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I've had a pretty great experience calling restaurants to place orders. I talk to a human, tell them my order, they repeat it back to me, and tell me it will be

I've had a pretty great experience calling restaurants to place orders. I talk to a human, tell them my order, they repeat it back to me, and tell me it will be X dollars and ready at Y o'clock. I show up at the specified time and the order is ready to go. A couple times I had to wait 5 minutes because they were inundated and couldn't keep up. No stupid app to download. No account to create. No bullshit fees. No marketing emails. I just tell them what I want and then go get it. It's refreshing.

mikysco 6y ago
Yes! I don’t know why there’s so much apprehension about calling the restaurant. So often I learn more about the dish I’m ordering - does it come with X ingredient yes/no, should I order Y add-on, is rice extra. Simple questions usually omitted from online menus. Makes the experience just a tiny bit more human and that’s honestly enough for me
- astura 6y ago
  I have very minor issues with phone orders that make me prefer online ordering. Restaurants are loud, add in shitty phone signals and heavy accents - the result is communication barriers are common and you have to do a lot of back-and-forth. Another issue is the person taking the order usually has more job duties than just taking phone orders, so they can be distracted if it's busy and forget to write something down and/or sometimes you have to call back several times until someone has a free hand to answer the phone.
  - gambiting 6y ago
    Yep, same. Every time I order over the phone I'm just hoping the other person understood what I said correctly, because I sure as hell haven't understood anything they said. It's a combination of accents, very loud backgrounds, and English not being my first language.
    - ikornaselur 6y ago
      Had a big order at a pizza place for 9 pizzas. 3 of them came out wrong. All parties involved speak my native language. The receipt had the wrong items listed on them, because the person taking the order checked the wrong things while taking the order. I guess it could have been verified better after they took the order, but I can't help but to feel that the order would have been more likely to be correct if I had checked boxes in an online form and verified there before sending it off. I personally prefer using websites/app for this reason, I can just in my own time make the order, get confirmation from others with me that I'm ordering with and when everyone is happy, just submit. If I ever have the choice between calling vs ordering online, I will never call.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > Yes! I don’t know why there’s so much apprehension about calling the restaurant. Maybe it is because I am relatively young. I grew up apps first, so all the little annoyances of phones (accents, noise in the background, dropped calls, a lack of written records, etc) frustrate me more than others who didn't grow up with apps that just worked.
40four 6y ago
I agree 100% with you. I think the expectations of the parent comment are very misplaced. Restaurant owners are usually not tech people, nor can many of them afford to hire tech people. To expect all restaurants to pay exorbitant amounts of money setup/ maintain online ordering systems is not realistic. Also, I have never had a restaurant ask me for a card over the phone. Order times are a rough guess based on current traffic, no matter over the phone or an app. And 9 times out of 10 the server repeats your order before hanging up. If they don’t, it is easy to ask them to. To be fair, I have been surprised many times how difficult it can be to find an online menu for places I like in my area. Lots of places might not even have a website, but in these cases, I actually use GrubHub and the like to read the menus only. I never order through them. Here is an easy way to beat these broken GrubHub shenanigans. Find an online menu, or use GrubHub only to read the menu menu if need be. Find the real phone number on Google maps. Place your order over the phone. Pick it up yourself and save tons of money on fees (and now apparently save the restaurant from getting screwed too). Make sure to pick up a paper menu on your way out for next time :)
- BeetleB 6y ago
  > To be fair, I have been surprised many times how difficult it can be to find an online menu for places I like in my area. Lots of places might not even have a website, but in these cases, I actually use GrubHub and the like to read the menus only. Don't. Do. This. Grubhub menus are often incomplete (and we all know the prices are wrong). I just checked a nearby restaurant I often frequent and the items I usually buy are not on the Grubhub menu. If they don't have a web site and you want to see the menu: Go to either the Google Maps listing or the Yelp listing. If Yelp, don't click on the menu if they have one within Yelp. Instead, click on the photos. You'll almost always find photos of the menu uploaded by Yelp users.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Just FYI, the menu photos on Yelp are not guaranteed to be up to date, either. The only real way to see what the restaurant's actual menu is without going there is if they have it up on their own website.
wl 6y ago
I've had far too many orders get screwed up over the phone, even when I've had them read back to me. Also, you still have to deal with physical payment when you pick the order up.
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> No stupid app to download. No account to create. No bullshit fees. No marketing emails. I just tell them what I want and then go get it. It's refreshing. That's how it always was, I really don't get this disconnect between people wanting to always hide behind a keyboard or smart phone when it comes to food. It's always been the most social thing I do in my entire day, as it has been done since for thousands of years, and I just can't see why people feel either super embarrassed and outright aloof when it comes to ordering food. I mean if you know you're going to try and use an expired coupon or not going to tip well, I guess that makes sense, but in my experience most people just seem to have some inexplicable aversion towards food ordering and pickup. Yet seem to want to chat with the checkout lady about mundane matters, whereas I just want to get out asap and cook with the stiff I'm trying to buy and keep things to a minimum.
- barbecue_sauce 6y ago
  Ordering food via telephone is, to me, the equivalent of trying to use a command line interface without knowing any of the options, and instead of "help" being automated, you have to bother a person who is probably already extremely busy and overworked to clarify the menu. It's also much easier to pay with a credit card via an app or website than over the phone.
  - bluntfang 6y ago
    >you have to bother a person who is probably already extremely busy and overworked to clarify the menu. That is built into the price of the food you ordering. You aren't bothering someone. You're giving them a job.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      Whether or not it’s their job, one can still feel bad about doing it. When I worked retail, if we didn’t have something in stock (after looking), I’d apologize. Not because it’s my fault, but because I felt bad. It’s the reason people don’t ask workers at retail stores for help; they (most of the time) don’t want to bother someone even though it’s their job.
cblum 6y ago
You're describing a good experience. Try calling a restaurant where they barely speak any English. Or one that's busy and you and the other person can't hear each other over the loud noise.
MattGaiser 6y ago
> No stupid app to download. No account to create. No bullshit fees. No marketing emails. I just tell them what I want and then go get it. It's refreshing. The interesting thing is that I view all those (except the fees) as benefits. App makes it always easy to access and I can casually browse for food when hungry. Account means I can re-order a past thing with a tap and that all my payment information is saved. Marketing emails mean coupons.
chrisseaton 6y ago
Most people these days just really don’t like having to speak on the phone.
- catalogia 6y ago
  Why is this? Shyness?
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    You have to give a phone call your complete attention - you can't do anything else while doing it. You need to be somewhere relatively quiet to do it. It blocks both people for the duration of the call. Some people have accents that are hard to understand. It's easier to make a mistake when reading something out or writing it down. There's no record of the phone call being made and the food ordered. Lots of reasons.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      One for me is: it makes group orders harder as you have to get everyone’s order either beforehand or take breaks while getting it during the call. With an app, I can take breaks during the ordering phase until I have everyone’s.
bambax 6y ago
Exactly! How hard is this?
mwexler 6y ago
My experience on the phone differs from yours. My customizations (low salt diet or other health requirements) are ignored or done incorrectly or misunderstood due to my accent or just background noise; I have to repeat the credit card twice since it was mis-keyed; I can't save my favorites as different people pick up the phone, so starting from scratch each time. And when I pick up my order, I discover only too late what's missing and have to decipher a scrawled notepad stapled to a bag to see if it was even listed. I agree, onboarding on these apps is miserable. But the benefits of a digital order, when done correctly, can really be better for some consumer cases than the voice call.
jedimastert 6y ago
Unfortunately phones are pretty difficult for me personally. I'm somewhat hard of hearing, meaning that I can't necessarily understand the other side of a phone call. I've also recently moved to an area much more diverse than my hometown. While this is great and I'm meaning people from all walks of life, it also means that there are suddenly a lot more accents that I'm not used to hearing and having trouble understanding and communicating with. Ordering on the phone has not been a great experience for me...
- bluntfang 6y ago
  Have you considered using the federal TTY program that is made for people who need accommodations over the phone? https://www.federalrelay.us/tty https://www.federalrelay.us/tty
  - jedimastert 6y ago
    I'd need a TTY phone and a land line for that to work. This issue is not a $260 issue
    - bluntfang 6y ago
      Please consider clicking through to the link before commenting. You obviously did not do that. There's also accommodations for different disabilities, like the Deaf and hard of hearing via sign language. https://www.federalrelay.us/ip-relay.html https://www.federalrelay.us/ip-relay.html >IP Relay uses an Internet connection, a computer or mobile device with a web browser and a Communication Assistant (CA) . An IP user types what they want to say, the CA relays the conversation to their caller and then types their caller's response back to the IP user. To start using IP Relay, users are required to register for a 10-digit number through the Federal IP Relay website. To make your call today, go to www.federalip.us. https://www.federalrelay.us/vri.html https://www.federalrelay.us/vri.html >Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) is a feature of Federal Relay's Video Relay Service (VRS). This option provides deaf and hard of hearing Federal employees with on-demand remote sign language interpreting in order to facilitate communication between individuals who are in the same location (i.e. office, cubical, front desk, etc.).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
catalogia 6y ago
I fully agree, that's how I do it too. As a bonus, when you order from the same restaurant enough times this way and become a 'regular', the process becomes even more streamlined when they start to remember your preferences.

mikysco 6y ago

Yes! I don’t know why there’s so much apprehension about calling the restaurant. So often I learn more about the dish I’m ordering - does it come with X ingredient yes/no, should I order Y add-on, is rice extra. Simple questions usually omitted from online menus. Makes the experience just a tiny bit more human and that’s honestly enough for me

astura 6y ago
I have very minor issues with phone orders that make me prefer online ordering. Restaurants are loud, add in shitty phone signals and heavy accents - the result is communication barriers are common and you have to do a lot of back-and-forth. Another issue is the person taking the order usually has more job duties than just taking phone orders, so they can be distracted if it's busy and forget to write something down and/or sometimes you have to call back several times until someone has a free hand to answer the phone.
- gambiting 6y ago
  Yep, same. Every time I order over the phone I'm just hoping the other person understood what I said correctly, because I sure as hell haven't understood anything they said. It's a combination of accents, very loud backgrounds, and English not being my first language.
  - ikornaselur 6y ago
    Had a big order at a pizza place for 9 pizzas. 3 of them came out wrong. All parties involved speak my native language. The receipt had the wrong items listed on them, because the person taking the order checked the wrong things while taking the order. I guess it could have been verified better after they took the order, but I can't help but to feel that the order would have been more likely to be correct if I had checked boxes in an online form and verified there before sending it off. I personally prefer using websites/app for this reason, I can just in my own time make the order, get confirmation from others with me that I'm ordering with and when everyone is happy, just submit. If I ever have the choice between calling vs ordering online, I will never call.
MattGaiser 6y ago
> Yes! I don’t know why there’s so much apprehension about calling the restaurant. Maybe it is because I am relatively young. I grew up apps first, so all the little annoyances of phones (accents, noise in the background, dropped calls, a lack of written records, etc) frustrate me more than others who didn't grow up with apps that just worked.

40four 6y ago

I agree 100% with you. I think the expectations of the parent comment are very misplaced. Restaurant owners are usually not tech people, nor can many of them afford to hire tech people. To expect all restaurants to pay exorbitant amounts of money setup/ maintain online ordering systems is not realistic. Also, I have never had a restaurant ask me for a card over the phone. Order times are a rough guess based on current traffic, no matter over the phone or an app. And 9 times out of 10 the server repeats your order before hanging up. If they don’t, it is easy to ask them to. To be fair, I have been surprised many times how difficult it can be to find an online menu for places I like in my area. Lots of places might not even have a website, but in these cases, I actually use GrubHub and the like to read the menus only. I never order through them. Here is an easy way to beat these broken GrubHub shenanigans. Find an online menu, or use GrubHub only to read the menu menu if need be. Find the real phone number on Google maps. Place your order over the phone. Pick it up yourself and save tons of money on fees (and now apparently save the restaurant from getting screwed too). Make sure to pick up a paper menu on your way out for next time :)

BeetleB 6y ago
> To be fair, I have been surprised many times how difficult it can be to find an online menu for places I like in my area. Lots of places might not even have a website, but in these cases, I actually use GrubHub and the like to read the menus only. Don't. Do. This. Grubhub menus are often incomplete (and we all know the prices are wrong). I just checked a nearby restaurant I often frequent and the items I usually buy are not on the Grubhub menu. If they don't have a web site and you want to see the menu: Go to either the Google Maps listing or the Yelp listing. If Yelp, don't click on the menu if they have one within Yelp. Instead, click on the photos. You'll almost always find photos of the menu uploaded by Yelp users.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Just FYI, the menu photos on Yelp are not guaranteed to be up to date, either. The only real way to see what the restaurant's actual menu is without going there is if they have it up on their own website.

wl 6y ago

I've had far too many orders get screwed up over the phone, even when I've had them read back to me. Also, you still have to deal with physical payment when you pick the order up.

Melting_Harps 6y ago

> No stupid app to download. No account to create. No bullshit fees. No marketing emails. I just tell them what I want and then go get it. It's refreshing. That's how it always was, I really don't get this disconnect between people wanting to always hide behind a keyboard or smart phone when it comes to food. It's always been the most social thing I do in my entire day, as it has been done since for thousands of years, and I just can't see why people feel either super embarrassed and outright aloof when it comes to ordering food. I mean if you know you're going to try and use an expired coupon or not going to tip well, I guess that makes sense, but in my experience most people just seem to have some inexplicable aversion towards food ordering and pickup. Yet seem to want to chat with the checkout lady about mundane matters, whereas I just want to get out asap and cook with the stiff I'm trying to buy and keep things to a minimum.

barbecue_sauce 6y ago
Ordering food via telephone is, to me, the equivalent of trying to use a command line interface without knowing any of the options, and instead of "help" being automated, you have to bother a person who is probably already extremely busy and overworked to clarify the menu. It's also much easier to pay with a credit card via an app or website than over the phone.
- bluntfang 6y ago
  >you have to bother a person who is probably already extremely busy and overworked to clarify the menu. That is built into the price of the food you ordering. You aren't bothering someone. You're giving them a job.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Whether or not it’s their job, one can still feel bad about doing it. When I worked retail, if we didn’t have something in stock (after looking), I’d apologize. Not because it’s my fault, but because I felt bad. It’s the reason people don’t ask workers at retail stores for help; they (most of the time) don’t want to bother someone even though it’s their job.

cblum 6y ago

You're describing a good experience. Try calling a restaurant where they barely speak any English. Or one that's busy and you and the other person can't hear each other over the loud noise.

MattGaiser 6y ago

> No stupid app to download. No account to create. No bullshit fees. No marketing emails. I just tell them what I want and then go get it. It's refreshing. The interesting thing is that I view all those (except the fees) as benefits. App makes it always easy to access and I can casually browse for food when hungry. Account means I can re-order a past thing with a tap and that all my payment information is saved. Marketing emails mean coupons.

chrisseaton 6y ago

Most people these days just really don’t like having to speak on the phone.

catalogia 6y ago
Why is this? Shyness?
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  You have to give a phone call your complete attention - you can't do anything else while doing it. You need to be somewhere relatively quiet to do it. It blocks both people for the duration of the call. Some people have accents that are hard to understand. It's easier to make a mistake when reading something out or writing it down. There's no record of the phone call being made and the food ordered. Lots of reasons.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    One for me is: it makes group orders harder as you have to get everyone’s order either beforehand or take breaks while getting it during the call. With an app, I can take breaks during the ordering phase until I have everyone’s.

bambax 6y ago

Exactly! How hard is this?

mwexler 6y ago

My experience on the phone differs from yours. My customizations (low salt diet or other health requirements) are ignored or done incorrectly or misunderstood due to my accent or just background noise; I have to repeat the credit card twice since it was mis-keyed; I can't save my favorites as different people pick up the phone, so starting from scratch each time. And when I pick up my order, I discover only too late what's missing and have to decipher a scrawled notepad stapled to a bag to see if it was even listed. I agree, onboarding on these apps is miserable. But the benefits of a digital order, when done correctly, can really be better for some consumer cases than the voice call.

jedimastert 6y ago

Unfortunately phones are pretty difficult for me personally. I'm somewhat hard of hearing, meaning that I can't necessarily understand the other side of a phone call. I've also recently moved to an area much more diverse than my hometown. While this is great and I'm meaning people from all walks of life, it also means that there are suddenly a lot more accents that I'm not used to hearing and having trouble understanding and communicating with. Ordering on the phone has not been a great experience for me...

bluntfang 6y ago
Have you considered using the federal TTY program that is made for people who need accommodations over the phone? https://www.federalrelay.us/tty https://www.federalrelay.us/tty
- jedimastert 6y ago
  I'd need a TTY phone and a land line for that to work. This issue is not a $260 issue
  - bluntfang 6y ago
    Please consider clicking through to the link before commenting. You obviously did not do that. There's also accommodations for different disabilities, like the Deaf and hard of hearing via sign language. https://www.federalrelay.us/ip-relay.html https://www.federalrelay.us/ip-relay.html >IP Relay uses an Internet connection, a computer or mobile device with a web browser and a Communication Assistant (CA) . An IP user types what they want to say, the CA relays the conversation to their caller and then types their caller's response back to the IP user. To start using IP Relay, users are required to register for a 10-digit number through the Federal IP Relay website. To make your call today, go to www.federalip.us. https://www.federalrelay.us/vri.html https://www.federalrelay.us/vri.html >Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) is a feature of Federal Relay's Video Relay Service (VRS). This option provides deaf and hard of hearing Federal employees with on-demand remote sign language interpreting in order to facilitate communication between individuals who are in the same location (i.e. office, cubical, front desk, etc.).

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

catalogia 6y ago

I fully agree, that's how I do it too. As a bonus, when you order from the same restaurant enough times this way and become a 'regular', the process becomes even more streamlined when they start to remember your preferences.