Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
1
The service has been available in Manchester city centre for some time but it’s only recently that it’s come to the leafy suburbs. There’s not many local places signed up to it yet but one is my favourite local Indian, so we gave it a try.
Food was definitely restaurant quality, as I suppose you’d expect, and definitely superior to even the best of the local takeaway Indians. The full restaurant menu was available. Process was a doddle and very quick - 30 minutes from starting to order, to the knock on the door. And portion size is actually bigger than that served in the restaurant, so there’s been leftovers to freeze away.
I’ve had mixed feelings as a Deliveroo user in London.
The big plus, as you say, is that the restaurant quality is a bit higher than normal. My favorite sri lankan pop-up delivered via deliveroo as do some of the good Camden Market street food vendors.
The minuses: I don’t like that there’s no easy feedback mechanism on either restaurant or delivery quality. A couple times we’ve used it, the food has arrived pretty wrecked from being packaged badly and then tossed on the back of a bike and jolted down a London road.
I’ve also got the feeling that the delivery workers are unbelievably stressed – once my door buzzer was broken (I didn’t know), which resulted in me collecting my delivery about 10 minutes late. The delivery guy looked like he was going to cry! I personally wouldn’t like to be in a job where a 10 minute delay meant doom, so I would rather pay a bit more and know the delivery people have fairer schedules or wages.
I’ve had worse jobs. Most of our complaints are app-related – as in ‘stop fucking around with the design and worry more about functionality’.
Other than that? Love it. But then delivering pizza in college was one of my favorite jobs. I love driving, having an incredibly flexible schedule… and the money ain’t bad, either.
I guess I’m lucky in that I love all the jobs I have (3ish).
I’ve used it here in London a few times. The main drawback from my point of view is that you can’t rely on them having deliverers available, so you might plan to order dinner from a place that only delivers via Deliveroo, only to find at the last minute that you have to change your plans. As someone who likes planning, I find this quite annoying! On the other hand, as a hippy, I do like that some of their deliverers use pushbikes instead of motorbikes.
