In the takeaway war in 2025, major platforms have attracted a large number of consumers through preferential activities such as full discounts and red envelopes, and the number of drink orders has surged. However, behind this seemingly lively market battle lies the frequent friction between clerks and riders. From the problem of card meals caused by explosive orders to the conflicts between the two sides due to time pressure, these contradictions not only affect the consumer experience, but also expose the deep-seated problems in the operation and management of the food delivery industry. This article will delve into the dilemma of store clerks and riders behind the food delivery war, analyze how they understand and cooperate with each other in a high-pressure environment, and how food delivery platforms and merchants can protect the basic rights and interests of employees while pursuing efficiency.
Out of sight, the conflict is intensifying.
Under the propaganda offensive of “yellow is more smart”, “red will win” and “blue must win”, the takeaway war in 2025 will be hotter than the early summer in Beijing. With the blessing of full discounts and red envelopes, the first to explode was the drinks, 1.9 yuan of poplar nectar and 2.9 yuan of strawberry latte, so that the orders of tea shops and coffee shops were endless.
Before these orders can be converted into drinks in the hands of customers, they need to go through two roles: the clerk who makes the drink and the rider who delivers the takeaway. On the back of the takeaway war, the time that was squeezed again became a sharp sword hanging over the heads of these two characters, making contradictions and conflicts imminent.
Conflict out of sight
At eight o’clock in the morning, a shopping mall in the South Fourth Ring Road was not yet open, and six or seven takeaway riders gathered here at the employee passage. A Tims employee wearing the iconic red plaid uniform rushed out the door, carrying several bags of takeaway in each hand.
When the rider saw the comer, he immediately surrounded him.
“Just a little thing, I can’t do it.” “If you can’t do it, don’t open takeaway.” Riders complained, many of which were more unpleasant curses and swear words with sexual organs. One rider has been waiting for more than twenty minutes.
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The clerk didn’t speak, and after the takeaway in his hand was taken away, he rushed into the mall again.
The cursing rider did not get the echo of the other riders, and the clerk did not return the favor, so he turned to the security guard guarding the employee passage and began to complain. There are two doors between the passage entrance and the store, 100 meters apart, and the rider does not know that there is only one employee in the store, and the employee does not know how much the rider will be deducted for overtime food delivery. Both parties are used to this process and don’t have extra time to explain to each other.
One rider had a “Don’t rush me” sticker on his car
In June 2024, Manner Coffee was exposed to three consecutive incidents of conflicts between store clerks and customers, and the brand’s personnel management model to control labor costs sparked heated discussions. There is only one employee working in a store, and employees can only leave notes asking customers to wait in order to go to the toilet, such impersonal operations, coupled with the salary and benefits of employees who do not match the intensity of work, have won widespread sympathy from consumers.
But after that, the manpower problem of the chain coffee shop did not ease.
Xiao Jiang, who has worked at Tims Coffee for nearly four years, told Hedgehog Commune that many tea and coffee brands, including Tims Coffee, have strict control over labor costs. In addition to making orders, it is also necessary to clean, sort out materials, thaw the materials needed for the next day, check the expiration date of materials, etc.
Xiao Jiang said: “If you keep working, you can really barely complete it within working hours.” But this will cause the partner to be tense and torturous throughout the day. In addition, preparing irregular food safety inspections, persuading customers to register as members of the ordering mini program, promoting discount cards and coupons, asking customers for post-meal reviews, and dealing with post-meal reviews are also the work of store clerks.
On the first day of the hot co-branded drink during the brunch rush, as long as you stay for a while in the coffee and tea store, you will find that the quarrel between the clerk and the rider becomes a background sound.
Hedgehog Commune flipped through the negative reviews of many coffee stores in Beijing on the Dianping platform, and “the clerk collapsed his face in the morning” and “the clerk quarreled with the rider again” were one of the one-star reviews. The reasons for such evaluations are self-explanatory: the clerk’s face is a bad service attitude, and the quarrel between the clerk and the rider is of poor quality on one side, which destroys the atmosphere in the café and affects the dining experience.
After the takeaway war began, the first to face explosive orders was Cudi Coffee, which was once as low as 1.68 cups. Endless cup stickers and receipts, endless coffee liquid, endless takeaways, and endless shelves, for Cudi clerks, daily work is no different from “fighting”.
Stores with high turnover can still resist this wave of impact with more sufficient manpower and equipment, but for some small stores, relying only on a coffee machine to make hundreds of takeaways in a day, the clerks and machines are under great pressure, and the store’s computer order system will even collapse due to explosive orders. Some in-service Cudi employees shared on Xiaohongshu that most of the clerks did not receive salary subsidies due to this takeaway war, and a small number of clerks who were “better” in the franchised stores could get a certain bonus.
Once the order explodes, not only will the clerk be so busy that he can’t stop, but it will also create a problem that neither the clerk nor the rider wants to face: stuck meals.
From the clerk’s point of view, card meals mean that a large number of orders pouring in in a short period of time are difficult to serve according to the expected time, and drinks that take less than a minute to make on average during off-peak periods and meals that can be picked up within ten minutes need to be doubled in time to complete when orders explode.
The lack of manpower is only one of the reasons for the stuck meal, and the time for the coffee machine to extract coffee liquid and the oven to heat the food is fixed, and it cannot be shortened because of the large number of lists. From the rider’s point of view, card meals mean that after waiting for the average time to pick up the food, the merchant fails to serve the meal, and the urging is fruitless and can only wait.
Hedgehog Commune once witnessed a quarrel caused by a burst order in a Bawang Chaji store.
At that time, the explosive peripherals were launched, and the store had hundreds of takeaway orders alone. As far as the eye can see, there are more than a dozen clerks in the front hall alone, and the meter-long dining table is lined with takeaway bags and dine-in drinks. A clerk pulled out a takeaway receipt longer than her height, divided it into several sections, and sorted it out quickly, while another clerk was busy packing takeaways, surrounded by more than a dozen riders in front of them. Complaints and scolding came one after another, and a rider reprimanded the clerk for not packing for him, and the clerk first explained that he did not pack what he did not do well, and then raised his voice several times in the constant urging and said, “Excuse me, how many hands do I have?”
The hot weather and noisy environment exacerbated the impatience of both parties, and the clerk changed from calling the rider “you” at the beginning to a blunt “number”, until the end he was silent, ignoring the rider’s inquiries, and just immersing himself in the mechanical action of packing.
The contradiction between “current system” and efficiency
On the one hand, because limited human resources need to give priority to ensuring the quality of the main products, putting the joint needs of coffee consumer groups before the horse is inverted, which is not conducive to consumers’ perception of the brand; On the other hand, the quality control of food processed by the factory is relatively stable, and the sale of prepared food only requires heating and display equipment, which can also reduce the area of meal preparation space, improve meal delivery efficiency, and reduce store operating costs compared with ready-made food.
However, there is also a chain coffee brand that chooses to use “ready-made warm food” to attract consumers in order to take a differentiated competitive route. It is Tims, a Canadian brand that only entered China in 2019, and in January 2023, it has a Chinese name, Tianhao Coffee.
If you search for Tims coffee on social platforms, you can see a common complaint: “Tims change to bagels, don’t make coffee.” Lu Yongchen, CEO of Tims Tianhao China, once said that 2024 is a key transformation year for Tims Tianhao China, and the brand has consolidated the differentiated strategic positioning of “coffee + freshly made hot food”.
The shift of Tianhao Coffee is in line with consumers’ needs for fresh and healthy ingredients, safe and transparent food processing. But in the face of such a turn, the clerks complained – on the one hand, they were in a hurry to make coffee and bagels, and on the other hand, there were riders who were constantly urging them to eat, and ready-made bagels would not increase their income, but once again magnified the possibility of friction between the clerk and the rider.
One morning, Hedgehog Commune went to a Tianhao Coffee store on the first floor of an office building in the East Third Ring Road, and eight takeaway riders waited in the store, either sitting in the guest seats or standing at the food serving position directly opposite the door. Starting at half past eight, the “jingle bell” prompt sounded continuously, accompanied by the sound of rubbing paper bags and the steam of the coffee machine, and the morning rush hour of a coffee shop arrived.
“(You take) 77? I haven’t picked it up on the 64th. A rider complained that in the race against time, they would not let go of any clues of suspected being cut in line.
Two smoking riders stood outside the store. Behind them, a whole floor window is posted with propaganda posters. Next to Tims’ signature bagel burger and croissant reference picture, the red font “upgrade” and “fresh handmade is better” are particularly conspicuous.
The previous hot food production process was that the clerk would make various bagel burgers a day in advance or before business, freeze them in the refrigerator, and then take them out to heat them after ordering. The process after changing to make-to-order is that after the customer orders, the food is heated on the spot and then assembled. For stores with high turnover, they can also prepare better-selling categories in advance and keep them warm under infrared lights.
Xiao Jiang told Hedgehog Commune that the store’s breakfast turnover accounts for a large proportion, and the beverage category is made quickly, but the baking, assembly and packaging of warm food are more time-consuming, resulting in the phenomenon of stuck meals, which will cause dissatisfaction among dine-in customers and takeaway riders. Switching to a ready-made system makes in-store workflows more complex, but store associates don’t get longer preparation times because of this. There are two main reasons:
1) Consumers’ expectations for freshly made hot food are still fast food, and they can be eaten after ordering in a few minutes, after all, warm food is just a coffee partner, not a freshly fried staple food that has to wait for dozens of minutes;
2) The company strictly controls the efficiency of people, and determines the number of employees on the job based on the turnover of the whole day, without considering how busy the morning rush hour is and how one or two employees distribute heavy work.
Xiaoxiao, who works part-time at Tianhao Coffee, told Hedgehog Commune that her store only arranges two clerks during the morning rush hour, one is responsible for making hot food, and the other is responsible for making drinks, helping dine-in customers order, packing takeaways, replenishing materials, inquiring about reservations, etc.
“Customers who order food on the spot during peak hours have to urge, and the rider’s big brother also has to urge, but we are all busy like a spinning top.” Because the two of them were too busy, Xiaoxiao and her colleagues generally didn’t have time for breakfast. “This is not good for the stomach” and “hungry stomach”, but Xiaoxiao also knows that the company will not arrange three people to work the morning shift, because the turnover has not reached the point where three people can be arranged.
It is good for consumers’ production requirements, and if it cannot match the corresponding manpower, it will become a new “trouble” for store clerks.
In 2025, Tianhao Coffee will take healthy warm food as the main line of development, expand the lunch track, and successively launch the “Weight Weight Lunch Box” series, with bagel burgers, rolls, and multigrain rice as the staple food, supplemented by hash browns, grilled sausages and other snacks, which are matched by consumers at will. The bagel burger and roll in the lunch box need to be cut in half, and some clerks complained on social media that “I don’t know what to cut”.
In the newly launched weight loss energy bowl, multigrain rice, mixed roasted vegetables and meat are more cumbersome and take longer to bake and assemble. Xiao Jiang complained, “Do you think you can not get stuck in the meal, and you are complained about the slow delivery?” ”
The inherent “emotional labor” attributes of the service industry, boring and repetitive work processes, high-pressure working environment, and uncompetitive employee benefits make the mobility of employees extremely large.
Part-time employees can leave, but full-time employees take on a job task – recruiting and training new people, and when part-time employees are too stressed to choose to leave, full-time employees will fall into this cycle again.
Xiao Jiang pointed out that new employees will basically only arrange three or four days of training, and then go directly to work, and they must be able to make more than 40 kinds of drinks and more than 20 kinds of hot food. He believes that the company “will not spend time and cost to train employees” and “iron generals and flowing soldiers, if this batch is not done, then the next batch will be replaced”.
In February this year, Lu Yongchen revealed in an interview with 36Kr that the proportion of orders containing warm food at Tims has increased to more than 50% and will continue to remain at this level or even higher.
Can migrant workers in different situations understand each other?
At another Tianhao coffee store in Beijing, Hedgehog Commune heard a rider complain to the clerk that he had been deducted money.
“I reported that the meal was overtime, and I was deducted five yuan.”
“I earned thirteen yuan by running two orders at your house, and now I have been deducted fifteen yuan. I have to run five kilometers to get the meal back, and I don’t know how much to deduct when reporting the meal loss. ”
The rider brought back a packed paper bag that was soaked with coffee and the entire bottom of the bag was torn, saying that customers reported that the drink was leaked not once or twice. In this situation, the clerk insisted: “You fell.” It hasn’t been sprinkled like this before. ”
“If you can’t make it, don’t open takeout.” In the Tianhao Coffee store, Hedgehog Commune heard this complaint from the rider more than once. A clerk hit back, “Then don’t take so many orders.” “During the brunch period, while the clerks are facing the pressure of exploding orders, the takeaway riders are also facing the pressure of stuck meals and food delivery timeouts. A platform rider told Hedgehog Commune that overtime orders will be deducted according to the excess time, and three to four yuan will be deducted for five minutes of overtime.
Xiao Jiang and Xiaoxiao both expressed their understanding of the rider’s mood of urging orders, after all, riders earn money according to the amount of orders. But quarrels with riders are still part of their daily work, and they can’t put all the “pot” on their heads just because they understand the riders, so they themselves can’t survive in this system.
They are aware of the unreasonableness of the takeaway system, for example, takeaway reservations can cause unnecessary conflicts between clerks and riders.
Regardless of the distance of the takeaway address, the time of issuing the reservation form is the same, and only the ticketing clerk can make it. If the store explodes and the meal takes more than ten minutes or even longer, then the rider’s delivery time is only twenty minutes or even shorter. Whether the delivery distance is one kilometer or five kilometers, the rider only has this time left.
The worst situation is: in order to ensure the temperature of the food, the time for early orders is short, the store is slow to explode, the takeaway address is far away, the rider receives multiple orders in a tight time, and multiple pressure factors are superimposed.
Riders don’t know the rules of the ordering system, and sometimes, before the store has issued an order, they receive a reminder to go to the store to pick up the food. The clerks were also helpless, they could not modify the time of the reservation form. Xiaoxiao felt aggrieved, “The rider grabbed us and scolded us, but we were also victims.” ”
If the store is slow to deliver food, the takeaway rider can choose to transfer the takeaway order to avoid other orders overtime, or report the food overtime to the system.
Xiao Jiang told the Hedgehog Commune that the clerk and the rider have also had physical altercations, and his advice to his colleagues is not to have a conflict, if the injury cannot be counted as a work-related injury, and it will also affect his work, “the rider really can’t wait, then it is recommended that he transfer the order.”
But the reality faced by riders is that the transfer order may not be successfully transferred; If the merchant reports that the meal is overtimed, the final responsibility for the overtime order may not fall on the merchant.
Because food delivery platforms need merchants, and even in the context of food delivery wars, food delivery platforms are “competing” for merchants to some extent.
Hedgehog Commune learned that the merchant of a takeaway platform has a meal reporting right, which is updated daily according to the merchant’s meal reporting data in the past 7 days, and the data includes the 7-day meal reporting rate and the 7-day meal reporting rate, the former reaches 60%, the latter reaches 90% is considered to be the data standard, and the merchant can enjoy the right and right of “no responsibility for bad reviews” on the same day, which means that when the merchant receives a bad review of slow food delivery or delivery time, he can use this right to appeal to the platform that the bad review is not responsible.
The calculation rules of a platform’s meal reporting indicators are compiled by Hedgehog Commune
The problem is that the real reporting rate of meals is not the same as the overtime rate of meals. Merchants can “sacrifice” the overtime rate of meals, even if the overtime rate of meals is high, it can ensure that the real reporting rate of meals meets the standard, and the result is the same – merchants do not have to bear the responsibility of delivery overtime.
The riders who reported the meal overtime but were deducted because of it did not know this, and their grievances could only be spread to the merchants. And the merchants in their eyes are not the store managers or bosses responsible for managing the store and controlling human efficiency, but just the clerks who do the work of two people in order to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and a group of migrant workers who are also trapped in the system, and these clerks do not even have the power to open or close stores on the takeaway platform.
In the Hedgehog Commune, the store where the clerk and the rider scolded the store, the clerk received a warning to “don’t swear in front of customers”. In Bawang Chaji’s signature welcome speech, consumers happily took the tasting handed to the clerk with both hands, completely unaware of the conflict that had occurred in the store.
(In this article, Xiaoxiao and Xiao Jiang are pseudonyms.) ）
Resources:
1. “Exclusive Interview with Tims: 67% year-on-year, how did “coffee + bagels” explode? “, Kamen.
2. “Tims Tianhao China Lu Yongchen: How to sell 58 million bagels? “, 36 Kr.
3. “Losses narrowed by 53%, capital chain is still worried, Tims Tianhao China starts the coffee battle of “profit breakthrough”, US stock research agency.
