when i used to work mobile bar regularly, people would CONSTANTLY take other peoples drinks

for example:

i was solo bar on a rainy sunday afternoon. pretty steady day, so i couldn’t babysit all of my time to mop. these women come in cafe and order three TALL HOT drinks (two white mochas, and a latte). i had recently put down a COLD GRANDE white mocha with a shit ton of modifications (sccf, almond milk, caramel drizzle, ect).

the eldest woman in the group, after placing her order IMMEDIATELY goes to the handoff plane and grabs the mobile and starts to drink it. at this point i didn’t see her walk in with the other two women, so i assumed she was the mobile orders owner. it was when i finished the second drink that i knew

i was upset. BEYOND upset.

i kindly handed the third drink out and said “have a nice day! ☺️”

one of the women said “we ordered three drinks? why is there a fourth?”

that’s when i said “yes ma’am. all three of your TALL HOT drinks are right here. that drink that she has in her hand (with a straw in it btw) is a mobile order.”

the woman says “oh well how are we supposed to know that it was a mobile order?”

bruh. 1. you ordered THREE HOT TALL DRINKS.
2. your name is on all three TALL HOT drinks
3. we have a sign on the handoff plane saying “mobile order and uber eats pickup area”

i said “can i please have the sticker on that COLD drink. i will have to remake it for the person that ordered and PAID for it, since you decided to grab it and immediately drink it. thanks”

beyond pissed.

We keep our mobiles behind the bar so that we can connect with customers. This also prevents theft. Personally I prefer it that way, even though it throws off my rhythm a bit… because if I was a customer I’d worry about someone else touching my drink if it was just sitting out there lol.

We do have the occasional cafe customer though that grabs a HOT drink and says “is this mine?” To which we reply “no ma’am… you ordered an iced tea.” Does that feel iced?!!??!?!!?!

My store has extremely high incidents with theft. We as well struggled with MOP being stolen, our solution actually helped us increase customer connections!

I will say, we do have the privilege of being a somewhat slow cafe+drive thru. But we repositioned the staging area for drinks and food to be pointed out of customers reach. When they arrive for their order it forces us to connect with them while we get their name and hand off drinks!

I wouldn’t recommend this if your location doesn’t have a dedicated/planted position to assist! Best of luck!

It happens at least once a day. I’m not really sure what happens to them but it seems like we always have to remake a food or drink because it just disappeared off the pickup plane and no one really noticed. I wish there was like a place we could put the mobiles behind the bar so the person has to come up and tell us the name. That way we could be sure that everyone would just get all their right stuff and we’re not just trusting people to not snatch something that isn’t there’s when it’s in the open.

i’ve had people steal mobile orders that don’t even have the same name. like they literally just go “oh this venti iced caramel macchiato looks like my grande dragon drink” and just take the drink and leave. then when the person who actually orders the drink shows up it’s super awkward because we have to search around for the drink only to ask what it was and mess up sequencing to remake it

Why are people so dumb. I will see someone check all the cold drinks to find theres and when i call out a hot drink its their drink! Like why would you think the cold one is yours?

One time this lady ordered a tall london fog with almond milk in cafe and walked over and pickedup a venti latte with a million add ins and I didnt really know who she was until she went to the register and was like excuse me you mad emy drink wrong I ordered a london fog and this tastes like coffee? And the person on register comes over and asks me to remake the london fog because it was made wrong and I'm like "what are you talking about the london fog is sitting right there, it's been here for 15 minutes and nobody's touched it" the lady overheard me and grabbed it and said nothing n left.

I didn't know what drink she grabbed so I had to eait until the person that did come in and order came to get it and I made it immediately.

At mine we keep them behind the counter with the food too and make people ask for their order by saying their name

my store just recently started putting mobiles “out” for customers to grab and in my opinion it’s going fucking atrociously. we have to remake so many orders because people are thieves duh

We went through a period of time where it happened a lot. Now we have mobil set up right by our warming station which helps with keeping an eye on them.