A meme recently seen on Facebook mocks the antiquated practice of faxing through the lens of Office Space’s favorite boss to hate, Bill Lumbergh. Another means of communication on its way towards extinction is using the phone to order food—well, not exactly. A smart phone is often used to order food but no human-to-human contact is necessary. Instead, it’s all about the app.
With the increased popularity of online ordering of nearly everything but particularly food, we wondered what the locals do. In an October 2015 Q&A between Carl Imo and our dining editor, Imo called online ordering “big and getting bigger,” noting that “check averages are higher with online ordering than with placing orders by phone to a human.” With more time to browse an online menu, customers appear to be making impromptu additions. (Also in October, SLM weighed in on the different restaurant delivery services in St. Louis, and there are a lot of them.)
Chris LaRocca, co-owner of Crushed Red, said that he sees a divide among the generations when it comes to online ordering: older customers would rather phone in their orders than use a computer. LaRocca’s daughter, Candace, who is the operations manager and social media expert at the Clayton location, argues that online ordering isn’t just a trend among millennials, but a “necessity”: “it’s all about convenience,” she explained. In her experience, older people tend to stay away from online ordering perhaps in part because of a “lack of trust.”
The father-daughter team not only described the differences in ordering based on age but they also live those differences: friends were recently in town and the LaRoccas wanted to pick up dinner. Candace recommended that they use Postmates, a popular delivery-on-demand service. But when LaRocca learned that the delivery fee was $10—equal to the food’s cost—he went the old-fashioned route and picked it up himself.
While online ordering provides convenience for the customer, it can initially prove burdensome to the restaurant owner as he or she determines which system works best. Dave Bailey, for example, is still deciding what to use at his new restaurant, Shift, Test Kitchen & Take Out.
The same is true at Gerard Craft’s recently opened Porano Pasta. Kate Woolverton, the office administrator for Niche Restaurant Group, said that the decision will be made in part based on how online ordering runs at Pastaria once they get their “sea legs” under them at the new downtown fast-casual spot.
Pastaria is a good example of how several online ordering and delivery options can be used by a restaurant simultaneously. Since it opened, curbside service has been in place, where someone can place an order online—paying for the food ahead of time—and then pull up outside the often-crowded restaurant and have the food hand-delivered to the car.
Another online ordering option there is through Food Pedaler, a local bicycle delivery company Woolverton praised as “reliable” and “great.” One can order from either Pastaria’s or Food Pedaler’s website and have the food delivered for a fee depending on location. Since Food Pedaler has a relatively small delivery window, ChowNow has been added to the available online ordering methods. After downloading the Pastaria app, which is connected to ChowNow, one can specify what food they want and when they want to pick it up. The app allows the restaurant to maintain its own brand and style, so one feels as if he or she is on the restaurant’s website, with ChowNow taking care of the logistics behind the scene.
Making the ordering process “as simple and easy as possible” is a primary goal at Pastaria, according to Woolverton. She imagines putting herself in the customer’s shoes, which apparently isn’t too difficult since she uses online ordering systems outside of her job. In fact, she joked, one reason she might rely on apps so much is that, as someone in the hospitality industry, she needs a break from interacting with people in her off time. One app she uses daily is for Starbucks; she can place and pay for her order online and walk into the store to (usually) find her beverage waiting for her.
As a millennial, Woolverton seems to prove the hypothesis that younger people prefer to order online. She attributes the preference, however, more to lifestyle than age: those who are “tech savvy and busy” at any age gravitate towards online ordering. At the same time, she admitted that her parents are hesitant to try Postmates, which puts them more in Chris LaRocca’s camp.
While convenience seems to drive online ordering—and perhaps the desire to not interact with another person, either for downtime or to avoid human error—what may be the most important benefit is control. In an increasingly chaotic world, where shouting reality TV stars may be president, the need to have some agency over one’s life is critical. “Customers have control over the order,” Woolverton said. That need for control, whether it’s over ordering food or over one’s job, helps to explain why a micromanaging boss from a movie released 17 years ago still resonates with many. Now would someone please create a Lumbergh-Trump mashup meme?
