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Phone is still the best way to order pizza

dan.bulwinkle.net

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Re: Phone is still the best way to order pizza

#351

Post by acdha »

fragmede wrote: post #350
ioman wrote: post #340

My local pizza place in Seattle has moved the technology the other way. Here’s the dialog when I call. “Pagliacci Pizza, how can I help you?” “I’d like to order a pizza” “Sure thing. Is this John Smith?” “Yes” “Do you still live at 1234 Main Street” “Yes” “Would you like to order the same thing you did last time?” “Yes” “Ok, it’ll be there in 20 minutes” Even better, while you talk to the store you called, the order…

That's just calling a VoIP line so the caller ID comes up on a computer and loads the relevant entry from the CRM including order history, run by an experienced user.

“Just” probably isn’t the right word: the tools have become easier but it still takes care to integrate all of the pieces to a smooth user experience. For example, no financial institution I’ve ever used has managed to link things that well despite orders of magnitude greater budget.

Re: Phone is still the best way to order pizza

#352

Post by macksd »

fragmede wrote: post #350
ioman wrote: post #340

My local pizza place in Seattle has moved the technology the other way. Here’s the dialog when I call. “Pagliacci Pizza, how can I help you?” “I’d like to order a pizza” “Sure thing. Is this John Smith?” “Yes” “Do you still live at 1234 Main Street” “Yes” “Would you like to order the same thing you did last time?” “Yes” “Ok, it’ll be there in 20 minutes” Even better, while you talk to the store you called, the order…

That's just calling a VoIP line so the caller ID comes up on a computer and loads the relevant entry from the CRM including order history, run by an experienced user.

You say "just" because the technology for doing this isn't novel. It doesn't feel like it's "just" anything when so few businesses bother to even put that much effort towards a good customer experience.

Re: Phone is still the best way to order pizza

#353

Post by nottorp »

> This is one of those situations where signing up is irrelevant, just like with most mobile apps1. In theory I should be able to autocomplete first name and phone number (maybe credit card2) and voilà my pizza is in queue.

So... the phone should give your personal data to any app that pretends to deliver pizza?

On a tangent, I think the best thing about food delivery apps is they inform you there is other food than pizza in the world. Even if most of it is junk-y, still some variation sounds more healthy than the same thing every day.

Re: Phone is still the best way to order pizza

#354

Post by tjoff »

ioman wrote: post #340

My local pizza place in Seattle has moved the technology the other way. Here’s the dialog when I call. “Pagliacci Pizza, how can I help you?” “I’d like to order a pizza” “Sure thing. Is this John Smith?” “Yes” “Do you still live at 1234 Main Street” “Yes” “Would you like to order the same thing you did last time?” “Yes” “Ok, it’ll be there in 20 minutes” Even better, while you talk to the store you called, the order…

Sounds good, but "the order goes into some sort of pizza load balancer and gives the order to the least busy store with a good drive time to your house" seems to be optimizing only for fast delivery.

Which might, or might definitely not be the highest priority to me.

Re: Phone is still the best way to order pizza

#355

Post by MAGZine »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #215
ec109685 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biggest issue is that DoorDash lies about how much you’re paying for delivery. They show you some of the fees, but hide the fact that the menu prices are often jacked up by 50% or more.

> hide the fact that the menu prices are often jacked up by 50% or more. Wheat in metric tonne lots direct from the farmer costs about $350-400/tonne, or about $0.35-$0.40/kg. Kroger enriched white bread costs about $3.00/kg, more than seven times as much. There are a lot of middlemen in there, each of which raises the price. On the other hand, I don't have to store a metric tonne of wheat, and maintain my own millin…

for places that never had delivery people, its a good proposition to expand their network and get food into more people's hands.

... but almost every pizza place has their own dedicated delivery people.

In short, by using the middleman, you're scamming yourself (through higher costs, and worse delivery because you're using random/shared agents rather than dedicated), or you're scamming the business (who ends up having to eat some of the costs).

That said, if you don't care about the business and you don't care about money (a single place to order pizza from is more valuable), then order away.

Re: Phone is still the best way to order pizza

#356

Post by ShroudedNight »

pwdisswordfish9 wrote: post #328
ssharp wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had food sitting at restaurants for over an hour before while Uber attempts to find a driver. After a particularly frustrating instance where Uber told me to cancel but didn’t refund me for me, I did manage to find a support inbox that’s read by an escalation team and I had a real life human calling from SF let me know that they would refund me. The effort it took to get the refund was ridiculous though as every…

> I’ve had food sitting at restaurants for over an hour before while Uber attempts to find a driver. If you're in a metro area ordering during ordinary hours and having this happen, it's almost certainly because the restaurant has developed a bad reputation and people refuse to work with them. The thing about Uber's intermediation is that if you had this sort of experience by ordering directly through the restaurant,…

> UberEATS drivers are like Fedex or USPS for food.

This is to be expected, but it's not clear how this is relevant to your parent given it appears to have been Uber customer-service agents directing them to cancel, not a driver.

Re: Phone is still the best way to order pizza

#357

Post by tjoff »

acdha wrote: post #351
fragmede wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just calling a VoIP line so the caller ID comes up on a computer and loads the relevant entry from the CRM including order history, run by an experienced user.

“Just” probably isn’t the right word: the tools have become easier but it still takes care to integrate all of the pieces to a smooth user experience. For example, no financial institution I’ve ever used has managed to link things that well despite orders of magnitude greater budget.

>.[..] despite orders of magnitude greater budget.

That's likely to be the problem. Also, a financial institution has vastly more complex interactions than "same as last time?"

Re: Phone is still the best way to order pizza

#358

Post by michaelcampbell »

tjoff wrote: post #345
michaelcampbell wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 100% backward from my experience. Having an account is a 1-time cost, and not only a small one, but one I do for hundreds of other things every day. Logging in is a keystroke that has my password manager auto type my username and password; again something I repeat daily. With the situation in the US at least, trying to get anyone on the phone is an exercise in frustration. The app (for me, so far) has always…

In theory you have a point. But installing a user hostile app is a total dealbreaker. And I guarantee that the eula is not only illegal but an absolute shitshow of trying to exploit paying customers so that the library of whatever third party module required to view an image could earn a sixteenth of a cent per pizza. And that is always the case. Just call instead. Unfortunately you can't do that for everything. Just…

I will say that when I say "app", I mean web app. I don't use the phone app, although most of my post is still relevant there. My reasons for that are mainly that I'm at home on my big screen with a real keyboard 99% of the time that I'm ordering pizza and it's just easier.

So the hostility is perhaps less there.

Re: Phone is still the best way to order pizza

#360

Post by Ekaros »

bennysomething wrote: post #274

Local pizza delivery place users Uber eats and dilveroo, they send a note with all orders saying that Uber and deliveroo take a 30 percent commission and to please use another service that only take 6 percent. How the hell do Uber and diveleroo expect businesses to survive when they are taking 30 percent of their revenue!?

They don't expect themselves to survive if they do not take 30%...

How else will you pay back the VC money and expensive software-engineers, marketing and everything else...

The reality is that using humans to deliver food is expensive. And food is already low margin business...

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