By Staff Writers Amy Chen & Richard Chenyu Zhou
Ordering food has never been easier as many apps now offer food pickup and delivery services from local restaurants and eateries. The Smoke Signal tested and reviewed four of the most promising food delivery apps in the Bay Area.
DoorDash
DoorDash delivers to over 300 cities around the country, including all of the Bay Area. While the application makes finding restaurants very easy, its interface occasionally feels cluttered. Unlike other applications, ordering food does not require the user to create an account. In addition, DoorDash has the widest selection of local restaurants that one could order from and doesn’t have a minimum order amount, although there is a delivery fee. The five dollar delivery we ordered from arrived ahead of schedule and was still hot. Every order also has a five-step tracking system that updates in real-time.
Interface: 4/5
Selection: 4/5
Delivery time: 4/5
Price: 4/5
Overall Rating: 4.5/5
Seamless
Seamless partnered with GrubHub in 2013, and serves nine metropolitan areas around the US. Its application is easily the most refined and is very intuitive to use. The app allows users to sort by price, rating, minimum amount, and cuisine. While ordering food requires creating an account, Seamless offers the most payment options. Users can pay with cash, Android Pay, credit card, or PayPal. However, Seamless charges a two to three dollar fee for delivery, depending on the restaurant. Although the delivery process didn’t involve an organized notification system, the arrival of our order was timely, the food was warm, and the driver was courteous and professional.
Interface: 5/5
Selection: 5/5
Delivery time: 4/5
Price: 4/5
Overall Rating: 4/5
GrubHub
GrubHub, the online and mobile food ordering company based in Chicago, currently has more than 44,000 restaurant partners in the US and the United Kingdom. The app interface is quick and easy to use. The GrubHub app does not offer many local options in Fremont and has minimum cost requirements for deliveries. It requires users to create accounts before checking out. Delivery is free, and it was the fastest out of all of the services we tried out, as our order arrived within twenty minutes of ordering.
Interface: 4/5
Selection: 3.5/5
Delivery time: 5/5
Price: 5/5
Overall Rating: 4/5
Eat24
Eat24 is the official Yelp food delivery and takeout app. The app design is simple but often crashes or loads slowly. Customers have the option of making an account or checking out as a guest. Eat24 has a relatively wide range of restaurants which it delivers from and many others that offer pick-up service, most of which have set minimum cost requirements. Delivery fees range from one to three dollars, and the user oriented delivery system, which notifies customers after each step of the food preparation, transfer, and delivery process, ensured that our food arrived exactly on schedule, warm, and ready to eat.
Interface: 3/5
Selection: 4/5
Delivery time: 4/5
Price: 4/5
Rating: 3.5/5
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