compare this nearly 30 year old script with the absolute red hot hell of trying to order anything at all through toast,caviar,grub hub,uber eats or postmates and you'll want to check out the latest RCS and build it on X86 before the end of the day.
im serious. compared to the relatively clean, coherent and transparent burrito script, the dumpster fire that constitutes modern online ordering is an unforgiveable travesty.
again this is not delivery...no gig shit this is just simple pickup n go we're trying to do here but at the end of the byzantine transaction you make on a vendors website you've opted into a dozen mailing lists and you're getting menus and direct mailers from any and every local and non-local restaurant and bar...complete with mailers from the goddamn platform itself shilling you to either get in your car and play delivery drone or sign up for endless datamining.
and hell, you might not even be ordering from the restaurant itself. most of these platforms set up the virtual equivalent of a pop up tent in front of the business. If nothing else, this script has pushed me to reconsider email-to-fax orders to the handful of small local restaurants in the neighborhood.
I recently opened UberEats because I was given an Uber gift card. There was a promo that said "no delivery fee" and I thought, "that seems too good to be true, but let's see." I then saw a promo for a local donut shop that was buy-one-get-one for certain items. It appeared that I could have two donuts delivered to my door for just a few dollars. This seemed too good to be true, although the donut shop is pretty nearby.
I went through to the payment screen and was greeted by several delivery-related fees, including a "small order fee" (which presumably only applies to inexpensive orders) and a "service fee", and a "CA Driver Benefits fee". None of these fees apply on orders that you pick up yourself, so it's pretty dishonest to say "no delivery fee" front and center in the app.
The user only discovers these fees at the very last screen, once they've invested in researching restaurants, choosing items, adding them to their cart, and possibly coordinating with other family members regarding their preferences/orders. Basically, users are much more locked-in by the time they realize there are actually many delivery-related fees, even if the "delivery fee" itself is not applied (when I looked another time, this particular fee was much smaller (1/8-1/4) of the delivery-related fees that remained.
It might be a difference in jurisdiction, but I've never noticeably been caught out by this in the UK.
Honestly, I think I'm seeing a lot of rose-tinted spectacles here because I can order a burger to my door and track it all the way in about 15s flat if I want to with the Uber eats app. I really don't see what the problem is.
American prices rarely if ever include taxes in the listed price. This is something that americans are used to, and will usually budget extra money for when they go to pay, but it catches a lot of people from other countries off guard.
How much more does it cost you than if you picked it up yourself? I'd also be curious to know how a burger in particular holds up through the delivery process.
I understand the time/money tradeoff and would be happy to spend a few dollars to save myself a 20-30 minute roundtrip drive, but it seems like the cost of this convenience is much larger than I prefer, even though we only eat out occasionally.
The one I usually get is one of those delivery only joints I think but the delivery fee is usually a flat few quid tops (£3 at most, almost zero for the less popular ones).
The delivery has always been absolutely perfect to the point of actually needing the app to see where the driver is because it's usually early.
That's great — I hope this sort of pricing becomes more common! I just checked, and getting UberEats to deliver a $14.99 Impossible Burger will cost me $10 in fees (not including tip or taxes). The restaurant is 3 miles away.
I avoid all the middlemen gig economy food delivery apps entirely. One I do like is the Little Caesars smartphone app in combination with their pizza portal, it really is seamless and a social anxiety sufferer's dream. Little Caesars is an entirely private single corporate owner company; I feel like there is a Linux to BSD analogy somewhere in here.
I dunno - I always thought we had it pretty good now. Previously delivery options were limited to the handful of takeout menus you had stuck in a binder - not knowing if they were up to date, if they were running specials, etc.
Now I can get a burrito made to order to my door in 20 minutes and I don't even have to hand over my credit card details to a minimum wage server. I'll take this Byzantine system any day.
I'm with you on that - longer than I care to think ago, I used to order takeaway almost exclusively from Domino's pizza because I could order it online and have it delivered.
v1.0 of anything is never perfect. UberEats, DoorDash, etc are not v1.0 of deliveries. Online ordering in the early 00s were atrocious. Modern day services should at least be v2.0, but it seems like we are only at v1.5 (v1.0 reskinned and more options). These apps also seem to be run in the style of the mafia in that they take as much from all of their "stores" until they bleed them dry.
At least one of the better restaurants I know of in my area seems to have its own online ordering set up and functional, I'm assuming they have needed to cut out the cost of grubhub etc just to survive. Nice to see it working for them.
Another one seems to be using something called ChowNow, which appears to have monthly fees instead of commissions, which I imagine might also make a big difference financially to its clients.
It would be pretty straightforward to set up a modern-day version of this low-bloat pickup-ordering:
- Simple web form with e.g. stripe integration (only paid-for orders are submitted)
- Server to process orders and send to restaurant
- Local computer and printer (or fax/vfax setup) at the restaurant
Could probably pair with a static CMS for photographs of the food. Delivery is, of course, a whole different problem to tackle.
im serious. compared to the relatively clean, coherent and transparent burrito script, the dumpster fire that constitutes modern online ordering is an unforgiveable travesty.
again this is not delivery...no gig shit this is just simple pickup n go we're trying to do here but at the end of the byzantine transaction you make on a vendors website you've opted into a dozen mailing lists and you're getting menus and direct mailers from any and every local and non-local restaurant and bar...complete with mailers from the goddamn platform itself shilling you to either get in your car and play delivery drone or sign up for endless datamining.
and hell, you might not even be ordering from the restaurant itself. most of these platforms set up the virtual equivalent of a pop up tent in front of the business. If nothing else, this script has pushed me to reconsider email-to-fax orders to the handful of small local restaurants in the neighborhood.