Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#61

Post by ghostbrainalpha » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:47 PM UTC

The last time I ordered Domino's the delivery person brought me a completely empty box.

It was so light when they handed it over, I immediately opened it before signing the check. I remember the driver just looked at me, like Dang, that's a weird order. He didn't jump in with an apology or anything.

When I said I wouldn't pay for the pizza, he asked me to sign the receipt and said he would go back and bring me another pizza. I said that's not what a receipt is for... a receipt means you RECEIVED the product.

I am pretty sure that guy ate my pizza, and after I signed the receipt he would never have came back. I called the store to complain and they offered to send me a free pizza the next day, but it never came.

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#62

Post by nxc18 » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:47 PM UTC

ahallock wrote: post #32

scrooched_moose wrote: post #19

> Yet Sela believes consumers have been abandoning local shops--even those with fresher ingredients, better flavors and ties to their communities--mostly because they lack the ability to take mobile orders. That may be part of it, but among people I know the majority of it is cost. A 16" pizza at most of our favorite spots ends up around $25. I can get a 14" 3 topping pizza at Dominos for $7.99. The local pizza is gr…

Local pizza is more like 100x better. I couldn't even finish a slice of Dominos, at least the one I ordered from on the west side of Cleveland. I've had better frozen pizza. I don't get who's ordering it. It's not even the 'good' kind of bad, like, say McDonald's fries that one indulges in on occasion.

Maybe you just have a bad dominoes. There are some great local pizza places where I live (SoCal), but they're 2x the cost, but not 2x better.

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#63

Post by JackCh » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:48 PM UTC

Maybe I'm just out of touch, but the appeal of online pizza ordering is something I can't wrap my mind around. Calling and placing an order using the traditional telephone method seems far easier to me. I do it often, more often than I should. Furthermore it seems better for the business since presumably the phone company takes a much smaller cut of the sale than whatever web platform they may be using.

Is it because people are growing more adverse to the brief limited social interaction of a phonecall? Is it because people are placing very large and complex orders that are difficult to convey over the phone? (admittedly most of my orders are for a single pizza with two or three topping specified..) Is it because websites have more pictures that people find attractive?

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#64

Post by ShabbosGoy » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:48 PM UTC

adamqureshi wrote: post #51

jiveturkey wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The download.cnet.com of the pizza world.

I spoke to the my local pizza shop in NYC. He said between grubhub, uberRush, yelp and now slice, they are eating his pizza profit margins. He said he has to deal with 3-4 software / hardware POS products for EACH service. They are sucking him dry. He can't make money BUT needs them to bring the business. Slice takes a 20% "slice" per order / of his business. Flour costs going up, he makes his own mozzerella. UberRus…

Which will inevitably lead him to use poorer quality ingredients in order to survive. 3-4 POS is ridiculous for a small business. Why hasn’t this been solved yet?

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#65

Post by lambda » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:48 PM UTC

ardit33 wrote: post #4

Fun fact, some of the best "italian" pizzeria's in NYC are actually owned and/or run by Albanians. There is a whole generation of Albanians that moved in Italy (after the 90s), learned the trade there and eventually moved in NYC and opened their places. Fun fact number 2: A lot of greek places in NYC are actually operated by albanians. (for the same reasons as above). The main reason is marketing: People in the US kn…

Pizza is pretty universal these days. There was one pizza place near me in college owned by an Indian family; they also sold Indian food. They didn't appreciate it when we tried to order a chicken tikka pizza, though.

Another pizza place near where I used to work was run by an Irish guy, who then later sold it to a Chinese guy.

Oh, and my favorite pizza place near where I used to live was run by a Dominican guy.

I think that pizza place food is not really connected with Italians in the US any more; it's pretty much just become mainstream American. Though there is still a trend for them to have Italian names.

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#66

Post by duderific » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:48 PM UTC

Fifer82 wrote: post #38

ahallock wrote: post #10

Dominos put more money into their ordering system bells and whistles than the actual food, if you can call it food. I couldn't even finish a slice it was so bad.

Absolutely the same here and I am Scottish. I will eat pretty much anything, but even with a beer in Me, I can't handle Dominos. Fake cheese, Fake chicken, Fake mushrooms (I was amazed at fake mushrooms) all put together onto a tasteless base. Gives me the boke.

I actually worked at Dominos many moons ago, and while their ingredients aren't "fake", they are certainly not so fresh. The pre-made, pre-sized dough, sauce, cheese and toppings all arrive in gigantic refrigerated semi trucks from a centralized warehouse. They scale they deal with is beyond the size of most "restaurants" save maybe the other fast food giants, so it has to be this way. You will never get the freshness level that you would get from a mom and pop joint, but of course, that is not what you're expecting from Dominos.

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#67

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:49 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #60

adamqureshi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spoke to the my local pizza shop in NYC. He said between grubhub, uberRush, yelp and now slice, they are eating his pizza profit margins. He said he has to deal with 3-4 software / hardware POS products for EACH service. They are sucking him dry. He can't make money BUT needs them to bring the business. Slice takes a 20% "slice" per order / of his business. Flour costs going up, he makes his own mozzerella. UberRus…

>UberRush takes 33%. // Man, that is terrible. This is a major problem with capitalism, the optimisation doesn't work when it gets corrupted with marketing - in theory these frontends would compete until they were making practically nothing above their costs, in practice the one(s) with the most capital behind them (or best marketing department) will win and leech the money away from the producers and to the people w…

[deleted]

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#68

Post by nxc18 » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:51 PM UTC

JackCh wrote: post #63

Maybe I'm just out of touch, but the appeal of online pizza ordering is something I can't wrap my mind around. Calling and placing an order using the traditional telephone method seems far easier to me. I do it often, more often than I should. Furthermore it seems better for the business since presumably the phone company takes a much smaller cut of the sale than whatever web platform they may be using. Is it because…

1) having to talk over the other restaurant staff; receiver can't hear you. 2) reading my credit card number over the phone 3) explaining the details of the order. The human always messes it up. 4) getting surprised by the cost, or having to calculate the cost for all the items ahead of time. I'd rather negotiate my order with a machine in the privacy of my own home than with a person on the phone.

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#69

Post by andjd » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:52 PM UTC

I can appreciate that Slice is trying to undercut competitors like seamless, but their app is little more than a minimum viable product. It lacks any user-generated content, such as reviews or photos, so there's really nothing to make your choice on, unless you already know the place you're ordering from. The menus have no standardization, so you don't even have a reliable indicator of how much food you are ordering. I have trouble seeing how they can compete when their many competitors provide a much better UX.

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#70

Post by sharkweek » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:52 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #36

Back about six years ago now, we had a new guy come on board my team at Netflix as an SRE. He had come from Dominoes. He told us stories about how Dominos saw the writing on the wall and reinvented itself as a tech company, how every step in the pizza making process had an API. He showed us command line tools that you could use to order and track your pizza, so you could set it up in cron and then have it tell you wh…

Hang on, what? People order pizza to show up at half time? I have only been at Super Bowl parties where the pizza is there before the game starts, normally part of a giant spread of other heart attack foods.