Cafe Owner Shows "Insane” Number of Orders from Delivery Apps in Viral TikTok

Working in the foodservice industry can often be a thankless job, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are throngs of people who've been overworked, and with an uptick in home delivery, restaurants have seen huge surges in business and many of them are struggling to keep up with the demand.

And even though there are plenty of social media posts and folks on various platforms expressing just how mobbed their places of work are, it can be difficult to really sympathize with just how hectic some shifts can get for food service workers. However, a viral TikTok from user @CarlaCafe provides a pretty good example of the number of orders that come in on any given day.

In the clip, a tablet that showcases the amount of schedule Postmates orders coming into the cafe is shocking a lot of TikTokers and has others who work in restaurants nodding their heads.

In-text overlay on the video, they wrote: "We thought we were taking video of a countdown to opening on Postmates but the numbers were going the wrong way."

One user wrote that seeing the counter number continually go up was "physically painful to watch." While others offered up their own solution to stopping the trickle of orders coming into the restaurant: "and that's when you slide the settings bar down, and turn off the wifi."

Another TikTok who commented on the clip said that this very same phenomenon is what caused them to walk out of their job: "This is what happened when my job got Uber eats and I cried so hard I left."

Others said that the notification noise on the tablet is one that instantly gives them stress/PTSD: "That sound goes off in my brain daily."

"That notification jingle HAUNTS my dreams" @Youincarnate123 penned.

There were others who couldn't believe that the Cafe employee was complaining about the number of orders coming in, stating that more business could only be a good thing for the company in question: "I’m confused, why is this a problem? Don’t you want business so you continue to have a job and paycheck? I see a lot of complaints in the comments too."

When another user told OP to "Run" the TikToker said, "I wanted to hide but then I realized I owned the place."

So while seeing the sheer number of Postmates orders is definitely intimidating, at least the owner of the Cafe can then use an average of the orders that they're receiving to see how much profit they can expect to make in a day and then compensate their employees and make more hires in accordance to how much they're receiving.

Other users offered up practical advice, too. They could change the settings on the tablet to decline orders when the business is closed, because what could've happened is the tablet is queuing up a bunch of meal purchases that were put in while the restaurant wasn't operational. Which means that when they open, they'll have a bevy of different orders just waiting to be fulfilled.

Have you ever worked at a restaurant that has Postmates/UberEats kiosks set up? Is it as nerve-wracking as the video makes it seem?