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How can you help? Most restaurant owners would very much prefer it if you called in your order. If you’d really rather order online, see if you can do it via t

by lacker 9y ago

How can you help? Most restaurant owners would very much prefer it if you called in your order. If you’d really rather order online, see if you can do it via the restaurant’s website. This kind of explains everything. As bad as Seamless might be, it's a far better experience for the customer than using the average restaurant website.

godzillabrennus 9y ago
Restaurants have god awful tech. My initial reaction when they force me to order direct for delivery is to find another restaurant. Explains to me why GrubHub and the like have been able to turn revenue in this space.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Spivak 9y ago
But the irony is that just calling the restaurant is a better experience than any app has been able to deliver. One wonders why restaurants even bother with online ordering.
- jghn 9y ago
  No way. The number of screwed up orders I had went down massively when I started ordering online. No longer do I have a pained conversations where we're both facing a language barrier. No wonder do I have to wonder "did they actually get that right?" Also I hate talking on the phone.
- thaeli 9y ago
  So I can talk to a human, who may have trouble understanding my accent, and slowly read out an order, then have it read back, correct it, then pay by reading out all the numbers on my credit card over the phone? And this is somehow better than using an app, where I just click what I want and hit go?
- traviscj 9y ago
  Which restaurant do you call? Do you find it on Yelp/Some other review website? Are those reviews of the dine in experience or the dine out experience? Will the person I speak to get my order correct? I dunno. I'm put off by the "% revenue buys place in the list" model, but I have a hard time saying that the online order aspect doesn't add some value.
jogjayr 9y ago
> This kind of explains everything. As bad as Seamless might be, it's a far better experience for the customer than using the average restaurant website. There are network effects. Even if some new competitor comes up with a far superior experience for restaurant websites (some kind of Shopify thing) the customers might all be looking on Seamless.
zippergz 9y ago
Yup. Similarly, I often find myself looking for dinner options on OpenTable, ignoring restaurants that don't take reservations that way, because the friction is so much lower. I know that OpenTable isn't great for a variety of reasons, and I also know that I'm missing out on a handful of places that don't accept reservations that way. But it beats the awful experience of calling around to restaurants, hoping they answer, going back and forth on available times (maybe trying a few places until you find one that's available), and then hoping that the person you spoke with wrote it down right....

by lacker 9y ago

godzillabrennus 9y ago

Restaurants have god awful tech. My initial reaction when they force me to order direct for delivery is to find another restaurant. Explains to me why GrubHub and the like have been able to turn revenue in this space.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Spivak 9y ago

But the irony is that just calling the restaurant is a better experience than any app has been able to deliver. One wonders why restaurants even bother with online ordering.

jghn 9y ago
No way. The number of screwed up orders I had went down massively when I started ordering online. No longer do I have a pained conversations where we're both facing a language barrier. No wonder do I have to wonder "did they actually get that right?" Also I hate talking on the phone.
thaeli 9y ago
So I can talk to a human, who may have trouble understanding my accent, and slowly read out an order, then have it read back, correct it, then pay by reading out all the numbers on my credit card over the phone? And this is somehow better than using an app, where I just click what I want and hit go?
traviscj 9y ago
Which restaurant do you call? Do you find it on Yelp/Some other review website? Are those reviews of the dine in experience or the dine out experience? Will the person I speak to get my order correct? I dunno. I'm put off by the "% revenue buys place in the list" model, but I have a hard time saying that the online order aspect doesn't add some value.

jogjayr 9y ago

> This kind of explains everything. As bad as Seamless might be, it's a far better experience for the customer than using the average restaurant website. There are network effects. Even if some new competitor comes up with a far superior experience for restaurant websites (some kind of Shopify thing) the customers might all be looking on Seamless.

zippergz 9y ago

Yup. Similarly, I often find myself looking for dinner options on OpenTable, ignoring restaurants that don't take reservations that way, because the friction is so much lower. I know that OpenTable isn't great for a variety of reasons, and I also know that I'm missing out on a handful of places that don't accept reservations that way. But it beats the awful experience of calling around to restaurants, hoping they answer, going back and forth on available times (maybe trying a few places until you find one that's available), and then hoping that the person you spoke with wrote it down right....