20 ms·

I’m incredibly perplexed why people do this. Even pre pandemic it was patently obvious to anyone who paid attention that certain foods just don’t deliver well.

I’m incredibly perplexed why people do this. Even pre pandemic it was patently obvious to anyone who paid attention that certain foods just don’t deliver well. Before the internet became a thing, the only places that regularly offered delivery were pizza joints and Chinese food, because both of those survive delivery well! I ordered delivery burgers once, from a restaurant close by, and learned my lesson that burgers are best enjoyed immediately and not 10 minutes later. Why should I blame the restaurant for that?

cforrester 6y ago
I think it's a matter of expectation more than anything. Someone who orders food from a restaurant might expect that the restaurant has recipes designed for delivery. I wouldn't expect a top quality restaurant burger when I order delivery, but I'd still be disappointed if it were a soggy mess instead of the 5-8/10 I've come to expect from decent delivery options.
- lostcolony 6y ago
  I think it IS a matter of expectation, yes. If I go and pick up something that doesn't sit around at room temperature well (let's say a milkshake), and drive 20 minutes home before eating it, I'm not going to ding the restaurant for the fact it's melted. If, however, milkshakes are offered for takeout (reasonable), but then a third delivery party gets involved and starts offering them for delivery, anyone ordering it will have the impression of "I ordered a milkshake. It arrived to my hand melted! 1-star, bad!" Since they clearly aren't thinking enough to -not order the milkshake in the first place-. Milkshake is an extreme example to demonstrate the point, but applies to anything that doesn't sit well (previously mentioned burger included), with the added trouble that customers are less likely to know what will sit well.
  - cforrester 6y ago
    The quality of the food really isn't a binary state, though. I think most people get the idea that delivery food isn't going to be as good as having it at a restaurant, but they're expecting a middle ground if the item is offered for delivery.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Funny fact, one of the best deliveries I’ve gotten this year was ice cream. The local creamery[0] has an option to sign up for weekly deliveries. They obviously bring the equipment to keep it properly frozen (easier than a milkshake I know), and check IDs for their alcoholic ice creams. I suspect that if they wanted to, they could have pulled off milkshake deliveries, although the logistics wouldn’t scale. 0 - https://ilovethestil.com/ https://ilovethestil.com/
    - AareyBaba 6y ago
      local = Boise Idaho. If you were wondering
    - lostcolony 6y ago
      I've had Jeni's delivered before, yeah. Packed in dry ice it shipped fine. But, yeah, it's packed to travel. Not just placed in someone's passenger seat for 30 minutes.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      TIL alcoholic ice cream is a thing.
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        And it is awesome. There’s not really enough alcohol in there to affect you; probably because it would eventually hamper the formation of ice. But having ice cream that actually tastes like coffee and bailey’s is the best.
- grogenaut 6y ago
  I know a few people who own top quality restaurants. They spent a shit ton of time figuring out delivery. One in chicago does it for reheat with nice instructions on everything. Like a blue apron style setup. A bbq place just won't sell certain items ever togo. Heck maggianos obviously spent time in their take home setup.
- ghaff 6y ago
  One of the problems is that, with some exceptions, if a restaurant offers take-out at all, they probably offer their whole menu. If I look at the menu for my local Greek pizza place, I can pretty much guarantee you that their pizzas, Veal Parmesan, and salads are going to stand up to take-out (AFAIK you can't get delivery) better than their burgers, meatball subs, or calzones.
joering2 6y ago
After seeing a one-star negative review for a mosquito electric zapper because it didn’t get rid of their roaches problem, nothing people do or say on internet will ever surprise me again.
ghaff 6y ago
A couple of times I've been tempted to order from Five Guys with one of the services I have a promo with. But then I remember that said Five Guys is far enough away that I wouldn't want to drive to it and, best case, what I receive is not going to be great. Better to grill it myself.
asddubs 6y ago
I've had some ok delivery burgers, but it was the actual burger place doing the delivery
mytailorisrich 6y ago
Because more people than you think do not understand this and how delivery platforms work (ie. that restaurants do not control them) If you're a restaurant and some of your dishes do not handle delivery well then you should not sell them as delivery/takeaway but only on premises. Otherwise you'll have to accept that some customers will be unhappy and leave a bad review. I think this is a learning curve for many restaurants that are not used to this business model. Certainly in Europe it was not usual for restaurants to offer delivery/takeaway, which was only done by some pizzerias for a long time. Now these platforms are booming and the pandemic has made them critical.
Dylan16807 6y ago
> I ordered delivery burgers once, from a restaurant close by, and learned my lesson that burgers are best enjoyed immediately and not 10 minutes later. Weird. It takes me notably longer than that to eat a burger in a restaurant, and I never notice any quality problems over that period of time.
- whoisburbansky 6y ago
  The ten minutes it spends on your plate is a very different ten minutes than those spent tightly wrapped in foil in a car; one makes the burger a lot soggier than the other.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    So the problem is how it's packed, and delivery could be done correctly. Okay, that makes sense.
    - RestlessMind 6y ago
      It's not only about packing. If you take your first bite a minute after a dish is ready in the kitchen, it leaves a much different impression than the first bite you take after 10 minutes in a ride. The extra time spent in the delivery is always going to make a huge different in how the food tastes, at least for certain dishes (dumplings, e.g.).
      - ghaff 6y ago
        Yeah. I think if you got delivered a hamburger in a restaurant that had just been sitting for 15 minutes, not under heat lamps, you'd be complaining to the waiter. I think we sort of internalize that our food is going to be getting colder etc. as the process of eating it goes on and we don't really think about it. And, as I noted elsewhere, something like soup dumplings or dumplings generally (unless you pan-fry them at home) are going to be pretty meh too in general.
        6y ago
SOLAR_FIELDS 6y ago
A local (actual, not American) Chinese joint makes by far the best soup dumplings in town. During the pandemic they’ve understandably switched to takeout only, but now their reviews are filled with people that are disappointed by dumplings that aren’t steaming hot inside and have holes because they stick to the takeout containers. I feel really bad for the owners - they’re forced to choose between endangering the lives of their workers or offering a subpar product.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I can't imagine getting takeout soup dumplings. They're almost getting a little too cooled down by the time you finish them in a restaurant. Dumplings that you pan fry at home can work reasonably well but, of course, a product that you have to partially cook yourself is not what a lot of people are looking for in take-out.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    For the most part, they're okay, if you don't have super high expectations for the soup portion of it. Some Chinese places near me have started selling the dumplings they make frozen as well.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      The thing is I do have high expectations. I'd be very happy with good frozen potstickers and wontons. Actually cooking them is pretty easy; I just find making them really tedious. And I haven't really found the ones I can get in Oriental markets all that great.
      - VRay 6y ago
        yeah, getting food delivered generally sucks.. You pay $30* for something that tastes like crap, when you could've made something better on your own in 20 minutes for $5 or less * in the bay area anyway, presumably it's not this expensive out in the real world
- 6y ago
wpietri 6y ago
Before VCs started trying to buy delivery market share and take a slice of restaurant profits, the restaurants that offered delivery were the ones that were well suited for it. Others would offer take-out, but there it was up to customers to solve the travel-time problem, so people generally got take-out from nearby restaurants. Now, though, consumers are being offered the food they love delivered to their door, with no hint that it might be a bad idea. I'm not surprised at all that they are unhappy that the thing they were sold turned out to be disappointing. I agree that if one understands all the logistical, marketplace, and culinary factors, it doesn't make much sense to blame the restaurant. But one of the glories of capitalism is that purchasers don't have to understand a thing. They just have to have money and a desire. I think the real bad actors here are the delivery companies here, not the consumers. The delivery companies are selling something they really can't deliver. It shouldn't be up to consumers to figure all this out on an order-by-order basis.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
Ironically, the main reason pizza works so well for delivery is because the drivers have specialized boxes that hold in heat, maintains the right humidity conditions, and is easy to handle. The third party app drivers don't have this, so pizza delivered from them often arrives cold and soggy, and sometimes even smashed to one side of the box.
danans 6y ago
Who is old enough to remember the McDLT? https://youtu.be/UTSdUOC8Kac https://youtu.be/UTSdUOC8Kac
- mgkimsal 6y ago
  Dropping the McDLT was what started me on the road to not try 'new' items from fast food places very much. If I like the new offering, it's going to be cut, just like the McDLT. McDLT was my all time favorite fast food burger from the 80s.
- btilly 6y ago
  I am. And it was dropped because when McDonalds stopped using styrofoam they couldn't make it work any more. There is an irony in that. We went from a society that uses styrofoam to paper cups. Never mind that styrofoam is one of the most easily recycled substances we have, while the wax on paper cups makes them destined for the landfill.
  - kibibyte 6y ago
    > styrofoam is one of the most easily recycled substances Is that actually true? I've always heard to put styrofoam in trash rather than recycling.
    - btilly 6y ago
      It is. I had a friend whose father was a chemical engineer back in the 1980s who did a study on it. The cost per cubic yard to recycle styrofoam was insanely cheap. It was just that it required a specialized process that nobody implemented because creating more was also cheap. So it wasn't recycled, but it could have been.
      - kibibyte 6y ago
        Is it also possible that food-contaminated styrofoam is significantly costlier to recycle than styrofoam on its own, or did this specialized process also take care of this problem?
azernik 6y ago
OT, but Indian food also travels very well.
- rrauenza 6y ago
  Except for the foil wrapped naan. Toasting it briefly sometimes helps...
wutbrodo 6y ago
> I’m incredibly perplexed why people do this. Even pre pandemic it was patently obvious to anyone who paid attention that certain foods just don’t deliver well. I don't say this with any malice, but a lot of people are just not that bright. Things that you think are "perplexingly obvious", to the point that you can't conceive of not thinking about them, just aren't to them.
- ghaff 6y ago
  More charitably. A lot of people really wanted food delivery in the pandemic who had never use it much before. And discovered, to their disappointment, that a lot of food deliveries were pretty bad.
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
    I don't think there's any indication that this issue is new to the pandemic, is there? I also don't have any strong opinions about this particular topic, and there could very well be some other explanation. I'm just generally remarking on the common expression of such confusion at other people acting suboptimally; sometimes it's just because most people aren't all that smart or thoughtful.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    There’s certainly something to that. Before the pandemic, I would have never thought to order a burger for delivery because that’s just not what one does. If I wanted delivery, I’d go for pizza or Thai food. But during the pandemic I wanted a burger, and getting my car out sucked (yay city living), so I ordered a delivery burger. Immediately after that subpar experience I thought “oh, that’s why ordering delivery burgers isn’t the norm” and went back to ordering noodles and pizza instead. It’s the leap from “culturally this isn’t a common thing to do (order a delivery burger), so obviously it’s the restaurants fault that my experience wasn’t as good as it would be in store” that I don’t get.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  > Things that you think are "perplexingly obvious", to the point that you can't conceive of not thinking about it, just aren't to them. And it can take almost half a lifetime to realize this That other people can have so vastly different brains.
derefr 6y ago
> Even pre pandemic it was patently obvious to anyone who paid attention that certain foods just don’t deliver well. Before the pandemic, many people had literally never ordered delivery before! I for one only ever ordered carry-out, or ate at the restaurant. I live in an urban jungle of restaurants, all within walking distance; why would I pay someone to drive to a place that's within five minutes' walk? Recent months have been educational about both the virtues and vices of delivery food. This has not been an education I would have ever otherwise received.
sandworm101 6y ago
>> were pizza joints and Chinese food Don't forget indian food. Much of that cuisine was specifically developed for delivery. The multitude of cultures and eating habits (vegetation, Muslim etc) in modernizing india meant that housewives would prepare hot lunches for their husbands away at work, food which was delivered by the famed Dabbawala network. Some modern restaurants are so proud of this that they deliver food to the table in metal dabba boxes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala "In the late 1800's, an increasing number of migrants were moving to Bombay from different parts of the country, and fast food and canteens were not prevalent. All these people left early in the morning for offices, and often had to go hungry for lunch. They belonged to different communities, and therefore had different types of tastes, which could only be satisfied by their own home-cooked meals. So, in 1890, Mahadeo Havaji Bachche started a lunch delivery service in Bombay with about a hundred men."
- aidenn0 6y ago
  No clue about the history. All I know is: The longer it takes them to deliver my vindaloo, the better it tastes.
- cannaceo 6y ago
  Amusingly, Indian food isn’t well suited for restaurant-style eating. The meal prep takes too long forcing restaurants to cut corners. It only works well with a limited, set menu.
  - maya24 6y ago
    Restaurant indian food is made in batch though. The food tastes just as fresh and often tastes better after the spices have had time to settle.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    Depends on how the chef runs the place. Indian food is difficult if one sticks to western notions of "made to order", each meal being started only after ordering. But a curry house will prep things like the curry base before opening, doing maybe 75% of the work before the first orders arrive. Then it goes quickly. In western cooking the skill is in the actual cooking, with indian food the skill comes in the non-cooking prep work.
watwut 6y ago
There are definitely good delivery burgers. Not every restaurant makes them good for delivery, but we have few around and they are our favorite delivery.
user5994461 6y ago
I'm really perplexed by what problems you have with burgers? Burgers work really well with delivery. Used to order burgers very regularly at parties (GBK in London), it was one of the few things everybody would agree with and find good. I can imagine that you would have troubles if the restaurant wasn't aware it was intended for delivery and gave a loose burger on a plate to the delivery guy. Gotta be put in a tight box to stay warm and in shape.
toss1 6y ago
> Why should I blame the restaurant for that? Of course, you should not and you would not But, to paraphrase PT Barnum: no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average populous. There are a sufficiently large portion of the customer base who either lack the intelligence or just do not care enough to figure out what is the source of the problem, and will happily blame the restaurant, and broadcast that erroneous blame in person and online. More than enough of these to ruin a restaurant's reputation and business. That is why this law is a good thing. My product or service, I should have the right to control it's distribution up to and including it's first sale (especially if it is not a commodity).

cforrester 6y ago

I think it's a matter of expectation more than anything. Someone who orders food from a restaurant might expect that the restaurant has recipes designed for delivery. I wouldn't expect a top quality restaurant burger when I order delivery, but I'd still be disappointed if it were a soggy mess instead of the 5-8/10 I've come to expect from decent delivery options.

lostcolony 6y ago
I think it IS a matter of expectation, yes. If I go and pick up something that doesn't sit around at room temperature well (let's say a milkshake), and drive 20 minutes home before eating it, I'm not going to ding the restaurant for the fact it's melted. If, however, milkshakes are offered for takeout (reasonable), but then a third delivery party gets involved and starts offering them for delivery, anyone ordering it will have the impression of "I ordered a milkshake. It arrived to my hand melted! 1-star, bad!" Since they clearly aren't thinking enough to -not order the milkshake in the first place-. Milkshake is an extreme example to demonstrate the point, but applies to anything that doesn't sit well (previously mentioned burger included), with the added trouble that customers are less likely to know what will sit well.
- cforrester 6y ago
  The quality of the food really isn't a binary state, though. I think most people get the idea that delivery food isn't going to be as good as having it at a restaurant, but they're expecting a middle ground if the item is offered for delivery.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Funny fact, one of the best deliveries I’ve gotten this year was ice cream. The local creamery[0] has an option to sign up for weekly deliveries. They obviously bring the equipment to keep it properly frozen (easier than a milkshake I know), and check IDs for their alcoholic ice creams. I suspect that if they wanted to, they could have pulled off milkshake deliveries, although the logistics wouldn’t scale. 0 - https://ilovethestil.com/ https://ilovethestil.com/
  - AareyBaba 6y ago
    local = Boise Idaho. If you were wondering
  - lostcolony 6y ago
    I've had Jeni's delivered before, yeah. Packed in dry ice it shipped fine. But, yeah, it's packed to travel. Not just placed in someone's passenger seat for 30 minutes.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    TIL alcoholic ice cream is a thing.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      And it is awesome. There’s not really enough alcohol in there to affect you; probably because it would eventually hamper the formation of ice. But having ice cream that actually tastes like coffee and bailey’s is the best.
grogenaut 6y ago
I know a few people who own top quality restaurants. They spent a shit ton of time figuring out delivery. One in chicago does it for reheat with nice instructions on everything. Like a blue apron style setup. A bbq place just won't sell certain items ever togo. Heck maggianos obviously spent time in their take home setup.
ghaff 6y ago
One of the problems is that, with some exceptions, if a restaurant offers take-out at all, they probably offer their whole menu. If I look at the menu for my local Greek pizza place, I can pretty much guarantee you that their pizzas, Veal Parmesan, and salads are going to stand up to take-out (AFAIK you can't get delivery) better than their burgers, meatball subs, or calzones.

joering2 6y ago

After seeing a one-star negative review for a mosquito electric zapper because it didn’t get rid of their roaches problem, nothing people do or say on internet will ever surprise me again.

ghaff 6y ago

A couple of times I've been tempted to order from Five Guys with one of the services I have a promo with. But then I remember that said Five Guys is far enough away that I wouldn't want to drive to it and, best case, what I receive is not going to be great. Better to grill it myself.

asddubs 6y ago

I've had some ok delivery burgers, but it was the actual burger place doing the delivery

mytailorisrich 6y ago

Because more people than you think do not understand this and how delivery platforms work (ie. that restaurants do not control them) If you're a restaurant and some of your dishes do not handle delivery well then you should not sell them as delivery/takeaway but only on premises. Otherwise you'll have to accept that some customers will be unhappy and leave a bad review. I think this is a learning curve for many restaurants that are not used to this business model. Certainly in Europe it was not usual for restaurants to offer delivery/takeaway, which was only done by some pizzerias for a long time. Now these platforms are booming and the pandemic has made them critical.

Dylan16807 6y ago

> I ordered delivery burgers once, from a restaurant close by, and learned my lesson that burgers are best enjoyed immediately and not 10 minutes later. Weird. It takes me notably longer than that to eat a burger in a restaurant, and I never notice any quality problems over that period of time.

whoisburbansky 6y ago
The ten minutes it spends on your plate is a very different ten minutes than those spent tightly wrapped in foil in a car; one makes the burger a lot soggier than the other.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  So the problem is how it's packed, and delivery could be done correctly. Okay, that makes sense.
  - RestlessMind 6y ago
    It's not only about packing. If you take your first bite a minute after a dish is ready in the kitchen, it leaves a much different impression than the first bite you take after 10 minutes in a ride. The extra time spent in the delivery is always going to make a huge different in how the food tastes, at least for certain dishes (dumplings, e.g.).
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Yeah. I think if you got delivered a hamburger in a restaurant that had just been sitting for 15 minutes, not under heat lamps, you'd be complaining to the waiter. I think we sort of internalize that our food is going to be getting colder etc. as the process of eating it goes on and we don't really think about it. And, as I noted elsewhere, something like soup dumplings or dumplings generally (unless you pan-fry them at home) are going to be pretty meh too in general.
      - 6y ago

SOLAR_FIELDS 6y ago

A local (actual, not American) Chinese joint makes by far the best soup dumplings in town. During the pandemic they’ve understandably switched to takeout only, but now their reviews are filled with people that are disappointed by dumplings that aren’t steaming hot inside and have holes because they stick to the takeout containers. I feel really bad for the owners - they’re forced to choose between endangering the lives of their workers or offering a subpar product.

ghaff 6y ago
I can't imagine getting takeout soup dumplings. They're almost getting a little too cooled down by the time you finish them in a restaurant. Dumplings that you pan fry at home can work reasonably well but, of course, a product that you have to partially cook yourself is not what a lot of people are looking for in take-out.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  For the most part, they're okay, if you don't have super high expectations for the soup portion of it. Some Chinese places near me have started selling the dumplings they make frozen as well.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    The thing is I do have high expectations. I'd be very happy with good frozen potstickers and wontons. Actually cooking them is pretty easy; I just find making them really tedious. And I haven't really found the ones I can get in Oriental markets all that great.
    - VRay 6y ago
      yeah, getting food delivered generally sucks.. You pay $30* for something that tastes like crap, when you could've made something better on your own in 20 minutes for $5 or less * in the bay area anyway, presumably it's not this expensive out in the real world
6y ago

wpietri 6y ago

Before VCs started trying to buy delivery market share and take a slice of restaurant profits, the restaurants that offered delivery were the ones that were well suited for it. Others would offer take-out, but there it was up to customers to solve the travel-time problem, so people generally got take-out from nearby restaurants. Now, though, consumers are being offered the food they love delivered to their door, with no hint that it might be a bad idea. I'm not surprised at all that they are unhappy that the thing they were sold turned out to be disappointing. I agree that if one understands all the logistical, marketplace, and culinary factors, it doesn't make much sense to blame the restaurant. But one of the glories of capitalism is that purchasers don't have to understand a thing. They just have to have money and a desire. I think the real bad actors here are the delivery companies here, not the consumers. The delivery companies are selling something they really can't deliver. It shouldn't be up to consumers to figure all this out on an order-by-order basis.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago

Ironically, the main reason pizza works so well for delivery is because the drivers have specialized boxes that hold in heat, maintains the right humidity conditions, and is easy to handle. The third party app drivers don't have this, so pizza delivered from them often arrives cold and soggy, and sometimes even smashed to one side of the box.

danans 6y ago

Who is old enough to remember the McDLT? https://youtu.be/UTSdUOC8Kac https://youtu.be/UTSdUOC8Kac

mgkimsal 6y ago
Dropping the McDLT was what started me on the road to not try 'new' items from fast food places very much. If I like the new offering, it's going to be cut, just like the McDLT. McDLT was my all time favorite fast food burger from the 80s.
btilly 6y ago
I am. And it was dropped because when McDonalds stopped using styrofoam they couldn't make it work any more. There is an irony in that. We went from a society that uses styrofoam to paper cups. Never mind that styrofoam is one of the most easily recycled substances we have, while the wax on paper cups makes them destined for the landfill.
- kibibyte 6y ago
  > styrofoam is one of the most easily recycled substances Is that actually true? I've always heard to put styrofoam in trash rather than recycling.
  - btilly 6y ago
    It is. I had a friend whose father was a chemical engineer back in the 1980s who did a study on it. The cost per cubic yard to recycle styrofoam was insanely cheap. It was just that it required a specialized process that nobody implemented because creating more was also cheap. So it wasn't recycled, but it could have been.
    - kibibyte 6y ago
      Is it also possible that food-contaminated styrofoam is significantly costlier to recycle than styrofoam on its own, or did this specialized process also take care of this problem?

azernik 6y ago

OT, but Indian food also travels very well.

rrauenza 6y ago
Except for the foil wrapped naan. Toasting it briefly sometimes helps...

wutbrodo 6y ago

> I’m incredibly perplexed why people do this. Even pre pandemic it was patently obvious to anyone who paid attention that certain foods just don’t deliver well. I don't say this with any malice, but a lot of people are just not that bright. Things that you think are "perplexingly obvious", to the point that you can't conceive of not thinking about them, just aren't to them.

ghaff 6y ago
More charitably. A lot of people really wanted food delivery in the pandemic who had never use it much before. And discovered, to their disappointment, that a lot of food deliveries were pretty bad.
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  I don't think there's any indication that this issue is new to the pandemic, is there? I also don't have any strong opinions about this particular topic, and there could very well be some other explanation. I'm just generally remarking on the common expression of such confusion at other people acting suboptimally; sometimes it's just because most people aren't all that smart or thoughtful.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  There’s certainly something to that. Before the pandemic, I would have never thought to order a burger for delivery because that’s just not what one does. If I wanted delivery, I’d go for pizza or Thai food. But during the pandemic I wanted a burger, and getting my car out sucked (yay city living), so I ordered a delivery burger. Immediately after that subpar experience I thought “oh, that’s why ordering delivery burgers isn’t the norm” and went back to ordering noodles and pizza instead. It’s the leap from “culturally this isn’t a common thing to do (order a delivery burger), so obviously it’s the restaurants fault that my experience wasn’t as good as it would be in store” that I don’t get.
cutemonster 6y ago
> Things that you think are "perplexingly obvious", to the point that you can't conceive of not thinking about it, just aren't to them. And it can take almost half a lifetime to realize this That other people can have so vastly different brains.

derefr 6y ago

> Even pre pandemic it was patently obvious to anyone who paid attention that certain foods just don’t deliver well. Before the pandemic, many people had literally never ordered delivery before! I for one only ever ordered carry-out, or ate at the restaurant. I live in an urban jungle of restaurants, all within walking distance; why would I pay someone to drive to a place that's within five minutes' walk? Recent months have been educational about both the virtues and vices of delivery food. This has not been an education I would have ever otherwise received.

sandworm101 6y ago

>> were pizza joints and Chinese food Don't forget indian food. Much of that cuisine was specifically developed for delivery. The multitude of cultures and eating habits (vegetation, Muslim etc) in modernizing india meant that housewives would prepare hot lunches for their husbands away at work, food which was delivered by the famed Dabbawala network. Some modern restaurants are so proud of this that they deliver food to the table in metal dabba boxes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala "In the late 1800's, an increasing number of migrants were moving to Bombay from different parts of the country, and fast food and canteens were not prevalent. All these people left early in the morning for offices, and often had to go hungry for lunch. They belonged to different communities, and therefore had different types of tastes, which could only be satisfied by their own home-cooked meals. So, in 1890, Mahadeo Havaji Bachche started a lunch delivery service in Bombay with about a hundred men."

aidenn0 6y ago
No clue about the history. All I know is: The longer it takes them to deliver my vindaloo, the better it tastes.
cannaceo 6y ago
Amusingly, Indian food isn’t well suited for restaurant-style eating. The meal prep takes too long forcing restaurants to cut corners. It only works well with a limited, set menu.
- maya24 6y ago
  Restaurant indian food is made in batch though. The food tastes just as fresh and often tastes better after the spices have had time to settle.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  Depends on how the chef runs the place. Indian food is difficult if one sticks to western notions of "made to order", each meal being started only after ordering. But a curry house will prep things like the curry base before opening, doing maybe 75% of the work before the first orders arrive. Then it goes quickly. In western cooking the skill is in the actual cooking, with indian food the skill comes in the non-cooking prep work.

watwut 6y ago

There are definitely good delivery burgers. Not every restaurant makes them good for delivery, but we have few around and they are our favorite delivery.

user5994461 6y ago

I'm really perplexed by what problems you have with burgers? Burgers work really well with delivery. Used to order burgers very regularly at parties (GBK in London), it was one of the few things everybody would agree with and find good. I can imagine that you would have troubles if the restaurant wasn't aware it was intended for delivery and gave a loose burger on a plate to the delivery guy. Gotta be put in a tight box to stay warm and in shape.

toss1 6y ago

> Why should I blame the restaurant for that? Of course, you should not and you would not But, to paraphrase PT Barnum: no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average populous. There are a sufficiently large portion of the customer base who either lack the intelligence or just do not care enough to figure out what is the source of the problem, and will happily blame the restaurant, and broadcast that erroneous blame in person and online. More than enough of these to ruin a restaurant's reputation and business. That is why this law is a good thing. My product or service, I should have the right to control it's distribution up to and including it's first sale (especially if it is not a commodity).