I just made my second order from a vegan food delivery site. This time it was buykind.com. This site offers various meal items from several restaurants in different parts of the country. By going through the restaurants and placing an order, I learned this much:
1. There are a total of six restaurants so far. One of the restaurants does not yet offer online ordering; you have to order by phone or email. I decided against that option simply because I want to stick with getting it all done online.
2. You have to complete an order at one restaurant before going to another. They are separate orders.
3. Delivery information is incomplete and seems to vary from restaurant to restaurant but I may have that wrong. To be safe, I ordered from a restaurant in Venice, California because it's relatively close to me (about 200 miles). And imagine my surprise when no shipping charge was made at all! But then I got a call from Jody at buykind saying they calculate shipping after the order is placed, and they offer a flat rate per box which is quite reasonable for me. She said I could add up to five more items for the same rate, so I am going back to choose a few more items.
4. The website could use some work. As a web designer myself I tend to be sympathetic. It can be hellish getting it the way you want. Also, this is a brand new business.
5. Because I ordered Saturday the order will be prepared and shipped on Monday and will arrive Tuesday. Sounds good to me.
8 comments:
Hey Judith,
That's an interesting service. It's crazy how specific it is; and also how few restaurants are included.
I'm curious why you used them. Is it because you have few vegan restaurants near your home, or was this just an experiment with ordering online?
Justin
There are a couple of reasons.
1. Sometimes I would like to have food ready-made, available right now, that tastes good. I like to cook but sometimes I am just not in the mood and other times I am otherwise occupied. I also like to try other people's food.
2. I love to encourage a service like this, in hopes that others will take the leap and create others. So far I've learned of three, each of which operates quite differently from the others but all of which feature vegan food.
There are no specifically vegan restaurants in my area but I am lucky to have several that are veg-friendly. If I were to eat out every day I would not starve.
So my goal here is to share these experiences with others. I hope that when others try them they will find this blog and add their comments. We all have such different tastes and expectations.
Wow, I didn't know this existed. Fascinating. That site *really* needs to be redesigned by a professional, though.
Yes, vegan blog tracker, the website needs work. I can understand her excitement about getting it up and running as fast as possible and leaving that a bit behind. I suggested that she look at seamlessweb.com for an example of a great program for ordering from menus. I have no idea what it would cost to hire someone to do that but I think it would be worth it eventually.
Hey Judith, not to be too spammy here, but you might mention my company to her. That's exactly what we do.
You can see a demo of our service here: http://www.resercom.net/1/menu
Well, Justin, I looked at your test site and wondered "where are the real sites?". Do you have some clients?
I'll be happy to mention you to her and perhaps you can strike up some kind of arrangement that works for you both. You might want to contact her directly, though. She's nothing if not accessible!
Judith, yes we certainly do. Most of our clients now are in the North Texas area, simply because of proximity, but our system is expandable nationwide.
This site is a little behind the times but we have a list of our active clients at http://www.razportal.com
In the meantime, I'll get in touch with buykind.com.
Thanks again
I think it's great how many of these kinds of mail order services are popping up. Vegan food is just getting easier and easier to find :)
Post a Comment