Has anyone tried ordering food online yet? I'm talking about ordering food from
someplace local, like a pizza place or a restaurant or take-out Chinese. I haven't done it yet (all the food I want to
eat is either already in my house or I'll just call and go get it), but several Boston college students do it a
lot.
As an experiment for The Boston Globe (the students got a free meal out of it), they all ordered food online at 8pm and waited to see who would deliver the food first. Here are the results. Is the online process tedious or easy? Did the food get there in the time advertised? Does it arrive hot? (Make sure you check out the links in the middle of the article for a rundown of the best services.)
Readers, do you order food online like this? What have your experiences been?










Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-02-2006 @ 8:46PM
Anthony said...
I literally just ordered pizza and wings from Pizza Hut/Wing Street. They have a very simple ordering system. I have used it before and have experienced only one problem. When I order from work using the online service it automatically selects a Pizza Hut that does not deliver to my zone. When I ordered from them the first time they called to let us know that they would be a little later than what the ordering system said. They asked that next time we call the in order to the one that delivers to us. They were about five miles away and the one that is supposed to deliver to us is two miles away. Other than that I have not had any problems. If anything it works better because the pizza always comes exactly as I ordered it. Any error in ordering would have been my fault.
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2-02-2006 @ 8:48PM
Hawk said...
I've done it. The guy thought it was kind of weird, like he wasn't used to dealing with it.. I picked up a pizza, because I lived down the street.
It was like ordering on the phone, except you did it on a computer.
I believe I had to pay in person, which I thought was odd because they required a credit card online.
It was Papa John's in Ann Arbor, MI.
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2-02-2006 @ 9:14PM
karsh said...
I order pizza online all the time, mainly because the franchises in my neighborhood employ kids that can barely walk and chew gum at the same time. If I call to place an order for an $11.99 pizza, somehow they ring it up to $19.99.
I know delivery charges are added, but c'mon...
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2-02-2006 @ 9:46PM
amy said...
My dorm-mates and I order online from Campusfoods all of the time. They make a huge amount of business, given the concentration of college students in my area (Cambridge/Boston). And it's great for us MIT night-owls, since many of the participating restaurants keep their delivery charges low and have late delivery hours to meet demand (surprisingly enough, there's very few restaurants within walking distance of the campus that keep late hours!).
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2-03-2006 @ 5:21AM
ElectricOrange said...
I live in Paris, and I order all the time via http://alloresto.com.
I discovered this site after learning restaurants had trouble deciphering my mangled French over the phone, and the online solution has resulted in zero screwed up orders in 3 years.
It's a godsend.
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2-03-2006 @ 12:09PM
alps said...
i've ordered anything from pizza to sushi online. its great for a person like me who hates the phone. It is just like ordering on the phone but its online. you select what you want, add any comments if you need to and send it on its way. And it comes hot (except for the sushi) and timely just like if you called. I really like it.
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2-03-2006 @ 1:30PM
Xue said...
I go to school in Connecticut and my friends and I order food from campusfood.com at least once a week. There've been some incidents (all with pizza places) where they have problems with their fax machine, but otherwise it's great.
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