Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 191 posts

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#81

Post by sneak »

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…

That sounds like a self-created disadvantage of underpaying in a global talent market, rather than an issue with their city.

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#83

Post by Reedx »

covercash wrote: post #34

I hate Slice. They basically came in and registered similar domains to existing pizza shops but because they are better at SEO than the mom & pop places, their results out rank the real sites. They even went in and updated unclaimed listings on yelp, google, Foursquare, etc. and put their site. That would be fine if the pizza shops were on board with this. But none of the shops I order from had any clue their orders…

Gross. I wonder if they were the inspiration for Sliceline or if that was just a happy coincidence?

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#84

Post by twic »

mprev wrote: post #30
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…

Interesting. Dominos in the uk is horribly expensive in comparison.

This is something i don't get. There's a Papa John near me, on Green Lanes, N4. They charge 18 pounds for a large pizza. On either side of it, there are Turkish restaurants and bakeries where that will buy you an excellent three-course meal with a beer (okay, so the dessert might be the single piece of baklava they throw in at the end). How do they survive?

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#85

Post by wand3r »

nxc18 wrote: post #68
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.

interesting, i have never had this experience. i can hear the staff, explicitly order what I want, confirm the price with the person and then pick it up paying with card or cash. also, most delivery places have square-type pos services or i just pay cash so i don't give a card over the phone. i love online ordering of products but i think ordering food is a bad experience. Typically my orders are uncomplicated and small though and usually for pickup.

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#86

Post by dfsegoat »

ShabbosGoy wrote: post #64
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…

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?

Venturing to guess / IMO:

Seems risky for a startup "integrator" (hypothetical company who would solve this) to have their business depend on providing specific integrations per startup + POS system. You would need to keep tabs on any changes ea. of the companies like Slice, GrubHub etc. made from both a service standpoint, and a hardware standpoint, right?

To top it off, it would just be one more layer ontop of this, so how would the company make money? Doesn't seem to solve the Pizza guys problems.

Or perhaps you just generally meant, why hasn't someone built a more modular POS unit that would work with any of these guys. That I have no idea about.

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#87

Post by praneshp »

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.

> Fake cheese, Fake chicken, Fake mushrooms

What is fake chicken? Do you want a live, breathing chicken?

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#88

Post by jacobwal »

Aco- wrote: post #73
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…

just curious what the name of his shop is? I'm always looking for good neopolitan pizza in this town.

Not OP but Kesté is great.

This is their site: http://kestepizzeria.com/en/home/

Not to be confused with the Slice site, which is linked on Google Maps (https://www.kestepizzavinonewyork.com/)

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#89

Post by matte_black »

Aco- wrote: post #73
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…

just curious what the name of his shop is? I'm always looking for good neopolitan pizza in this town.

Same here, I will visit when I'm in NYC soon.

Re: Tech Startup Slice Helps Local Pizzerias Get Online

#90

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

Its a generational thing. The children of Italian pizza guys grew up middle class and got homogenized into standard issue Americans. Who wants to toil in a pizza shop when you can be a banker, project manager, IT guy, etc.

Ditto with Jewish delis. One of my dad’s good friends shut a very successful deli down because the family wanted nothing to do with it.

Post reply on HN