Grubhub driver caught on camera eating customer’s food: See the video

A California restaurant owner says he was shocked last week to find surveillance video of a Grubhub driver ripping open a bag of food with his teeth and eating an order he was meant to deliver, right in front of the restaurant.

On Oct. 13, ABC7 Los Angeles first reported on the situation involving Martin Luzanilla, CEO of Mexihanas Hibachi Grill in Long Beach, California.

“My sister had helped that Grubhub driver out, but I was aware that he had picked up a large order and it was going to one of our customers who has purchased from us in the past,” Luzanilla tells TODAY.com. He says the incident occurred on Oct. 11 in the middle of the restaurant’s dinner rush.

“I was keeping an eye on the cars out there and I noticed that the car hadn’t moved and it was parked right in front of our entrance door,” Luzanilla says, adding that he glanced out the store’s one-way window. “I noticed that he was eating in the vehicle.”

Luzanilla says he went outside to confront the driver, who claimed that it was actually his food, so Luzanilla apologized and headed back into his shop, but something was still bothering him.

“I couldn’t really see into the vehicle because I’m a little bit taller than how his vehicle was,” he says. “I gave him a fist pump and I came inside but I went right to my tablet.”

In the footage, obtained by TODAY.com, the driver can be seen tucking into a takeout container for a full minute and a half before Luzanilla comes into view. After Luzanilla confronts the him, the driver stops eating and drives off, presumably to deliver the remainder of the food.

“We called the customer about a dozen times, if not a little bit more, and he finally called back and we advised him what had happened and not to eat the food and throw it away,” Luzanilla says. According to the customer, the order was delivered. “He FaceTimed me to show me how the packaging was wrapped. I was amazed at how clean that packaging was done.”

Luzanilla says that after he got in touch with the customer, the restaurant remade the order and he delivered it personally to the customer’s home.

“Ever since this happened, we upped our game and we bought our own tamper-proof seals,” he says. “We’re taking an extra measure of precaution to ensure that every package that we send out is properly sealed and labeled and can’t be tampered with.”

When reached for comment, Grubhub said this specific driver will no longer be delivering through its platform.

“We have no tolerance for misconduct on our platform,” a Grubhub spokesperson tells TODAY.com. “The vast majority of our orders are completed without incident or complaint, and when things don’t go as planned, we work hard to make things right. Upon hearing of this situation, we took immediate action and permanently ended the driver’s contract with us, removing his access to our platform. We’ve also reached out to the diner and restaurant owner to address and help resolve the situation.”

A 2019 survey by restaurant food supplier and distributor US Foods found that of nearly 500 delivery workers surveyed, more than 25% said they’d eaten food from an order.

“When customers are calling in and saying, ‘Hey, my order’s missing an item,’ or, ‘I didn’t get my garlic noodles’ or something, Grubhub charges us.” Luzanilla says. “At the end of the day, small business owners are the ones that are paying for this, you know?”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com