10 ms·
What frustrates me with restaurants (especially the small business mom and pop ones) is that they are not adapting to this situation. When I go to their websit
by bit_logic 6y ago
What frustrates me with restaurants (especially the small business mom and pop ones) is that they are not adapting to this situation. When I go to their websites (sometimes they don't even have one), I want to see two things:
* A way to order and pay online.
* Details on their contactless pickup procedure if I drive there. I want them to bring it to my car, then I can unlock my trunk, and they can place it inside and close it.
If they did this, my use of these food delivery apps would drop to almost zero. I don't mind driving to pickup my food, it's even good for my car which has been sitting idle for weeks. But I want it to be contactless pickup. If bringing it to my car is too hard, I might even be ok with waiting outside their restaurant, text them, and they bring it out and place it on a table.
But these restaurants have no plan, put no effort into adapting, then complain about high fees for food delivery apps. I don't like these expensive apps either, please provide an alternative!
- BurningFrog 6y agoYou may overestimate the tech skills of "mom and pop" restaurants. They're one of the shrinking segments where people without much education and language skills can make a decent living with some hard work. If they knew how to maintain the web site you want, they'd probably be in a better paying, more academic career. Disclaimer: This is just my impressions from the outside. I know nothing. But I doubt mom or pop will show up on HN to tell their story.
- syshum 6y agoAll they need to do is watch one of the endless youtube ads for squarespace or wix... No one needs web developers anymore, you just need to sign up for a wix account it will do everything /s
- petre 6y agoShopify rather than those two since they also need to sell a product. Or a new platform (opportunity) that also takes care of food delivery or connects couriers to restaurants.
- JAlexoid 6y agoWait! You really think that restaurants are even remotely capable of handling customer support volume, that delivery companies work with?
- tlbsofware 6y agoSounds like a good venture for Uber
- mydongle 6y agoNo, you're right. Many people on HN would scoff at UberEats taking a 30% cut or whatever from orders, but how much would it cost for every mom and pop to try and implement something like that themselves? And have someone to maintain it? Whatever people want to say about it, these are orders (or at least a signficant number of them) that the restaurants would've never received, if not for the app existing. 70% is better than 0%. And that 30% isn't in stone. Last place I worked at, they were able to negotiate for 15% because of how desperate Uber was.
- aaomidi 6y agoHey if this is exposed there can certainly be non profits who setup delivery systems like this with a goal of providing a service, getting paid, but not trying to keep growing and growing. It would allow users to understand this isn't free and actually pay for a subscription that essentially does this. This regulation creates an opportunity for new business models.
- bilbo0s 6y agoVery good point. I hadn't considered this, transparency allowing for potential competitors to differentiate.
- zaidf 6y agoRemember before uber, yellow cabs had their own app. The experience was shitty. Nonprofits are not known for great software products and operational skills.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tatersolid 6y agoYellow Cab Company is the furthest thing in the world from a nonprofit. They recently went bankrupt, but a century of monopoly tactics and mafia ties preceded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Cab_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Cab_Company
- freddie_mercury 6y agoYou don't need to "maintain a website". You can do all of this trivially from within Facebook if you don't want to "maintain a website". In the country I live in, only the hugest businesses have a website. 99% of businesses run off of Facebook (you generally order by just sending them a FB message saying "send me 12 of X" and then you pay Cash On Delivery). Here's how you add a Menu to your restaurant's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/help/533179700126832 https://www.facebook.com/help/533179700126832
- cortesoft 6y ago"Cash on delivery" would not allow the OPs requirement of contactless delivery.
- rkho 6y agoYou could theoretically place said cash in an envelope in the trunk for the exchange
- cortesoft 6y agoThis is sounding a lot more difficult than ordering from an app.
- gnicholas 6y agoIf you have exact change.
- JAlexoid 6y agoLOL! Do you trust a random restaurant to make your order correctly? The restaurant next door is run by a 20 something lady and she still managed to fuck up opening hours and the menu online.
- C1sc0cat 6y agoOr if the USA had contactless cards it would not be problem
- deleted 6y ago
- JCharante 6y agoI expect a restaurant to have a working bathroom, the owner doesn't need to know anything about indoor plumbing, that's why even a mom and pop shop hires a contractor to take care of that. Don't see why web is any different.
- impendia 6y agoIs there some reason you can't (or don't want to) call them?
- ikeyany 6y agoThe idea here is to avoid contact with human beings altogether.
- chrisseaton 6y agoMany people these days just flat out don't like having to make or receive a phone call.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- C1sc0cat 6y agoOh well they can go hungry then - or learn basic social skills
- BiosElement 6y agoLanguage barrier and awful call quality also come into play. It's sometimes next to impossible to understand them and that's even assuming a strong language grasp. Much of the best food comes from the old dude/woman who's been cooking all their life, but not necessarily the easiest to communicate with.
- cortesoft 6y agoI can re-order my previous orders from Grubhub or DoorDash with one hand on my phone while I chase after the kids or am busy doing something else. Don't have to enter payment info, find my wallet, look at a menu, or worry about the noise level.
- JAlexoid 6y agoHave you talked over the phone to an average Chinese restaurant lady or Taco place? If I had to ask for the menu from my local, one of the best that I had, taco truck - I'd hang myself by the time I got to actually deciding what my order would be.
- schoolornot 6y agoI want * A way to order and pay online WITH A TRUSTED PAYMENT PROCESSOR. * A way to track the order from the time it's submitted to acknowledged to en route to delivery. * A way to get a partial or whole refund if the order is incomplete or incorrect WITHOUT A PROMISE THAT I'LL GET SOME FREE THING ON THE NEXT ORDER. * A website that's functional with pricing equal to what would be charged with an in-person order. It seems to me that 99.9% of restaurants are incapable of setting this up and would rather make it someone else's problem and pass the added costs off to customers. Which is fine by me. I have no gripes about Uber or it's culture or it's 30% cut. Just note that while restaurants can pass off ancillary costs to customers, we can make a statement by passing those costs off to Uber by not using the service OR to their "employees" by zero tipping. I have no qualms about either.
- analog31 6y agoRetail shopping has gone through a similar evolution, so it might be a source of inspiration for how to make online food delivery more successful. Today, retail customers have the same, or an analogous, list of wants. When e-commerce first emerged, a similar 99.9 of retailers were similarly incapable of meeting those demands. Simply handling disputes is enough to bury any retailer who doesn't learn how to handle it. If it doesn't consume their money, it will consume their time. I have a very small side business, and have handled the above needs by working exclusively through PayPal. Also, I have enough of a mark-up to cover disputes. It's kind of ironic, but to survive in business, you have to be comfortable with somehow letting your customers pay for your mistakes.
- JAlexoid 6y agoMajority of people simply do not understand. When people are not in front of you, people are much faster to complain and dislike. Thus when this guy sold a sub-optimal pizza in his shop to a person in a hurry, they would rather have the food and not start a verbal fight. But when they are physically removed - they are free to look at the quality and make a complaint. PS: Customers aren't paying for your mistakes, your profits suffer. I just recently sold off a bunch of excess sports masks(it's faster to order a bulk package from a Chinese manufacturer, than buy one). I sold them off on eBay at cost and people bitched to me about the fact that the postman didn't come on time... while not paying for expedited delivery. In the end I lost $10.
- cortesoft 6y agoThere is another big advantage that aggregators have; I only have to enter my address and payment info once, and can order from a ton of restaurants. It can save all my orders from lots of places so I can reorder. It can find all the places that deliver to my address.
- bsder 6y ago> I want them to bring it to my car, then I can unlock my trunk, and they can place it inside and close it. That's a little excessive given there are lots of customers and only a handful of restaurant workers. What I have seen restaurants do is that they put your food on the tables (which are idle anyway) with a number. If you tell them who you are when you walk in, they tell you the number and you can pick it up without interacting with people.
- techsupporter 6y agoI've seen this as well, at the ~60% of restaurants who will still serve me without my having a car. Walk in, give name from safe distance, get food from spot. What sucks about the other 40% is half of them are "our door is locked, pay a delivery service" and the other half are "use our drive-thru and if you come in anything other than a vehicle with a license plate we will yell at you." I don't want to do the former because delivery people seem incapable of working out where I live and I can't do the latter.
- impendia 6y agoI've been buying groceries in this manner. (I submit a MS Word document with my order, they call me to arrange payment and double check that whatever substitutions they need to make are okay, and I show up in the afternoon and pop my trunk.) Probably not practical in big cities, where parking can be haphazard, but many restaurants have parking lots right in front.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- yoshamano 6y agoOut here in the hinterlands of "fly-over country", I just want a phone number, address, menu, and hours of operation. I don't care what form they take be it website, Facebook, a Yelp page, whatever. Something that a search engine can index. Just those 4 things can be something of a large ask from the mom and pop places around here. What you're asking for sounds like science fiction.
- petre 6y agoThen you won't be buying food from dark kitchens which is what these food delivery apps encourage.
- yoshamano 6y agoTrue, but dark kitchens/ghost restaurants aren't really a thing around here.
- JAlexoid 6y agoMost of the "flyover" country isn't even on these apps.
- yoshamano 6y agoI'm surprised by the number that are around here. The town of 7,000 people I live in (Marshall, MI) doesn't have a lot in the way of delivery app participation. However, 15 minutes away is a town of 52,000 people (Battle Creek, MI), and I would say at least half of the local mom and pop places there are in bed with at least one delivery app.
- chii 6y ago> Just those 4 things can be something of a large ask from the mom and pop places around here. i bet that there's a way to turn this sort of need into a utility that can be provided with a very simple method. It used to be very difficult to operate a telephone when it was new. Now it's ubiquitous. Calling somebody meant looking up their number in a phonebook. And it is because of standardization. So i propose that all businesses standardize in describing what they sell - make this a requirement by law, and there will be companies that can provide cheap services to do this task for them. Using this standardization process, online ordering and other (like inventory tracking) can also be "standardized" in such a way that makes it outsource-able.
- gjs278 6y agoyou have severe autism if you think every place is going to accommodate your trunk idea
- ForHackernews 6y agoThere's is an alternative, it's called the telephone! Are you that terrified of making a phone call? If it's a small restaurant, just ring up and ask them how you'd like to pick up the food!
- megablast 6y agoI know, why don’t the waiters just edit the website, the cooks integrate a payment api, the cleaners implement a back of house system, etc.... Crazy.
- ulfw 6y agoHow's the whole "I can unlock my trunk, and they can place it inside and close it" going to help? If you're worried about exposure, someone still prepared your food, touched it in the kitchen, brought it out to your car...
- lakerz16 6y agoI'd much rather get my food from someone that has not been interacting with the previous 100 customers. And now every customer after me won't be exposed to me, either.
- hedora 6y agoThey’ll have touched the trunks of the 100 previous people, and breathed concentrated common air from the 80 of them with an SUV, minivan or truck. Is this really better than having the customer walk into a big open room (with a mask in some jurisdictions), and pick up a bag?
- hedora 6y agoI’m perfectly happy phoning in an order, walking in and sticking my credit card in a slot. I’m orders of magnitude more likely to catch it at the grocery store, or during a trip to our partially-closed and therefore over-crowded parks. However, no one in our house is in a high risk group. We’d rather get one of the two strains that are common now (preferably the first one!) than roll the dice with whatever’s common during the second surge later this year.