines of sentences without periods or proper grammar.

I have a few topics in mind that I could write on, but I just write when I feel like it. That is, unless I was getting paid.

Today’s topic is about the fine art of To-Go food. To-Go was a concept started by Mac Cromwell in 1927 in the podunk town of Sharpersville, Idaho when his potato restaurant had an abundance of people wanting to walk into his restaurant and walk out with food off of his regular menu. Now, that was a total pile of bullcrap, but hey, it made you think “really? huh, interesting”, didn’t it?

Just about every restaurant with a menu has the ability to take To-Go orders. Generally they might send out their menu in the mail to thousands of residents, or they’ll have the menu online. But most of the orders come from people who have dined in once, but don’t want to dine in again on a particular night. So, they call up and order stuff with which they are familiar and come in to pick it up to bring home to the chibblets and spouse.

Usually, one person in the restaurant is responsible for To-Go food. Your regular waiter isn’t going to be waiting tables and taking to-go orders, unless it’s a special job like a bartending/waiting/To-Go amalgamation; a “to-go specialist” as they are sometimes referred.

The unfortunate thing is the lack of actual ability of some people to place a To-Go order. It isn’t too difficult to place a to-go order, but sometimes it seems like some people just left their brains sitting on the kitchen counter when they picked up the phone and smashed the numbers on their cell phones enough times until they got the right number like a team of monkeys typing Shakespeare. Let me give you a scenario: A 45-year old man calls up one of his family’s favorite restaurant at 8:00 pm to place a to-go order. With the employee on the phone, the man turns to his family over his shoulder and asks them what they want. Little Timmy can’t decide, the wife wants to order something that was a special 3 months ago and he cant decide between the steak and the chef salad (but he thinks he might want the chef salad without the cheese, though). Five minutes goes by and they finally get everything together, get their total bill – $21.54 – and hangs up after the employee tells him it would be 25-30 minutes. He goes and picks up the food that’s waiting for him 45 minutes later, pays with a credit card and signs the bill without leaving a tip. Happily, he returns to his car and drives home until he realizes that his food is cold and calls up the restaurant to complain to the manager.

What’s wrong with this all-to-common picture? Can’t figure it out, Captain Oblivious? I’ll spell it out in detail.

First, he called up in the middle of dinner rush without figuring out what his family wants ahead of time. If you don’t know your favorite items from your favorite restaurants, then try to find them online, or have an idea of what you want to eat. Also, he’s got to understand that a restaurant is usually extremely busy between 11:30 – 1:30, and 7:00 – 9:00. These are the “rushes”. By delaying his order as much as he did, his one call took up a whole 5 minutes placing an order that should have been made in 45 seconds. He may have cost that to-go employee quite a bit of money from other orders because they decided to hang up and order somewhere else.

Second, he didn’t ask his wife for a second option in case the special wasn’t on the menu anymore. Usually if an item is a “special”, it will only be on the menu for a brief period of time. You should always check to make sure that the specials haven’t changed if you are planning on calling in to order one.

Third, He didn’t leave any kind of tip for causing the person on the other line trouble. I know this may sound pompous, but this is someone’s livelyhood. That person taking to-go orders rely on massive amounts of orders to make any kind of money. One out of every nine or 10 orders will leave a tip. That’s sad.

And fourth, he picked his food up much later than he was told to do so. If the to-go employee says 25-30 minutes, get there 25-30 minutes if you want your food to be hot and fresh. Don’t expect the kitchen to keep your food hot for you while the restaurant waits for you to pick up your food. We don’t really care that your food is cold when you pick it up. It was hot when we made it 15 minutes ago. This is the only time that we are pretty much allowed to tell you that you’re a failure to your face and you should have gotten here earlier. Well, in nicer terms of course (damn tact).

Listen to these rules and heed by them. Because if you are placing a lengthy order over the phone and you hear the other person let out a really long sigh, yes, it’s because you’re an asshole!