Restaurant delivery websites

March 10, 2013 1:10 PM

What are your favorite websites for ordering food to be delivered from restaurants? I'm a devotee of Seamless, but I know there are a lot of competitors out there, including sites which only serve specific local areas. So I'm interested in both sites with "national" and local scopes, anywhere in the U.S. I'm not interested in individual restaurant websites with their own in-house ordering systems — only looking for sites which feature multiple restaurants. Thanks.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell to food & drink (22 answers total)

Foodler has been pretty reliable for me here in greater Boston.
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:16 PM on March 10 [3 favorites]

When I was in San Francisco proper, I had a great experience w. Grub Hub. I find it works best in large cities (surprise, surprise).
posted by smirkette at 1:16 PM on March 10 [2 favorites]

I really like the domino's pizza ordering system because you get an idea of what's happening with every step of the pizza's creation. I used to live across the street from one in Charlotte, so when it was almost finished, my roommate and I would scrounge together some cash, cross the street, and enjoy our $5 pizzas. We saved a few dollars on delivery, and it was totally convenient. A+++
posted by oceanjesse at 1:16 PM on March 10 [1 favorite]

Oh yikes, sorry about not reading the second half of your post.
posted by oceanjesse at 1:18 PM on March 10

I have not used it yet, but there is Bite Squad, which is relatively new in Minneapolis.
posted by wocka wocka wocka at 1:19 PM on March 10

Seconding GrubHub, but also seconding the mostly works in bigger cities and surrounding areas caveat.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:25 PM on March 10

We're big fans of Eat24 in this household. Greater Seattle area, but it looks like they serve a lot of locations around the country.
posted by trunk muffins at 1:29 PM on March 10

In Portland, Oregon, there is Delivered Dish. Looks like they also now serve Denver, CO and San Diego, CA.
posted by ainsley at 1:34 PM on March 10

We've got Delivered Dish here in Portland, OR. I thought they were strictly local, but I see they also list Denver and operate as Expressly Gourmet in San Diego (but with identical templating for their website). Don't know when that happened.

Taking driver tip and delivery fee into account, d-dish is something we do in the depths of Portland winter, when seasonal affective disorder makes even signing in to d-dish seem like a horrible trial that might exhaust the last of our mental reserves. It also pays to plan to order a bit more ahead of time than, say, a pizza. Delivery times down where we are in town can run to 2 hours.
posted by mph at 1:35 PM on March 10

Albany NY, I use Mealeo a good bit.
posted by mrgoat at 1:38 PM on March 10

Eat24(hours.com), and I'll never go back. They have coupon codes basically every week for $2-4 off, and almost all their restaurants are delivery charge free, unlike Seamless. They also have ratings options so you can see what's good on the menu, clearly mark vegetarian options, and have absurdly fast and nice customer service.

I'm clearly a fan, and that's a problem for my budget.

(I'm in San Francisco.)
posted by c'mon sea legs at 1:51 PM on March 10

Valet Gourmet in Asheville is wonderful. Back when I could afford it we used them a lot.
posted by mygothlaundry at 2:30 PM on March 10

I've pretty much exclusively used Foodler in the past (Washington DC). Having looked at some of the suggestions, I think I'll stick with it because it sorts by cuisine which is way more useful to me than by distance or anything; you can scroll through the options to figure out what type of food you want and then pick a restaurant that serves that. It looks like the others have more variety and options which is great but not useful if you have to scroll through about twenty basically identical pizza restaurants to find the Ethiopian food which you may not even have considered before (this is also really helpful when dealing with roommate situations where narrowing stuff down can be quite tricky because no one wants to make a decision or rule out something someone else kind of wants so if you can just be like "pizza no. Chinese no. Indian? Maybe." it is a HUGE help).

So it turns out I apparently feel really strongly about this but yeah, something to consider when picking your preferred food ordering website.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 2:50 PM on March 10

BiteSquad does this in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Some of the restaurants featured have fairly high delivery minimums, but it's easy to use and really varied.
posted by jeudi at 3:23 PM on March 10 [1 favorite]

In Chicago, I really liked GrubHub.

Here in the DC area, I have used (and generally like) Eat24, but that should come with the caveat that there just aren't that many restaurants that deliver to me and the ones that do that I tend to order from are on Eat24. I also like their loyalty system (you get some percentage of your last order as a credit on your next order, for instance).

I dislike Takeout Taxi, however, because my experience is that the restaurants that use Takeout Taxi package their food differently for those orders (like, the portions are notably smaller than when I just drive to pick it up), and the surcharges seem pretty high.
posted by devinemissk at 5:50 PM on March 10

I have used both Foodler and Seamless. In general, I like Foodler a lot better. They have better deals and coupons and less exorbitant delivery costs.
posted by theuninvitedguest at 5:54 PM on March 10

Delivery Express is tiny in scale compared to the other companies mentioned, only servicing two college towns and one not-huge city. I haven't used them in a while (curse living in the wrong college town!), but I've had good experiences with them in the past.
posted by camyram at 6:04 PM on March 10

Take Out Taxi here in Louisville and several other cities.
posted by magstheaxe at 6:36 PM on March 10

Main Line Delivery outside of Philadelphia-- not many restaurants do delivery so it fills a gap in the market. Delivery fee is high, but they're really good about fixing mistakes and following extra directions for condiments and changes.
posted by jetlagaddict at 4:36 AM on March 11

I use Foodler here in the Boston area and like it a lot. It's easy to find a particular dish, or see what I liked when I last ordered from somewhere, or find discounts. The selection is great and I've never had a problem with any of my orders.
posted by cranberry_nut at 8:17 AM on March 11

I use GrubHub most often because of the ease of use, variety of restaurants, and ridiculously over-the-top almost-Zappos-like customer service. (Restaurant forgot to include the salsa? Here's $10!)

I also like a regional delivery service called EZDineInn. Well. It's a complicated relationship. Their web site is atrocious, they charge a hefty delivery fee, and a quarter of the time there's something small but significant missing from my order, but they deliver from a lot of fancier restaurants that don't otherwise deliver and every 6th delivery is free, and often they either forget to let me tip or outright refuse my tip. Many of the restaurants they deliver from also show up on GrubHub now (marked as coming from a delivery service), but often the minimum order is higher on GrubHub, so I stick with them. I used a very similar site when I lived in Boston: DiningIn (though they appear to have grown up a bit since).

They've been advertising the hell out of Seamless.com in the Bay Area, but their selection, at least in Berkeley/Oakland is woefully limited to half a dozen low-quality restaurants, basically the handful of mediocre pizza places that have always delivered.
posted by rhiannonstone at 6:30 PM on March 11

delivery.com is pretty big in NYC.
posted by NotPayingAttention at 7:53 AM on March 28